Giving Thanks For Our Son!

It is high time to get Dad and Mum’s brag book out and give you a look at some of the highlights of our son’s last year. We have less than two weeks left before we enter Jubab’s teenage years – can you believe it? Our son is turning 13!  Where did all those years fly by and how come our baby son is now suddenly a man-child as his Mum likes to call him?

This past year has been sort of a quiet year for Jubab. It has been his first year of high school and in his mid-year report card he got 8 A’s and 1 B and just this month he received a certificate from his Year Advisor for ‘Great Work In ALL Subjects’.  Needless to say we are VERY, VERY proud of his achievements and very thankful for his great teachers – Ben and Leonie!!!!!!

Just so you know, some of the things Jubab enjoys are:

                Foot spas in a bucket

                Playing basketball

                Sketching and drawing

                Conquering huge pythons with Dad

                Doing homework with his dog, Sparky

                Work-outs (cool ‘tough’ look) 

Amongst some of Jubab’s achievements this year is the development of quite a few cooking skills – he has made cheesecake and teriyaki chicken amongst other things, and one day last week while his Dad was out preaching and his Mum was sick, Jubab even cooked a whole meal for his Dad’s lunch meeting with the elders and they said it was delicious!

He has read numerous books as he has a real eagerness for reading, he is one of the best care givers you can imagine if you are sick and need caring for (he stayed by his Dad’s side day and night when his Mum was away at a Ladies’ camp and his Dad got sick and had very high fevers), and he frequently gives us the treat of listening to his fine voice, which is developing in depth and in volume and which we are trying to encourage him to share with others - which he is thinking about maybe doing.

Jubab is quiet, loves ‘alone’ time, avoids too much conversation if he can, and his friends here in Lapoc describe him as a gentle and calm friend. Wrestling matches though can bring out the tough side of Jubab so watch out if you ever challenge him to a wrestling match! This toughness was really evidenced when he gritted his teeth earlier this year and had surgery on his ear drum without anaesthetic. Ouch!!!

He is very tenacious when trying to solve a problem and this has helped him work through things in school and solve technical problems with his different devices. It also helps him with his sketching – until he gets his sketch just the way he wants it, he will re-do it over and over and over again.

If you want to know about Jubab’s idiosyncrasies, well, he does have a few. One of them is his huge love of sleeping in front of a whirling fan, even when its cold. Another is his love for tea – green tea, oolong tea, white tea, jasmine tea – just about any sort of tea. He loves to take his pot of tea and his Japanese tea-cup down to his room at night. Another is his favourite question, “How long do you think it will take.......?” He loves to know time schedules!

So dear ones.......for those of you who haven’t seen Jubab for awhile......this 13^th birthday tribute will re-introduce you to our delightful son who is the apple of our eye.

How did these baby days slip away so fast?

Teenage years........here we come!!

What FUN!!

Cancer and funerals........

Ronnie and Aling.......
they really need our prayers at the moment
as they battle Aling’s bowel cancer.

Today is the third day of Aling’s chemo treatment,
they are away from their family,
out in the city,
facing the pain and the strangeness of the hospital
amongst mostly strangers.

Life feels so foreign and so uncertain to them at the moment.
They are sorely missed here in Lapoc. They play a huge role in the church in
pastoral care and leadership.

Paul went out to the city today, to visit them and to make sure they are doing okay.

And funerals.......

This is the scene we visited 12 evenings ago, as we went to grieve

with a family from the church here whose young adult son had just been brutally murdered

along with his friend.

Sadly, this scene has been repeated just yesterday - another two men were murdered

early yesterday morning during a gathering to bury a family member who had died

of old age. They had been drinking, old hostilities were stirred up, knives

and guns were brought out and now there are two more to bury.

These deaths directly affect families here in the church who are relatives and family

of those who have been killed, so there is much grieving here  

and there are funerals and loss and grim finality to deal with,

which is especially hard considering the violence of these deaths.

So please pray for our church family here.

Pray that these tragedies will spur us on in even more fervour in

the spreading of the Gospel.

Baptisms.......new brothers and sisters!!!

This is Jesus’ little flock at Pawagaon.......a small group of believers,

very familiar to being in need,

isolated in many ways,

newly freed from a life full of many fears......

.......and here we are gathered with them on the banks of a small river,

as they prepare to testify to their salvation through the Lord Jesus

through the waters of baptism. 

There were nine baptized that day at Pawagaon,

and last month there were fifteen baptized at Kapisahan

which is an outreach over in the Dulangan Higaunon where we

first were. For years we wanted to teach over in Kapisahan but the people’s

hearts there were closed. Only recently were the people there open to being taught.

God keeps opening doors where doors were not open before!!!!!!

Goodbyes....plus patient and ministry updates

We never like to say goodbyes but they are a frequent part of missionary life.

A few weeks ago we said goodbye to Josh and Belinda and their children, Daisy, Ally and Neo.....tears and hugs and that last wave and then they were in their vehicle and driving off down the road.

This is a photo taken during our farewell team dinner with them. They have been a close part of our lives and partners in the work since Sept 9, 2006 when they joined the team here. And even when they were way past their furlough time, they kept working away here with us while we all prayed and waited for the paperwork for Neo to be finalized.

(By the way, since you might not have seen a photo for awhile of our whole Lapoc missionary team: the couple on the left of the photo are Ben and Leonie, then it is Jubab, Paul and I with Neo in between us, next to me is Annie with her hubby Rodel sitting at the front of her. Next to Paul is Josh. Then it is Bugs and Elsa, Belinda standing behind Elsa, and then Wing and Hazel. Hazel is hugging Gwen their oldest daughter, and at the bottom of the photo are their other two children Cled and Jella. Daisy and Ally on the bottom right and Chingx2 in the stripped hat next to her Dad with her brother Nel beside her.)

Back to our farewells, the long-awaited day finally arrived in the second half of May - Neo’s passport was ready!!!! So in a few short weeks Josh and Belinda were able to finalize plans, finish Daisy and Ally’s school year, pack up their house, say many, many goodbyes, pack their suitcases and head for their passport country - looking forward to hugs and much awaited times with family and friends.  We hope and pray that they have a very refreshing year and ask for prayer for them as they adjust to what is now somewhat a foreign culture to them even though it looks familiar.

Please pray for safety for them as they travel, and for spiritual refreshment and renewing in their lives.

PS – Aling has colon cancer – Please keep praying probably will undergo chemo.

The elderly lady will have cataract surgery (Lord Willing) tomorrow – July 22

The little girl is also scheduled to have her eye removed tomorrow – we will try to get an artificial one for her.

The man with huge growth on his back will be operated on (Lord Willing) on Aug. 9

Bible study with the primary school teachers continues tonight and is going fantastic.

The new outreach in Lantod is also going incredibly well – please pray.

A hard day in town....please pray!

Dear Co-workers in Christ,

Debbie, Jubab and I came to Cagayan De Oro City on Saturday after attending our NTM missionary conference in Malaybalay. We had a bunch of things on our agenda.

We wanted buy food to supply us for the next 2 months on the Saturday, then catch up with some friends in CDO on the Sunday and then on Monday (yesterday) our driver Wingwing was to go to Cauyunan and get all of the elders from our first work for them to have an elders  meeting with me in CDO and Debbie while I met with the elders was to care for some patients who Wingwing was also bringing out of Lapoc due to them needing special medical care out here.

We ended up having an emergency ---- Rony who is my dear friend from Lapoc and one of our first converts came out with his wife as she had a mass in her abdomen that we wanted to have looked at. We ended up having to have immediate and urgent surgery and they removed a 6 inch length of her small intestine due to it being engulfed in a large mass/cyst/abscess???. Please pray for them. We first took them to the government hospital and there were patients literally littering the whole area and no room or ward vacant for them to be admitted into for surgery, so we took them to the next hospital and it was the same so in the end we admitted them into one of the best hospitals in town and had the surgery performed last night at about 8PM. Must be just what God had planned for them – He is so gooood!!!! Rony has been my right and left hand J ever since we arrived in Lapoc, we watched him experience the tragic death of his 14 year old son due to an asthma attack and he hurt and hurt and hurt but never even missed going to his outreaches where he has led many to the Lord. He has helped me with designing and heading up most of our construction as well and we work very closely together.

Please pray for Rony’s wife’s recovery – her name is Aling. I will be going to see them once I get this e-mail sent.

We will be caring for the other patients today now – to give you a bit of an idea of our days patients:

1.      We have a little 11 year old girl that has an ulcerated eye. We have to have it removed.

2.      We have an elderly lady from our new outreach of Lantod who we are having cataract surgery on.

3.      We have a middle aged man who has a gigantic cyst on his back that we need to have operated on.

4.      We have a lady who was shot up some years ago and pus is still coming out of her wounds. Her condition has just come to our attention. She will need LONG time care for which we have rented a room out here for her to stay in. We also employ another lady out here who assists us with these patients and others which are quite common when we cannot be here due to us being home translating.

5.      A lady with a skin disease.

6.      And a poor little boy who has a spinal fluid leak causing swelling between his eyebrows. Not sure what they will do with him yet.

So in addition to Aling there are all these patients that we would appreciate prayer for.

We are going to try and go home on Thursday and have “Naring”  (our employee out here) finish off caring for these patients. We just need to get them all set up for all their surgeries and then she can handle the rest.

Meanwhile yesterday until about 4PM I was in our elders meeting. It was a good time and it is exciting for me to see the work going on in the area where we first worked for 12 years. There are 8 churches there now. Will write a few things down about some of the highlights. Please pray for these people as well as they serve and grow.

1.      We are setting up a new mission station in Kalamalamaham – it was the very first village that I surveyed as a young missionary back in 1987 but they rejected us and would not allow us to live with them as they believed that we wanted to sacrifice their children to the evil spirits. Almost 25 years later they want to hear the Word of God so we are currently constructing 2 houses there and will soon send 2 missionary families to reach the area. The men are already there.

2.      They had a baptism in Kapisahan which is a brand new outreach – there are 15 believers there now. What great joy!!!!

3.      We have to rebuild the medical centre in Cauyunan as we constructed it from wood some 20 years ago and it has been eaten by termites. Hopefully this year.

4.      A big youth conference is being planned.

5.      Many of the kids of our initial believers in the Cauyunan area are being trained as Bible teachers and going out to other areas.

Lets pray that we can set the place on fire for the Lord through the power of the Glorious Holy Spirit.