Mission to Man-ai

The Talaandig New Testament has gone tech!!!!

Praise God for friends in Australia who made an App this month for the Talaandig New Testament!

This App is now published on the “Google play store” so you can download it on your phone for free and check it out.

Instructions: 

Click on the “Play Store” icon on your phone.  

Type in “Talaandig Bible” and search.

You will see the icon appear that is in the picture above. 

Click on “Install”.

You can then click on this icon on your phone and it will open the TAV (Talaandig Version) for you.

It is a great blessing from our Lord to have this App!

Each week as we whittle away at the 18 chapters left in the book of Matthew which are still not translated, the App will reflect this progress as it will update automatically each week.

Please be praying with us as we work towards publishing a “book form” of the TAV in early 2019. We still will need to finish Matthew, do minor revisions, book introductions, maps, a glossary and get it all formatted before it can be sent to the printer.

So…… the Talaandig and Higaunon will end up with the New Testament being available in both book form and also digitally. No doubt all will desire and obtain a book form New Testament and then those who have phones can have it digitally as well.

Our 2018 began with our family in Perth for a family wedding! We got to spend time with our two Mums and our whole family and we just loved it!! Now Jubab is back in Bible College and we are back HERE. ‘HERE’ is in the office where we can usually be found spending hours and hours with our team on Skype, working on finishing the Talaandig New Testament.

Please make this your special prayer point for us this year! This year is a really BIG one! 

Balintad Temporary Church Building

Have a blessed Christmas and New Year!!

Our God is a mighty God…..His name is Emmanuel!

More than the sounds of many waters,

Than the mighty breakers of the sea,

 The LORD on high is Mighty!

Psalm 93:4

We are so thankful to have our son with us for Christmas break and thankful too for safety during the recent typhoon which brought heavy rains, flooding and landslides.

Wishing you a very blessed Christmas and New Year!!  Much love from us three!!!

Amazing News!

We have just been at an amazing Church Family Conference weekend in Lapoc!! Almost unbelievable and ourheads are still reeling as we try to get our minds around what just happened. Our God is truly an AWESOME God!!!!

There were 1350 believers who gathered for the conference from our churches, some of these churches are over 100 km away from Lapoc. They arrived on trucks, jeepneys, motorbikes and on foot from Ricodo, Man-ay, Limonda, Pigtaw, Ginitan, Sungay, Balintad, Pinatagan, Pigsag-an, Colawingon, San Aquino, Tagbak, Tumpagon, Cauyunan, Anlagan, Awang, Tinaytayan, Lapoc, Linawlawan, Migpait, Overlooking, San Abel, Limunsud, Lantod, Bisigan, Kilometro Disisayis, Indulang…… (The believers from the Tikalaan, Salimbal, San Doneseo, Kibanug, Dungguan, Malumpayad, Palalan and Gawgawon churches were not able to make it due to various reasons including distance, health and finances but hopefully next time they will be able to attend.)

The greatest challenges apart from their travel to get to Lapoc, were toilets and water! Amazingly, we got through the three days without running out of water and with everyone being able to take baths and use the amenities when they were needed but it took a lot of work behind the scenes to make this work and I think God was multiplying our water as it should have run out.

Above are pictures of the baptisms which took place last Saturday morning (Dec 2^nd) in the river of Sagayan, which is about two kilometers from Lapoc. Most of us walked there and it was an incredible scene to the unbelievers as they saw the huge crowds of people walking down to the river. There were 187 people baptized that morning and we celebrated this wonderful day with a special meal together of 10 roast pigs and lots of rice eaten down by the river!

The theme of the Conference was “The Great Commission” and we had a wonderful guest speaker from Birmingham, Alabama who spoke on Acts 1 in four sessions while Paul interpreted for him. The believers were very blessed and challenged by his messages as well as Paul’s message to them on the last day. Thanks so much Rick for coming and to SMC for sending him. You were all used of the Lord.

We had over 100 people staying in our house alone, hundreds staying in the church building, and we couldn’t keep count of how many were staying in our team member’s houses. The praise, the worship, the fellowship, the meals together….it was all so, so wonderful! Thank you so much for PRAYING!

Our time with Jubab....and other news!!!!!

Praise God for all of His blessings and for the privilege it is to be involved in translating His Word and being part of the team spreading the Gospel here in Mindanao!

Big news here at the moment is the joy and the preparations going towards our ‘Kaamulan’ which is a family conference involving all of our churches here. We are expecting hundreds of believers to gather and a big baptism as well.

There are huge amounts of firewood being cut in preparation for all the cooking that will be done, houses being cleaned and readied for guests, food being planned and speakers studying the Word and preparing to share wonderful truths that will encourage and feed the flock spiritually!

We’ll have more news to share about this conference before too long! On the translation side of our ministry, we are working this week on Matthew 7-8. Not many more months now and we will be able to tell you Lord willing that the whole Tala-Andig New Testament is finished and we will be in the final preparation stage before printing!!!!!!

On a family note, we are praising God so much for allowing us to have a wonderful visit with Jubab!! Jubab is doing great. He is super challenged to be a full time missionary in Japan. It is a really hard mission field and only a real small percentage of Japanese people know the Lord. Very Challenging. He wants to work with OMF in a ministry with university students and is currently applying to do an internship with OMF over his summer break next year. God has been working incredibly in his life.

During the 11 days we had there with him, we got to go to classes with him and also had opportunities to share with some of the students there in chapel times. We stayed in the guest apartment at the college together so we had lots of family time, ate all our meals together, got to hang out, watch movies, have lots of coffees and talks.  After the 11 days with Jubab, some dear friends took us on a holiday which was an amazing provision for us from the Lord. We really needed a break and the time was so special and so refreshing in every way. 

It was fun watching Jubab in action: doing dish crew, working on his assignments, going to class, meeting his friends and dorm mates…..it was such a precious time!!

Please pray for Jubab’s support needs as he prepares to go to Japan, first for the internship next summer and then as a full-time missionary. His support level is better than it was but he still in need of more regular support.

Please pray too for the upcoming conference, for the speakers and all the people who are planning to attend, for safety for all the travelers and that God will be glorified!!  

Rejoicing to be a part.....!

Last week we had one of the missionary families from our work in a place called Ricodo come to spend the day with us. They have a motorbike and they left their place about 6 am from Ricodo which put them here about 9am. So we had about 6 hours with them before they left to go back home.

We have quite a history with this couple as the wife, JingJing, was brought to us in Cauyunan back in the beginning days of our work, 'dead'.... back when she was a child, aged 12. She had malaria and went delirious with fever, until her fever went so high she'd stopped breathing and so they had rushed her to our house from where they lived in Tumpagon. The night they arrived with her and laid her down on the Clinic floor, she was unresponsive, basically dead. Her parents were new believers and we gathered around her and we prayed and God started her breathing again. We couldn't give her any medicines or fluids orally because she was in a coma, but we inserted all the malaria medicines and fluids rectally which kept her alive for the next 4 days until she came out of her coma!! And slowly she recovered but she had what seemed to be fever-coma induced psychological problems. It took about a whole year for her to return to her normal self.

Years later after she was married and pregnant with her second child, her and James were sent by the Tumpagon church to Lapoc for missionary training with us and a couple years later they were sent out to Ricodo to work with another couple over there. While they were in Lapoc I delivered her second child. James woke us up at midnight and I went to their house and had James go wake up one of the young neighbor ladies, Nanah, who I was training to deliver babies. While he was gone, it was just JingJing and I in the house for about 15 or 20 minutes and she was groaning and panicking because the pain was much worse than her first labour. I was glad when James and Nanah arrived and I had some extra sets of hands because we were able to get her up from the bed and into a standing position which eased the pain slightly by shifting the baby's position. She was having unusually terrible pains in her lower back (probably because her bub was facing up and was fairly large) and it was quite a job calming her and reassuring her through the pain she was having but eventually she made it through the labour and he was born at 7 am (a very dark purple colour and he didn't take a breath for about 60 - 80 seconds or so which was very stressful). They asked me to name him and I named him Aiden. He is now in kindergarten which gives a bit of an idea how long ago that was. Anyway, just reminiscing a bit .... but this is the James and JingJing who visited us last week. 

Paul bought 3 beautiful bangos (milkfish - the Philippines national fish) before they came, and we had them ready in the fridge all de-boned and ready to fry. We marinated the bangos overnight in white cane vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic and when they got here we fried it until it was crispy. This dish is called 'daing bangos' over here. We also had a bowl of chicken livers (a delicacy) ready to adobo which we served with boiled eggs once it was cooked. For the rice, I mixed part glutinous rice with normal rice and cooked it with grated ginger and coconut milk. Food is a beautiful way of enjoying time together and celebrating the joy of just being together!

Every week when we have different ones of the church leaders and missionaries out here to stay, one of Paul's and my goals with the visit is to spoil them with lots of good food and to make them feel very loved and appreciated as they are pouring their lives out for the Lord and the Gospel. It wasn’t all just about the eating though! (Although that was one of the very enjoyable parts of their visit!) We also had several hours to talk to them about their work, their plans, their marriage, their co-worker relationships and to pray with them as well before they left to go back home to Ricodo.

Days like these ones with James and JingJing have to be some of the highlights of the ministry of the Gospel! How sweet the fellowship is with fellow labourers of the Gospel!! We love to cook for them and serve them and to help them on in their journey in any way we can.

As you think of James and JingJing, and their partners in the work, Roel and Irene, please pray for them. Daily they face the demands and joys of building the church and spreading the Gospel. They are doing a great work in Ricodo and we rejoice with them over the 30 new believers that they just baptized last month.

PS. Ricodo and all the different villages we mention are all churches that have been planted by the believers that we have been training and discipling for the past 30 years:  believers from our first church in Cauyunan and then from other churches as we have been able to plant them. Today there are approximately 30-35 churches all up in the areas where we work and about 127 bible teachers teaching thousands of people each week. It is almost too much for us to fathom.