Our last days with Dad.....

This was our last photo with Dad. Taken about 2 hours after we arrived. We had long delays with our flights and a frantic message as we were driving from the airport saying, “Sis, how far away are you? Please hurry…..” We were wondering what God’s plan was for us and if we would arrive too late, but God gave us the beautiful gift of 2 hours with Dad where he was able to respond to us before he lapsed into unconsciousness. All that night and the whole next day our family was at Dad’s bedside, holding his hands, talking to him, keeping him as comfortable as we could. His breathing was very labored which was heartbreaking to listen to.

At 10:50pm on Sunday evening, July 23^rd, 30 hours after we arrived, our Lord Jesus took Dad and brought him into His own presence. Dad died very peacefully with our arms around him, and we give glory to God and are so thankful for His plan for Dad’s last days. During Dad’s last week on earth, he was still able to have his weekly bible study and drive Mom to the grocery store for their weekly outing which was amazing. Only for his last 3 days was he confined to bed, and in his own home as he wanted it to be.

Since Dad passed into glory, our family has just clung together, sharing our grief, our memories of Dad, and working through all the things together that we face now that Dad is no longer here with us. Mom is very tired but is doing okay and keeping strong. 

We have been cushioned on all sides by the outpouring of love and prayers from all of you! Thank you so, so much!  All I can say is that there has been so, so much LOVE.

Paul and I plan to return to the Philippines on August 4 (1 week after the funeral). We praise God that we were able to be here with Dad and our family during this time. Mom will probably be going to WA with Bobby at about the same time we go to the Philippines. I wonder what God’s next chapter is for us all.

For those of you who can attend, Dad’s funeral is on Friday, July 28. We are having a memorial service at Kingsridge Baptist Church, at 11:30 am at 12 Portia St, Kingston. At 3:00 pm there will be a viewing at the Mt Gravatt Cemetery Chapel which is at 582 Mains Road, Macgregor followed by the burial at 3:30.

About my Dad....

My Mom just called this morning as Paul was on his way up to Lapoc. She said that Dad is not responsive this morning, and is not waking up. Dad has been progressively getting weaker and weaker with his cancer the past weeks and his pain has been increasing terribly. Thankfully I was able to contact Paul and he turned around straight away and arrived back home a few minutes ago.

Right now we are trying to book tickets to get to Brisbane as quickly as possible. The palliative care doctor said we should return home as soon as we can and encouraged us to talk to Dad on the phone which we did and we heard his voice although it was very weak.

Just wanted to let you know. Our hearts are very heavy right now, tears falling as we write this. Please pray for our family and pray for all the travel details. It is so comforting to know that Our God is not taken by surprise and has a plan.

Like FAMILY.....

Many of the people in this photo were part of the very first group of believers in Cauyunan that put their faith in the Lord about 26 years ago!!! The bond that binds our hearts together with theirs is so deep and so special, we can’t even begin to describe it to you. They know stories about us and we know stories about them that could fill book after book. It is no wonder that when we are with them, the only way to describe it is that we are FAMILY.

Our time with them last Sunday was so, so amazing and so joyous. A commissioning service was held for one of the ‘little girls’ of Cauyunan (not so little anymore) and her husband, who the churches there sent out this week as their newest missionary family. Please pray for them – Aybi and Jerrum and their little daughter Shine: for safety, for good relationships with their new team, and that they will stay close to the Lord.

Praise the Lord with us for one of our brothers Kikì, who has recovered from leprosy after 4 or 5 years of suffering terribly from this disease. He and his wife sang during the church service and brought many of us to tears.

The progress on the translation work is going awesomely – THANK YOU FOR PRAYING!!!!!

We reached our translation goals last month and please pray that we will reach our goal for the month of July of finishing up to and including John chapter 17.

Just in closing, we had a real experience of ‘cops and robbers’ here last night. Just as we were boiling the kettle and getting ready to have a quiet cup of tea before bed, the place erupted into gunfire so loud and close we thought at first it must be fireworks just outside our home. It turned out it was the police chasing a highway robber, peppering his escape route with bullets. He didn’t get away it turns out, but ended up being shot in the foot and then arrested.

On the road again with the translation!

Translation
After spending a few months renovating our home and taking trips to the mountains, having meetings etc, we are finally back into translation. We have about 15% of the New Testament left to complete before we can print. This is a Big and Continual prayer point. We need wisdom, tenacity and strength from our Lord. This week we are working on John 12:21-50. By June 30 we would like to see up to and including John 13 completed. After we finish the Gospel of John, we will just have the Gospel of Matthew to do and then the New Testament will be completed.

Ministry
Hugely good is all we can say and to our Lord Jesus be the Glory!!! We have been up into the mountains several time since we have been home and all is going well in the churches. Today the “Dulangan” elders are visiting us after meeting with the “Lapoc” elders. (These are the names of the 2 areas we have worked in for the past 30 years). They are coming here to discuss a new mission team that we want to send out on a full time basis. This is exciting for us – us grandparents now of the work. Pray that the Lord will give wisdom and that a schedule can be set out. They are thinking that we will send the family from the Dulangan to live in Lapoc for 12 months before they finally move out so they can receive more training and bond with new team members who will go out with them. A big prayer point.

A New High-school
The Lord is opening it up for us to minister in a NEW high school this year - in the village of Ticalaan. There are about 800 students there. The men evangelists will do most of the work here. Students who attend this high school come from a large number of villages that make up the catchment area for this school. So we are hoping and praying that this high school will be hugely instrumental in the Word being taken to more places. The scripture teachers want colored pictures to be inserted into their teaching materials so we have just purchased 2 top end duplex lazer color printers which can churn out our new materials that we are developing. We also need to hold some seminars on these materials within the next 2 weeks and need wisdom to set dates. It will probably mean an overnight trip away into 2 different locations. Pray for this work and the other 14 schools that we currently minister in.

Our Health and our Family’s Health

-     * Deb’s Dad is holding his own with his cancer but certainly needs our prayers. IT has gotten worse and he is on fairly heavy pain killers.

-      *My Mum in Perth may need a knee replacement soon.

-      *My Step Mum in the USA has had her brain cancer reoccur after it was absent for about 12 months.

-      *Deb and I have the normal pain that comes with age - wear and tear but overall we are good and happy.

Jubab is doing GREAT at Bible College

The Lord has raised up some people to partner with him financially each month so this is a huge praise point as it has reduced the stress of not having funds to pay for the needs he has. Praise God --- reduced stress on Mum and Dad too. Can’t help but watch with anticipation to what God is going to do with our Sons’ life.  Of course we miss Jubab terribly but we are more comfortable with him being separated from us now and really happy with what he is doing. We recently had a really great time with him when he visited us.

Where we are now

We thought we would show you this map so that you can see where we are now compared to before. All our churches are in the upper left quadrant of the map of Mindanao, and we've shaded the area in - from Cagayan de Oro, to Iligan and then across towards the Malaybalay area and then back to Cagayan de Oro. The area that we've coloured with light blue is the Cauyunan - Tumpagon area where there are 8+ churches (where we lived and ministered the Word from 1989-2000). They continue to reach out to new areas including a new outreach here in Cagayan de Oro.

The area coloured in with purple is in the Iligan jurisdiction and we have a missionary team of two families living in this area sent out from the Tumpagon church and supported by the churches of that area as well as some support from Australia. They live in Ricodo where we visited last month, and they have done a lot of great outreach and church planting. There are 4+ other churches in that area planted from that work. They continue to reach out to new areas.

Then there is the red area and that is the Lapoc area where we moved to from Cauyunan in the year 2000 along with a team from the Cauyunan church. There are about 20+ churches planted from the Lapoc work and they continue to reach out to new areas.

The area coloured orange is where we are setting up a work centre now. Cagayan de Oro is a coastal town spread over quite a large area and teeming with people. This is the place where we have always come out to from Cauyunan and Lapoc: to buy supplies, bring people to hospital, pick up our mail etc. It is also the place that many of the people from the churches we work with come if they need to sell or buy or do paperwork required by the Govt.

We're setting up a central office here to finish our translation from and to work on materials needed by the churches. There is also a place where we can hold meetings and training sessions with the church elders who will come out to stay for 2 or 3 days at a time. We can also easily move around and travel to visit all of the churches and security wise, it is one of the pretty stable parts of Mindanao right now. The distance around the circumference of these areas, from Iligan to Rogongon to Lapoc to Malaybalay and then back to Cagayan de Oro is about 455 km and takes hours because of bad sections in the road. It would be about a 9-10 hour trip on average and you could get road blocks that would prevent you even from arriving in a day.

The green area is the Man-ay area where preparations are under-way to place a permanent missionary team. There is a family from the Tumpagon church in the process of moving over to Lapoc for missionary training, another single man already in training from Ricodo, and the church leaders from all the areas are coordinating together making plans for setting up the facilities to house the missionaries and the new work that will open up over there. We have been praying about this area for about 4 years so this is WONDERFUL news to us.

Anyway, this is just a vague sketch but hopefully will be helpful in giving you more of an idea of where we are now.

More good news is that we have now moved into our new place here in Cagayan de Oro and are in the process of unpacking, settling in and getting our new office set up!! Lots of clean-up and little finishing off jobs to do but the end is getting very close!

Jubab arrives in 3 more days Lord willing!!! We are sooooo excited!!!

Every day brings something new and exciting and challenging!

April 25, 2017.....it is very hot today, and our clothes seem to have been permanently stuck to us with sweat all day. I think we still have a ways to go before we will be fully acclimatized to the heat here. We were up at the building project quite early this morning and as usual, there are cement chips flying everywhere. 

The ‘maninilsil’ on the work team has been a very important part of the building project. He is the one who uses a ripping chisel - or in this case, a piece of plastic pipe with a nail in it - to pry pieces of cement away that need to be removed.

This little tool has been extremely busy as we work on getting new electrical outlets put in and new pipes and fittings for the plumbing.  The builders helping us originally thought that we were looking at about 3 months of work, but it is looking like it may only be just a little over 2 months before we can move in which would be wonderful.

 Every day brings something new and exciting and challenging.  Last Sunday we set off at 4:30 am to visit the work in Ricodo. It took us 3 ½ hours of driving to reach the church there.

The two-family missionary team, both sent from the Tumpagon church, have been serving in Ricodo for close on 5 years now and Paul said to them after witnessing the amazing things God is doing  through them:  “Guys, the work you are doing here, all I can say is that it’s just nothing short of WONDERFUL. To God be the GLORY!”

It really was just wonderful to see what God is doing through the team there: the way the church is growing, the outreach they are doing, the discipleship happening, the way they are teaching faithful brothers and sisters to teach others……their hospitality… their love for Jesus!

One of the things we are looking forward to when we get moved into our place is being able to have the Ricodo missionary team come and stay with us so we can get some time aside with them to pray together, and to talk about their vision for the work and their struggles and how we can help them. It was hard to get any time alone with them while we were there in Ricodo because of the constant stream of people to their houses.

One of these visitors in Ricodo was this little 5 year old who so cutely and fearlessly showed me the enlarged lymph nodes in his neck and skin lesions on his hands and feet which led me to believe he has a tuberculous infection. I tried to advise his Mom as best as I could and we’ll follow up on him to make sure he gets treated. Another lady came and hugged us who had been crippled up with tuberculosis last year and on her deathbed, but thanks to the availability of skype, we were able to call from Australia and get in touch with contacts the Lord had given us and have doctors and accommodation waiting for her at the hospital. She was on treatment for months but is now restored to health, and is longer crippled – she was walking!

This is their beautiful new church building in Ricodo – our first time to see it.

The missionaries asked Paul to share the Word which he always loves to do and afterwards we ate a meal together.

The trip back was uneventful but long because we ran into a couple of bridges only partially open due to ongoing repairs which held us up for a long time. The day grew even longer later on as we got a desperate call from a young lady who had been apprehended and Paul and I found ourselves separated at night in a huge crowded market while he tried to find a place to park the car and I tried to find our terrified friend. Paul walked into the police station trying to find me and asked, “Is my wife here?” The police looked at the overcrowded holding cell which could hardly hold another offender, and said in a very surprised tone, “Your wife is HERE?” (Hilarious some of the situations we find ourselves in.) The story has a good ending as we were able to talk to authorities on behalf of our friend, pay her fine and take her safely home to her family.

We’re so thankful that we can be here serving our incredible Saviour in any way He wants us to and we’re so thankful for your lives as you serve Him where you are and for your love, prayers and encouragement!!!!

The Painful Last Embrace

It happened.

Much as we were trying to hold onto each day and each hour in our hearts, the moment did arrive earlier today when we had to give our son that painful last embrace before we left him to go to the airport.

From the time our eyes opened earlier this morning, the tears have been close to the surface and often spilling over: first from the pain of the looming goodbyes with Jubab and now because the goodbyes are over and already we miss our beautiful son so much. 

Right now we are sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for our midnight flight. It is snowing outside, a very different sight to what we will see outside the Manila airport when we arrive there Lord willing in another 24 or so hours.

The two of us are wondering what lies ahead and God keeps reminding us that it’s a walk of faith and that we can trust Him. But four little words are in our hearts right now:  MORE OF THE SAME!  More miles traveled to spread the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus, more churches planted, more spiritual leaders raised up, more baptisms, more missionaries being sent out, more buildings to build……more amazing works being done which only our God can do as He sends us and uses us and gives us this privilege to serve!

So as our feet once again have the joy of walking in the Philippines, these are some of our immediate tasks and prayer points once we arrive:

·       Necessary paperwork – please pray that it will get processed smoothly and quickly.

·       Setting up our home and office in the new area from which we will base – this may take 1-2 months. Please pray that this work will be even quicker than we anticipate so that we can soon get back to the translation work.

·       Meetings with all the church leadership – pray for all of us to know the Lord’s mind as to how and where we can best bless the churches and the leadership teams.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us and for Jubab……we treasure each one of you and praise our God that we can serve Him together!