We arrived safely.....!

We had a safe arrival back in Mindanao – thank you for praying!

Jen and Udi and kids came out from Cauyunan to spend a couple of days with us and to celebrate Jen’s 39^th birthday  – hard to believe that it is 26 years since Jen came to our family as our permanent foster daughter! We had a wonderful couple of days with them and are very excited about a new outreach that Udi is heading up in another new region - Baongon region. We had some great hours talking about the amazing things God is doing in that area and about how the churches in Cauyunan and Tumpagon are rallying together and helping with some of the costs of this outreach. It is a tough trip to even make it in there and we are so thankful for Udi and his team who are excited and eager to preach the Gospel and who are giving up two days of their week to go there every Thursday and Friday.

Of note a key shaman (witch doctor) there along with many other people have given themselves to following God’s word and they even made a fire and burnt their amulets and other things they used in their worship of the evil spirits. God is so powerful!!! Our son in law is not the most gifted teacher but his heart is fantastic and he serves in an amazing way and God has used him along with his fellow servants to plant quite a few churches. I guess the truth is – if we allow God to use us, He will.

This weekend we are travelling to a big church conference in one of our regions and we would love your prayers for this time, there are a lot of people travelling from afar to get there, a lot of preparation for catering, there are speakers (including Paul) preparing to share the Word and there are new believers excited about getting baptized during this time.

Today we launched into our new project of writing new Evangelism Materials. Our alarm didn’t go off at 4:30 as I had miss-set it, but thankfully we were woken up at 4:40 am by our little beloved doggy Ducky, so we didn’t miss it by too much. The water from the tap was just a trickle this morning as water pressure here can be a problem, but we are old hands at catching trickles of water in a bucket and bathing in a few dipper-fulls. Getting a cup of coffee took a bit of effort as the grinder was not functioning properly because our coffee beans got too old and hard while we were away. 😊 That was worse than the bird bath shower as we love our coffee in the morning. All the little hiccups of daily life, hey!

Please keep praying for us. Church planting and missions always involves struggles and pressures, attacks from within and attacks from without. Already in just one week we have been experiencing heart-aches and stresses along with the joys and the progress. One couple who labour with us in the Gospel were just here this morning going through some severe testings, overwhelmed almost to the point of wanting to surrender and leave the work that God has entrusted to them. Our hours of counseling them, comforting them and reminding them of God’s love and promises may help them and if we could only just take their hearts and turn their focus back on Jesus and on His work, how we would love to do that, but it needs an act of their own wills and their own personal surrendering to the Lord. So we entrust them to Him and pray, and if you could pray too that would be such a help.

So please pray for this couple who are struggling, for the church conference this weekend, for the baptisms and for our work on the new Evangelism Materials.

But the BIG PICTURE is our amazing and wonderful God who has us and each one of His precious children in His hands and no one and nothing can snatch us away from Him! How awesome is that?!!!!!!

A bit like tortoises......!

We were at the Perth Zoo with Jubab a couple of weeks ago and saw these two giant tortoises. There was an interesting fact we learnt about these guys:

“The tortoise likely would not beat the hare, but when strongly motivated these big fellows can hike right along. They have been known to travel 3 or 4 miles in a day on rugged terrain.”   The two of us are sort of like these old tortoises, we’ve been on the road for a long time, wouldn’t likely beat the hare, but we can hike right along when strongly motivated and the Lord has put a huge motivation in our hearts.

Please pray for us as we fly back to Mindanao on Saturday (Oct 19) evening, that our hearts will stay captivated with our Lord Jesus and focused on Him right to the very finish line! He has given us a job and we are so grateful for the part He has given us in his great work – that of planting churches in Mindanao and spreading the Gospel – and we want to hike right along doing as much as we can before He calls us home.

Deb’s shoulder is doing much better since her surgery, Paul’s leg is getting stronger with the physio and we have had a beautiful time of spiritual refreshment here in Perth and very special family times. Our hearts are being wrenched at the goodbyes and separation we will endure again, especially leaving Jubab here in Perth, but we are grateful beyond words that we can serve our Lord Jesus in Mindanao.

We are so excited that our Talaandig New Testament is finished and the time is fast approaching when we will distribute it (hopefully coming off the printing press the end of November). So much effort and years of work are finally being paid off and such joy for all our Talaandig and Higaonon brothers and sisters that they will soon be able to read the word of God in their own tongue! We know without doubt that it will grow their faith even more and that many others will be saved!

Our new focus on our return is going to be developing new Evangelical materials. This includes producing these materials in both Talaandig, Higaonon and English, putting them up on the web and having downloadable study notes for people who want to use them. We would love prayer for this, that God will give us great wisdom. We believe that these materials will not just be greatly used by the Talaandig and Higaonon speakers but we feel that they will be used also greatly by English speaking folk.

Please pray also for 2 church conferences that will be held in the next months – one in Ricodo one in Lapoc – We will be at both.  Another big prayer point is a new work just opened up in the region of Baungon.  It started with a few families asking to be taught and within a couple of weeks, more and more people were being added to their number. We are asking God if this is the next area that He would like us to put full-time workers of the Gospel into.

May our GREAT God who is the source of all our hope and life, bless you amazingly!