RE: SDA Church in the Philippines

[Gerr]

For some reason it crossed my mind to look for Northern Luzon Mission in the internet having been born in that part of the world. I was shocked & dumbfounded to see that there was a 78.6%, that was over 58,000 members lost in 2003! Then I came across a letter about a crisis in the church throughout the whole islands which all began with a leaky church roof in the Visayas (Central Philippines). The members requested help from higher up who refused to help & told the members to fix it themselves, which they did but later withheld some money from going to the conference. To make a long story short, the church officials wound up locking the church. The members sued & won in court. Then someone burned the church to the ground. From that point on, it snowballed to where the official church lost the right to use the name "Seventh-day Adventist Church" because it had not been registered as a proprietary name. The conference lost their tax-free status because their supposedly non-profit hospitals have in fact been operating as for profit entities. Then the church officials supposedly tried to bribe members and gov't officials.

I have not heard of this crisis before. Is there anyone here who can verify or disprove these? Apparently, this news is at least 3 yrs old. If true, any update?

Gerry