I first met Jessup when we were both 18 years old. It was in an out-of-the-way place called Kiara in Don Carlos, Bukidnon.
We were attending what we called then as the Feast of Tabernacles, a yearly church convention of the Worldwide Church of God. I think it was still then known as the Radio Church of God. The two of us were baptized together along with an older man. To be baptized at 18 was a rarity in those days as maturity was a strict requisite. Somehow Jessup and I showed enough age to get dunked in the cold baptismal pool of the church tabernacle in the middle of nowhere in Mindanao.
I never thought I'd be baptized that day or I would have brought a change of clothes. So there I was in my brief and Jessup in his shorts pushed under the water by the minister in a ceremony that was believed as the burial of our old, decadent selves. Touching moments indeed but a source of amusement for me in later years.
Jessup came with his father and family for the feast from Sibulan, Negros Oriental. He was already skillful in the art of aircraft repair and working his way towards becoming a pilot. I was finishing my technical inland fishery course in Zamboanga City but my residence was Dimataling, Zamboanga del Sur after I moved back to Mindanao, to rejoin my parents and siblings, from Cebu where I grew up with my maternal grandparents.
Our next meetings would be in Cebu City since my mother and the rest of the family transferred to Cebu after the death of my father.
Jessup helped me get into Philcox Phil. which had a contract with the airport authority to maintain the avionics equipment of airports. He was one of the check pilots; I was one of the ground avionics techs. (I had just finished a technical electronics course from the Cebu School of Arts and Trades.) I did not stay long in the company and moved on to other jobs and rejoined government service and eventually finished a degree in Commerce. In the meantime Jessup was hired as fulltime minister of the church and assigned in Cagayan de Oro. It was where he would show his mettle as a servant-leader in the fullest sense.
There were many things we did together but what I would most remember is when he helped dig and poured concrete for the foundation and piled hollow blocks for the walls of my small home. I reciprocated in a small way when he was building his bigger home (compared to mine). By this time he was back in Cebu as a volunteer church elder which meant he could engage in non-church business. This would become the Aviatour while I struggled along as a lowly government employee.
With the demise of the founder of the Worldwide Church of God in the mid 80's the membership splintered into many small churches often espousing variants of the teachings of the original group; others wandered off to other mainstream Christian churches. I took a step further in the early 90s when the internet was beginning to pick up. Through my association with the internet pioneers in Cebu, I was given access to information not theretofore available to others in the church. These information led me to humanist groups, freethinker sites, and cult-watch centers which in turn led me to the writings of Carl Sagan, Stephen Gould, Ernst Myer, and Richard Dawkins in that order. It is easy to follow the logical conclusion from there.
And that's how Jessup and I drifted apart as church buddies (my wife and I served under him for some time as deacon and deaconess) although his family and mine remained friends.
When my family and I went to his wake we thought it was the Feast of Tabernacles all over again. There were our friends from the different flavors of the Worldwide Church of God and other churches from as far as Davao and other parts of the Visayas. It was the biggest wake I'd ever attended what with all the friends Jessup made aside from the church members.
Farewell my good friend, Capt. Jessup Magallanes Bahinting. Long after now, I will still be talking to my children and their children about our adventures together. Thanks for the memories.
