Ricodo Church Conference and Baungon Mission......!

The church conference in Ricodo was wonderful – we had an amazing time of ministry and fellowship! The church leadership had done a superb job of planning and preparing.

One of the highlights was 22 new believers being baptized!!

The river was flooded, and the current was swift, so it was quite funny at times watching the struggle it was to hang onto the people being baptized! 5 of the bible teachers did the baptizing.

Over the past year, the Ricodo church has had about 50 baptisms.

BAUNGON

During the evening service, the speaker stopped and announced that the evangelists who had been teaching that day in the new outreach to the Baungon area had just arrived. He asked them to come up to the front and these 7 very humble servants of God went up. The whole building erupted into great applause!!! All the churches are so thrilled that the Gospel is going out to Baungon and they are doing all they can to help!

No one likes to be on a remote road and to see Men step out of the forest like they are about to ambush you but this is what happened to udi and his fellow-evangelists as they travelled to Baungon. They stopped, expecting the worse, and the ‘Ambushers' said, “we know who you are, you are the ones preaching the way of salvation in higaunon. No one has ever come here sharing that message in our own language. we want you to come and teach us in our village too!!!

Pray with us about whether Baungon is the next place where God would have us open up a new work and send a missionary team to live full-time! And an update on the couple we asked for prayer for: God had the victory!!

New leaders of the Ricodo church were prayed for along with their families.

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!

2019 Church Camps Full Of Fun

Trekking around the regions.....!

As we have trekked around the mountains recently visiting some of our churches, it has been a blessing beyond words to see first-hand the things that God is doing through our team of Gospel workers. It was truly an incredible and overwhelming privilege!

In the photo above is the church in Man-ai, the newest region that the Gospel has reached. The two missionary families in Man-ai are our youngest and least experienced missionaries but God is bringing many people to Himself through these two couples. The work has grown so much since they moved in there Aug 20th, 2018. They took us on an afternoon walk to meet some of our new brothers and sisters in Man-ai and we were thrilled to see the deep relationships they have formed in just 8 months…..every person has an incredible story and that story is packed into the photo above, a new living baby church being transformed by our Lord Jesus!

In one of the churches in the Ricodo region, we got to talk to, eat with and comfort a young couple who are ministers of the Gospel, who we hadn’t seen since their 4-year-old son died from pneumonia. Their tears fell but their faith strengthened us as they talked about God’s goodness and their trust in His plan.

No one could pour on the hospitality better than the churches throughout the regions that we went to – even in the areas that are hurting for food. They had teams going out hunting, the ladies went to huge lengths to cook special things out of cassava and coconut and goat meat and plantains and the church-family meal-times were amazing to see and to eat! It was a lot of work but so much fun and done with so much love.

We have just sent out the video about this trip so you may have seen this already. Other news is that we are going to take a few months of home assignment in Perth which we are really needing. The Talaandig New Testament is scheduled to come off the printing press in October, and as we wait for this, we are going to take some much longed for family time – with Jubab (who is enjoying Uni in Perth) and with our families, especially our two Mums. We will be doing some sharing in churches and a little travel and hoping the Lord opens doors for us to see you! Please pray for our travels and especially for the printing of the New Testament.                                           

To The Regions and Beyond

Welcome Ernesto and Jane Lopez!

We are thrilled to say “WELCOME TO THE TEAM“ to our newest co-workers, Ernesto and Jane Lopez who just arrived from the US last week!! Praise God for growing our team and providing through Ernesto and Jane's skills and gifting - Ernesto will be able to provide some hugely needed IT help for all the regions we are church planting in. As well as this technical help with all the computers and other equipment, Ernesto and Jane both love to teach the Word and Jane shines in administration and ministry to young women. We're hugely excited that they are here. Please PRAY for them as they start setting up a home this week and begin their initial transition year of culture and language study - which is a vital and necessary first step for them so they can communicate well (even though we can't wait for the day they can actually take over all the IT work and other ministry they have come to do! 😊)