A wedding and a goodbye

This is our third day back from our Philippines trip and we haven’t come down from the mountain of joys, joys, joys!

One of the joys was on our very last day; Paul officiated at the wedding of Ronnie and Aling’s son Rhonnie Jhon as he married Christian, his beautiful, young bride. We’ve watched both of these kids grow up in the church at Lapoc and it was wonderful to be a part of their special day – one of the many blessings God gave us during our time there. God answered prayer and Aling was able to see her son married to his beautiful girl, although she was too weak to go to the actual wedding. Immediately after the wedding ceremony we went to their house to say goodbye as we had to leave for town to catch our flight back to Australia and this was one of the most painful moments of our whole visit.

Aling has been confined to her bed since last month and is failing a little bit more every day. Ronnie told us that he doesn’t think she can last much longer. In the last two weeks, Aling’s mind has started to drift a bit, she has high fevers that come and go. Painful lumps keep forming in her body which eventually break her skin and drain. The only relief from the agonizing and continual pain is the morphine which the Lord provides through a dear Doctor friend in Cagayan and we are so, so thankful for the gift of relief that God gives her and also that she can still smile and praise God with her lips and with her smile. 

Aling and I had a few minutes alone to say goodbye and I will never forget those precious moments that I lay my cheek against hers and both of us cried knowing that those would be our last minutes together on this earth. She told me that not a morning or an afternoon doesn’t pass by that they don’t think about us and miss us and I told her that I didn’t want to say goodbye to her yet and that I will miss her so much and that I love her. We talked about how we will see each other again when Jesus comes to take us all home. She is ready to go home to our Lord Jesus and it won’t be long now. 

 

The last day of our trip started with the wedding and then our goodbyes to Aling, but backtracking to the first week, we had a very wonderful four day conference with church elders, pastors, evangelists and missionaries from all of the churches which have been planted – 70 men in all, including six men from the fruit company who trained in Lapoc. Paul taught them through the whole book of 1 Timothy which has just been translated and we were able to give them the finished books of Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians and 1 & 2 Timothy. Thank you so much for your prayers!!!

The trip was full of awesome family times.  The beautiful and teary young lady who Jubab and I are cuddling is our very own Charly-Joy, Jubab’s beloved niece and our oldest grandchild. We couldn’t believe how much she has grown up. This was a very sad moment, hugging her goodbye last Thursday at the end of Youth Camp as she was going back home with the Cauyunan Youth Group. How we wish we could hold onto her forever.  We live in a world of goodbyes...so heart wrenching…but the goodbyes are only for a short time and then our Lord will return.

Is not My word like fire?

Another Beautiful Verse -  Jeremiah 23:29   “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?  ----- God’s Word is so powerful and can shatter the hardest heart and draw a person to Himself. Let’s pray for our loved ones and friends.

I had all the intentions to put out an update at the end of March about how our translation went. But then before we knew it we were in the Philippines and had a God given amazingly wonderful time -- Deb will write a few updates over the coming weeks and we also have some video clips that Jubab made which we will put up on the web before too long. We will send out the links.

While in the Philippines, the highlight for me was to be able to teach the book of 1 Timothy to the elders and pastors who God has raised up through the work over the past 27 years. We taught them for 4 days and it was a tremendous time. All up there were 70+ elders, pastors and evangelists present.

Now - - -  God enabled us to reach our translation goal in March and we completed the book of 2 Timothy. We really praise God for the progress that He is giving us in the translation and we really praise Him for the prayer that you have offered up for us. He is sufficient.

The next goal - - - on Monday (April 27) we are beginning to translate the books of Titus, Philemon and 1 Corinthians. This project will take us (Lord Willing) 15 weeks. All up it is 20 chapters consisting of 480 verses. Please continue to pray for us as we translate. For health, encouragement, strength and a close walk with our beautiful Jesus.

Smaller goal – by the end of May we are hoping to have completed Titus, Philemon and up to and including 1 Corinthians 4.

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Finishing 2 Timothy

Just wanted to ask for special prayer this week as we work on finishing the book of 2 Timothy. We are working on chapters 3 and 4 this week and would love to take the completed books of Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians and 1 & 2 Timothy to the Philippines with us next week!!!

We are gearing up for our trip to the Philippines next week so lots to do and lots of excitement.

Jubab has a busy week getting things finished off for Term 1 at school and completing assessments.  Paul has just been diagnosed with a very bad case of sleep apnoea which explains the tiredness he has been experiencing. As his sleep was monitored by machines the doctors discovered that his oxygen levels are getting dangerously low (83%) for extended periods of time (hours) and his sleep very broken so we praise God that He has brought this to light and there are machines available to help Paul with this which should help to improve how he is feeling.

May God’s peace and joy be with you as you go through the minutes and hours of this week.

Family News

God gave our family a wonderful evening to celebrate last week – Dad and Mom’s 50^th wedding anniversary!!  We five siblings, including Paul and our sister-in-law Rhesa, were all together at one place for the very first time ever! Many of our beloved family on Dad’s side and Dad and Mom’s life-long friends around the Brisbane area were there to help us surprise Dad and Mom with this special celebration and to bring together a wonderful meal to share. Our hearts are overflowing with joy at God’s grace to us. Please pray for Dad as his cancer has spread to his lungs and to the area around his liver and intestine. He started back on his chemo last week and straight away started experiencing severe cramping in his feet and his calf muscles at night time and fluctuations in his blood pressure. Please pray for Dad and for all of us as a family as we take things one day at a time in this journey with Dad’s cancer and as we keep trusting our Lord for whatever plans He has.

Jubab is getting into a good routine and balance with his Gr 11 studies and other activities. He is also having a bible study at school every Monday and he is growing heaps in our Lord Jesus and the thing that is characterizing Jubab since he returned from his Teen Missions trip to Hungary is his joy in the Lord and the freedom he is experiencing in his walk.  This is an extract from an update Jubab wrote when he came home last month:  “Pray for me in these areas: Learning to be within God’s will, not turning to the right or the left, but even in the smallest thing walking with Him. I’m giving my all for Jesus, I’m going in with arms high and heart abandoned.”    

This is our prayer too!  Praise God!! 

First Fruits and Behind the Scenes

 First fruits!!  Praise God!!

There is exciting news from one of the newest outreaches called B…….and K……..!!! News from there is filtering in slowly and with not much detail as this work has been dangerous and no one has been able to go to these places yet apart from the two bible teachers who were committed to the ministry who also have relatives in those areas which somewhat protects them. 

We are blessed though to see some of their faces because a few of these first fruits from B…..and K…..visited Lapoc on the weekend of January 21^st.  There are about 10 new believers in the Lord Jesus in these places and 3 of these are young men who have already started training to be Bible teachers!  One married couple are so fervent that they are travelling each week with the Bible teachers to some of the neighbouring little hamlets to help gather people to listen to the Word.

This month, Rodnie (who is heading the ministry there) has been invited by village leaders to speak publicly in front of the whole community of B……which is a real spiritual breakthrough. Please pray for him that he will speak with great confidence in the Lord and with power.

Church leaders from Lapoc recently wrote to us saying that this is one place God is showing them where His spirit is at work opening up many new doors. This really excites us but we are also sad that for now these doors remain quite closed apart from to a few because of the unrest and danger in these areas.

Behind the scenes of God’s stage:

Some of the things God is doing are very obvious and seen by many but there are a lot of things happening behind the stage that few see. And one of the things we don’t often see or take notice of is who cleans the seat we sit on when we meet to worship the Lord or who sweeps the dirt off the floor that our shoes bring in. This is a quote from one of our dear widowed sisters who sweeps the church building in Tumpagon: “atiyù sa trabahu ku ba tagkatuusan ku ha sakop a hu lawa hi Cristo….” She said, “I just have a small job to do but I continually see that I am part of Christ’s body….”  How beautiful! I want my heart to have this attitude continually as well: to recognize that I am serving within the body of Christ – for His glory!

 

This is a new church building just going up this week in a village called Ligiron which is about 3 km away from Cauyunan where we first lived and first proclaimed the Gospel. Quite a few times we visited Ligiron, treated their sick and tried to make inroads for the Gospel but there was very little response. Now, over 2 decades later, there is a growing young church in Ligiron and the believers are helping one another to make this new building for them to meet in! The roof was bought with money they made from the corn mill. The cost of the nails was divided up amongst all the churches. The church in Pinatagan provided the posts, the church in Cauyunan provided all the wood for the framework, and all the elders and church leaders from all the churches are working together on the building alongside the believers from Ligiron. 

And as always, there are the ones back-stage, providing food for the workers, cooking for them, serving tirelessly – rejoicing that they are part of the body of Christ! The ‘plates’ in this picture make us homesick for Cauyunan. These are our favourite sort of picnic plate – a banana leaf!