5000 Talaandig Pocket-size New Testaments!!!

WE’RE PRAISING GOD AND SUPER EXCITED!!!!

5000 pocket-sized copies of our newly printed Talaandig New Testaments were just delivered this morning from the Philippine Bible Society in Manila for the school ministries!!!! The 5,000 copies of the big Bibles that are for all the churches are all boxed up and ready to ship as soon as it is allowable to ship things from in Manila.

The shipping company who delivered them from the pier, are on their last day of work. Tomorrow they are closed because of the Covid-19 lock-down!!!

DoyDoy, one of the Lapoc Church elders, arrived 30 min later in his truck to pick them up and take them to Lapoc!!

2020 Baungon Region Work

A Whirl-wind Journey.....!!!

During the past few weeks it feels like God has been taking us on a whirl-wind journey, showing us more amazing things that He is doing than our hearts can hardly take in.

No pictures or words can describe it, but we will try to give you a quick sketch.

This is a new group in the village of Malandog who our missionary team in the Ricodo just started teaching.

  

This very day, another group in Ligiron, an outreach from Cauyunan have heard about Jesus’ death for them and His resurrection, and more of our Lord’s lambs have been brought into the fold!

Two days ago we made a quick trip to Manila and meet the whole team in person at the Philippine Bible Society who have had a part in the type-setting and editing and designing of the Talaandig New Testament.

They told us the long-awaited news that the New Testaments are ready to ship to us on Monday!!

We made it back home around 10 pm last night, very thankful to make it out on Manila before all transport in and out of Manila closes. Please pray with us that the shipping of the New Testaments will still be able to go ahead next week despite the quarantines and lockdowns to prevent the spread of covid-19.

In these uncertain days with people not knowing what they will face next — amidst closures of  schools and workplaces, travel restrictions, face masks, panic — God has chosen this time to bring His unchanging Word translated into Talaandig and available for the first time in printed form to His people here!

There are 2,300 believers from our churches who have put their names down to come to the launching of the Talaandig New Testament celebration to receive a bible and to give thanks to God for His beautiful gift! And there are over 500 who can’t travel but are waiting at home for their copy! (We can barely believe how many believers there are now in our churches.) Now, we may have to delay the group celebration or we may have to have several smaller celebrations but we won’t delay the distributing of these very special, life-giving Bibles to these waiting believers!

Another very exciting event during the past few weeks were the seminars we have held for the new evangelism material we are writing! Above are the pastors, missionaries and others who are keen to evangelize, who attended the first English Seminar.

After the English Seminar, we held the same seminar in Lapoc only in Talaandig for about 60 Talaandig and Higaonon missionaries, pastors and evangelists. Paul told the team during the seminar in Lapoc that he felt like one of the most blessed missionaries to have them as his spiritual children and his co-workers in the Gospel!! They are an amazing team!

In summary, during the last few weeks we have seen the Lord bring salvation to about 50 – 70 new believers, the New Testament that we’ve been working on for 20+ years is ready to ship and almost 3,000 people are waiting for their copy, there were about 95 workers of the Gospel who studied the new evangelism materials in the seminars, and ALL of this is God’s doing and amazes us!!

The Gospel Arrived In Baungon!!!!

Yesterday we were able to witness and take part in an amazing day! God wants the people of Baungon and He saved about 40-50 of them yesterday!

It started with a young man called Yongyong, (bottom right in this picture) who got saved in Tumpagon. He was so thrilled with his new relationship with the Lord Jesus, and he started thinking about his grandparents and uncles and aunties and relatives a long way off, who had never heard about Jesus and knew nothing about salvation.

So, he spoke to Udi (our son-in-law) and offered to guide them to the place and help them establish contacts, if they would be willing to go and to preach the Word. And Udi of course went because he has such a heart to reach the lost, and he took a few other teachers and evangelists with him from Tumpagon and Cauyunan. So, the outreach into Baungon began on August 23, 2019. They have literally poured hours and days of their time travelling to this remote place, enduring hardships, and have been in dangers…….and they ended up being asked to teach in three different villages.

Yesterday was the culmination of almost six months of preparing hearts with foundational teaching for the day of salvation and for the first time yesterday, they heard what Christ went through on the cross to pay for their sin. Udi and the others with him asked Paul if he would preach yesterday and it was with great joy that we were able to witness firsthand about 50 people accept salvation!

One of the men saved was Datu Efren. He is one of the head chiefs of the area. He was sobbing as he heard what Christ had done for him and at the end of Paul’s message, you can see him here hugging Paul and still wiping tears. Many were crying as they heard for the first time how Jesus had cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabacthani,” and that he was forsaken on account of our sins while he hung on the cross.

Afterwards, there was a huge rejoicing together as all of us from the Cauyunan, Tumpagon and Lapoc churches (I counted more than 60 of us who had come to help and to encourage on this great day) burst into singing, praising God for His salvation, while we shook hands and hugged our newest brothers and sisters in the Lord.  This went on for quite some time and we were just amazed at what God has done through the work Udi, Alan, Mico, Ryan, Victor, Jo-Jo and others who were willing to take the Gospel to Baungon. 

Another amazing part of the day that we must share is that Lola, one of the ladies who was saved yesterday, is 102 years old! She can still hear and see, now after more than a century of life, she has finally been able to receive salvation!!  Yesterday I watched her leaning near the people who were singing and praising Jesus and she was tapping her feet and tapping her cane and loving it!

Another story that we must tell you is about this smiling lady next to Lola, who ran up to me and hugged me when we first arrived and said, “Do you remember me?”  I answered, “Where did we meet before?” And she said, “I used to live near Cauyunan and my 9-month-old baby boy got really sick and after a few days, he was almost dead, and I ran with him all the way to your place. When I got there, you took one look at him and you grabbed him from me and ran into your house and I wondered if I would ever see him again alive. And you treated him and cared for him and he lived! And now he is 28 years old and has three children of his own and our whole family has trusted Jesus!”

These beautiful children belonging to Datu Efren wanted to sing a praise song! They listened so intently to the whole message of the Gospel. I was sitting behind them and watched them listening carefully as Paul was teaching about the cross and about Jesus’ suffering to pay for our sins. These two precious young lives are amongst those who we believe were saved yesterday and now have eternal life!

 Words don’t do justice to the amazing happenings of yesterday. We hope to send a video soon which will give you a much better picture of what it was like when the Gospel arrived in Baungon!

Our Dear Team.......

Just a quick update to let you know the good news that in spite of expected delays due to the coronavirus and the current difficulty of getting materials for bible covers from China, the Philippine Bible Society phoned us last week to let us know that they are still aiming for the end of next month as the completion date for the Talaandig New Testaments!!

Including shipping time, that still puts the Celebration of the Talaandig New Testament, sometime in the month of April or early May and we continue to aim for this by faith! God’s timing is perfect!

We are making great progress with the new evangelism material we’re developing and are currently working on lessons 8 and 9 along with visual aids and illustrations. On Feb 29 we are holding the first seminar on these materials for a group of pastors, missionaries and others who are interested, which will be in English, and then on Mar 9, the same seminar except in Talaandig.

Our plan is to continue holding monthly seminars in both languages and the materials can then be taken out and taught in each of the regions to other groups of pastors, evangelists and anyone wanting to teach about salvation to their neighbours and families. Please pray that this will be a great tool for the pastors and evangelists in all the regions here and that they will be pleased with how we have put together this material that they have been asking us to do for a good many years now. It just had to take a back burner until we finished the translation!

God’s work continues mightily! Last week, eight new believers from Malandog and Kiwalan were baptized in the ocean, including this 80-year-old man who is Wing-Wing, our co-worker’s Dad!!!

Praise God for His power, goodness and awesome faithfulness!!! We rejoice each day that we can be a small part of the team who is spreading the Gospel in this part of Mindanao and seeing Him do great things!! Thank you for your constant support and prayers and for your part in reaching those who are still unreached. Please PRAY, PRAY and PRAY for the last steps of the printing of the Talaandig New Testament!!! 

Translation Team Celebration

Our Hearts Are Bursting With Joy.....!

Our hearts are bursting with joy as we’ve just had an amazing church conference over the weekend in the region of Lapoc! This was a regional conference, so most of the 1008 people attending were believers from the Lapoc region, although there was a delegation of about 50 of the new believers from the Man-ai region which thrilled all of us so much! God has greatly blessed the work there which has only been going for just over one year!! We had great messages from the Word from 5 different speakers and beautiful times of praise and worship.

It was one of the best conferences we’ve had so far in Lapoc, organized totally by the leadership of the Lapoc church with no input from us. They built a unique, outdoor baptismal which we saw for the first time when we arrived for the conference, so this time we held the baptisms at the church and didn’t need to make the big trek to the river. The mothers with small children and the older people were especially thankful for this!

There were 77 baptisms, and it was a thrill to see many young people who have grown up in the churches in the Lapoc Region, eagerly seeking baptism and desiring to follow the Lord! There is a real spiritual fire burning amongst the youth in all the regions!

We got to catch up with dear friends and family in the Lord, have precious times of fellowship over meals, laughter and some tears but mostly just heaps of JOY!