God is so good to us every day:

     The way He provides for us to keep working in His field year after year and meets all our needs:  thank you for being a part of that!

      The way He puts prayers in His people's hearts to pray for us:  thank you for being a part of that!

       The way He keeps encouraging us:  thank you for being a part of that!

       The way He works through His Body to spread the Gospel:  thank you for being a part of that!

God is also just so good to each one of His children the way He carries them through the trials and hardships and dangers of this life and we want to tell you about how good He was to Chariza (we took this picture of her singing in the Lapoc church last April when she was 3 months pregnant) last month through a huge trial that she had.

Chariza is one of the children who grew up in the Lapoc church. She became a believer in Jesus at a young age, was baptized and when she finished high school, she became one of the scripture teachers in the schools and also helped us on the Translation team. About a year and a half ago she was married to the love of her life, a fellow believer in Jesus called Momoyama and after some time they were excited to find out they were expecting. Last month they were looking forward to the birth of their first baby and one morning a couple of weeks before her due date, after eating some fruit out in her yard with her husband and mother, Chariza's head suddenly began to hurt. She got up and said, "I'm going to go inside and lie down." Her husband got up too and left for the farm and her Mum went off to visit a family in the next village who had just lost a loved one.

What neither of them knew was that Chariza never made it to her bed. She had collapsed on the floor just inside and everything had suddenly gone black. Still conscious, she tried to call for help but her voice wouldn't come out and no one could hear her silent screams. She couldn't see as she had suddenly lost her vision and she couldn't move. She lay on the dirt (their house hadn't been finished yet and didn't have a floor) for a couple of hours unable to move until noon when her married sister dropped by and found her. Her sister ran to the farm to call Momoyama and together they carried Chariza to the bed and cleaned her up and tried to give her something to eat and drink which she really couldn't get down. By then she was spitting up some blood and Momoyama was panicking and so was her sister and they had no idea what to do.

Their Mum arrived back at 5 pm and as soon as she saw Chariza she ran to Lapoc for help and came back an hour later with WingWing and our 4WD that is used to transport the scripture teachers, along with Nanah and Annx2, two of our team who we trained as health workers in the Clinic and who we gave midwifery training to as well.

  

They diagnosed Chariza as having pre-ecclampsia and cared for her during the long two hour ride out to the hospital. During that ride, Chariza still couldn't see, her blood pressure was sky high, she was falling in and out of consciousness and attending to her was extremely difficult in the cramped space of the vehicle. Only 30 minutes into the trip, she had a massive convulsion, a massive haemorrhage from her mouth and she stopped breathing. Moyomaya cried out in despair, "She's gone, she's gone...." and began to sob heart wrenching cries because he thought his wife was dead.  Nanah and Annx2 called out to God for help and He heard their prayers and they began to feel a pulse and to see Chariza taking tiny, shallow breaths and they made it to the hospital where she was put on an IV, given injections and after two more massive convulsions and 40 minutes trying to stabilize her, she was taken by ambulance to another hospital an hour away for an emergency C-section.  

Today Chariza is back home with a beautiful, healthy baby boy, her vision has returned, her body has healed......it is another of God's amazing goodnesses! God chooses how each of our stories will end, but one thing is always the same - His goodness! "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Psalm 23:6. 

Grandma's little babies!

We're going to see our grandkids again soon as March is just around the corner now that November is already here. This is our delightful little Jhamaica who is 4 and her little brother Lloyd (having fun with Grandma in the picture below) who is 2, the youngest of our four grandchildren.  (We just wanted to show them off!)

Paul has been spending a lot of time today organizing our schedule and contacting people in the Philippines in preparation for this coming visit in March. Amongst other things we are going to be having a weekend with the elders from all the churches along with their wives which will be packed with fellowship, bonding time as teams and lots of prayer time and planning meetings.

We want the elders to tell us where they think we should locate and what areas they feel we could most benefit the churches as we move back full-time in 2017 once Jubab is finished high school and settled somewhere in Uni or College.

Would you please pray for Atu and Boding, a  brother and sister from the Ricodo church? Their 12 year old son Jorics, was hit on the head from a falling coconut and died from the injury. He was buried over the weekend and they are left in great grief and shock. Boding is one of the praise team and also one of the ladies who teaches scripture at the school in Kalamalamahan.  In another church - the new church at Dungguan - the believers are going through sickness and loss: please pray for the family of Tony who the Lord took after a time of sickness. He is an older man but was a new believer in the Lord. Pray also for Helen who opened up her home to us when we went to Dungguan, she is having blood pressure problems and pain in her chest. Also a man who is newly saved whose name is Juan, has cancer. We have personally been to Dungguan and it is a very isolated and poor community and medical help is a difficult to reach.

Sickness, grief and trials are nothing new in this world but the Word of God brings something new and wonderful and that is the knowledge of Him and of His love and the help that is constantly near as we walk with Jesus and are empowered by Him. This new and exciting journey is sustaining hundreds of our brothers and sisters. Yesterday in the Lapoc church, the pastors there: Ronnie, Rodil and Duyduy started teaching the book of 1 Timothy which we only finished translating this year. It was only the introduction but already we have heard of the excitement of the congregation to hear this new part of scripture and to learn new things in their walk with God. Some we heard were thumbing through their copies of the partial Tala-Andig New Testament and were saying, "How come our Bible doesn't have 1 Timothy in it?" They were disappointed to only be able to read it on the church power point.

The wonderful news though is that we are right on schedule again and completed our translation goals for the month of October (PLEASE KEEP PRAYING - YOUR PRAYERS ARE VITAL!) and by the end of this week, 2 Corinthians will be totally finished and we will be printing new partial Tala-Andig Bibles that will have almost 70% of the NT in them rather than the 54% which they currently have and this means that they will then be able to read 1 Timothy in their own homes and carry it with them wherever they want.

We are already drafting the book of Hebrews and are up to chapter 3. Please pray that by the end of November we will have up to and including Hebrews 6 finished. 

Great News From The Basak School

It has been two weeks now since the Elementary School in Basak with 20 classrooms of young students, opened their doors to the teaching of God's Word. This is the amazing report from the women who God is using as His mouthpieces in that school – Quote:

"Our time at Basak has been so good. The children are listening well. The teachers are very welcoming. We teach twice and after we come out of our first classes, the teachers have us go to the office and they serve us coffee and snacks and they really go to expense for us. We have told them not to prepare snacks for us all the time as it will become a hassle for them but they told us that it was the least that they could do in return for the Spiritual truths that the children will come to know through us. The teachers are so happy and two of the lady teachers have bought bibles from us and even the school principle has ordered a bible from us. Last Friday was our second time to teach there and the principle didn't have us write our names in his logbook because he said, 'We don't consider you visitors anymore because we are partners.' We are so happy with how things are going in Basak!"

Please pray for the school teachers of the Basak Elementary School who are in the top picture, and also pray for these wonderful scripture teachers who are teaching the Word each week in the school. Their names (left to right) are: Marie, Gang-Gang, Nanah, Yen-Yen, Lorna, Jie-Jie, Christian, Aiza, Ann-Ann and Judy. 

Overlooking Outreach Paralyzed Man

Overlooking Outreach

Exciting news!!!!!

Exciting news this month! Heart-stopping news!!!!

Remember Kaulayanan? That village waaaaaaayyyyyy up the top of a mountain that we struggled to the top of in February, 2008, with the hopes of making an agreement with the village leaders to send a team in there to live and to preach the Gospel. We already had two families from the Lapoc church who had committed to move up there so that they could reach this area with the Good News about Jesus. But to our disappointment, the door there was slammed firmly in our faces and we felt pretty sad and discouraged as we travelled home late that afternoon and into the evening.

Well God has opened doors there in a different way!!!! God is the one who is continually knocking on people's hearts, continually seeking..... as we have been learning in 2 Corinthians (like in ch 5:19-21) which is the hardest book of the New Testament that we have translated so far. You might be saying, "Quick - tell us in a nutshell what this heart-stopping news is!" Well, it started unfolding a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of school teachers turned up at our place in Lapoc. Not many of the team were home as the ladies were all out teaching scripture in the schools, but they talked to Rodil and said that they had come to ask for scripture teachers to come and teach the Bible in their school in Basak.

In Basak!!!!! Many of the children from Kaulayanan go to school in Basak!!! Our first thought when we heard this news was to praise God that He has opened a way for the Gospel to reach Kaulayanan - through the school children!!!

It is great timing as the scripture teachers in Lapoc have been busy multiplying themselves and training others to be teachers of the Word and just last Saturday they had a special lunch to commemorate a year of hard work and study that these ladies have put in so that they can become proficient at teaching children the Gospel and in helping them to grow in Jesus.

 The team who will be taking the Gospel to the school children at Basak will be made up from ladies in this picture, including some of the 8 newly graduated ladies who are holding their certificates. They start tomorrow - October 2nd - and they need lots of prayer. Please pray for them: for endurance through all the bumps in the road ahead, for them to continually look to the Lord for the patience, focus and zeal that they will need, for both teachers and students in the twenty class-rooms at Basak to be greatly blessed through their ministry.  Pray especially for the new ones that they will quickly overcome any timidity or fear and grow courageous and bold in the Lord.

The Lord helped us greatly through the month of September to achieve our goal of finishing up to and including 2 Corinthians 4! This was in spite of Paul's nasal surgery (septoplasty and turbinoplasty) which resulted in a painful week of recovery.

This month of October, the goal is to finish up to and also including 2 Cor 12:10. Please continue to PRAY, PRAY, PRAY for this!!! We are so delighted and thankful for the progress in spite of the many hard hours of mental, physical and spiritual strain in achieving this.

Some Prayer and Praise Points:

               1. Please pray for the elders and bible teachers in the Dulangan churches as they look to the Lord to show them where to reach out, that doors will open before them for the Gospel.

               2. Please pray for the weekly outreach to Gawgawon which has been tough going for the teams from Tumpagon and Cauyunan.

               3. Praise for the many new believers in our Lord Jesus at the banana plantations and ask for wisdom for those heading up the teaching that they will have wisdom for the next step.

               4. For our family - pray that all three of us will walk in the joy of the Lord, that Jubab will have great wisdom and encouragement and diligence as he starts his HSC subjects this term, that we will have tender hearts all the time to the Lord's leading.

               5. Please pray for Dad as he continues to go through the renal cancer. He is very anaemic and has had blood transfusions, but it seems the problem might be due to side-effects from the chemo. 

A quick memoir from Paul, Deb and Jubab's Desk

Our family is looking pretty happy here because this was taken on our beautiful son's 17th birthday!

Every day we are happy as we give thanks to God and serve Him! 

A great milestone this past week was finishing the book of 1 Corinthians and this week now to be working on 2 Corinthians!! Just finished skyping with the translation team in Lapoc - working on 2 Corinthians 2 which is almost completed. Our favourite verse of that chapter is:  14 Ba salamat hu Magbabayà ha dayun tagpangulu kanyu duun hu kadaogan duun ki Cristo daw tagpaalimbahung pinaagi kanyu hu kahumut hu katun-anan mahitongod Kandin duun hu alan ha dapit. 

Which in one of our English translations (NASB) says: 14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. 

What an incredible privilege to be translating God's Word into Tala-Andig!!!!!!!!!!!  Some days we can hardly believe it that we have been given this joy. 

Today we were also able to help a brother in Lapoc by contacting friends who run a hospital in Cagayan to arrange for him to be taken there for treatment. He has had a suspected stroke and is being taken there right now. Skype, email and cell phones makes our brothers and sisters seem so reachable in spite of the distance. 

This afternoon we have started drafting 2 Cor 4 and Paul has been preparing a message as he is speaking on Sunday. 

Jubab is having a big week: his 17th birthday, finishing up all his exams and assessments for Yr 11 and his basketball finals (his team won and we were some of the loudest parents at the game).

(Breaking news:  About an hour ago, Jubab passed his driving test so he is now a fully-fledged driver!!  Where did our baby go??)