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!

Reflections......!

Monday morning here and I thought I would write an update and share some about the regions we are doing missions in now – Deb and I are super excited by all we are seeing the Lord doing 😊.

Man-ai

Yesterday (Sunday) we headed up to Man-ai. You may remember that our mission team there consisting of 2 families – Nonon and Jiejie Capitan and Jerrum and Abigail Obsioma moved into Man-ai in August 2018. Funny as I was thinking back and remember how Abigail slept between Debbie and I for quite some time back when she was just a baby and we were treating her for TB. Today she is a young woman, married with one little girl and a missionary in this budding region of Man-ai.

            Any time you move into a new region and invest with finances and effort in buildings and then send out young families, you can’t help but have some trepidation in your heart wondering what God is going to do in there, whether the team will make it or if the endeavor will fail etc.

            Well we set off yesterday morning with 24 pieces of fried chicken, 2 whole roast chickens, 12 apples and a bunch of mangos to gift to the Man-ai team and help with lunch. On arrival we saw that they had prepared a pot of frogs (which were delicious – no wonder the French love them 😊) – a big pot of vegies and pots of steaming rice. We feasted together on this great meal and then feasted with them spiritually into the late afternoon as we encouraged them and spurred them on with many things that God has taught Deb and I over our missionary lives. This is so beautiful for Deb and me as we get older that we can have a part in the oversight of all these young mission teams that God has budded out of our lives and work – how privileged we feel.

            Bottom line is that we had a hugely good time and we are so encouraged – 14 months of work and they are now teaching around 80 people each week in 3 different villages – and most of these 80 are now saved. Deb and I can do nothing more than say – “Thank you Lord!!! You do the work according to your desire, and we give you thanks that we can come along and watch and have a part too.”

           

Keep praying for the work in Man-ai – Our enemy is very busy and does not rest. But our Lord is greater.

Baungon and Libona

            These are 2 new regions which are vast that we have been working in for about 3 months now. These people came looking for us and wanted us to come and teach them. They had heard that we knew how a person can be saved and have a relationship with God and they wanted to know too.

My association with Baungon began way back in 1989. Debbie was suffering pretty bad from Endometriosis and had surgery for one thing or another 11 times during our first 16 years on the field. By the way, we learnt that you can still serve the Lord on the mission field even with a condition like this. Back in those days our mission leadership were discussing whether we should be sent home or not due to sickness – Deb and my thought was that we could be sick   just as good here in the Philippines as we could in Australia – anyway, God enabled and we stayed and God used us in spite of sickness. Deb has now been healed from her endometriosis for many years.

            Anyway, after Deb’s first surgery in Manila back in 1989 which was a total failure but cost us a fortune, we sold our motorbike and some other assets to pay for our medical expenses as we had very little support and a large debt for the operation. We also had a chainsaw that had been basically ‘stolen’ from us and taken to the region of Baungon. So, I borrowed a motorbike from my friend Trevor and went in search of it as I needed to sell it so we could pay our medical bills.

            We had lost the oil cap for the chainsaw and were using an old corn cob to seal the hole, so the chainsaw was pretty easy to identify. As I got close, the road conditions were extreme, and I lost control of the bike and began careering down a hill into the bush and when I finally came to a stop the chainsaw was right there in front of the bike. I took hold of my chainsaw and a guy came out of a house and grabbed the other end. A struggle ensued and I ended up with a chainsaw but surrounded by a bunch of guys who were not too friendly. The chief came along within minutes and the end of the story is that they did not harm me, and I also got the chainsaw back after the problem was sorted out. Well this is the area of Baungon that we are now teaching in some 30 years later.

            My beautiful son in law along with a team from the Cauyunan region are teaching several different groups there for several days each week and they are still in the evangelistic stage of teaching. Deb and I have not gone up there yet since the team started teaching but the people up there speak of us and one day soon they will understand fully the truth of what Jesus said when he said – “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except though me”.

           

Balintad Region

            Headed up by Flor and Mario Talo. There are around 50+ believers in this area now. Flor and Mario have not been there a year yet but are working faithfully and God is blessing their efforts. Amazing that Flor’s father held a M16 machine gun to my chest some 30+ years ago as we prepared to move into Cauyunan. That was back when Deb and I were still basically kids. We felt we were bullet proof back then with some silliness in the whole mix – but God had a plan.

            We are in the process of computerizing this region – getting them a computer and printer as we have done in several of the regions now. The more we can use technology the better.

Ricodo Region

            This region is going great also. We were at their regional conference a few weeks back and Deb and I slept the night there and it was a balm to our hearts to soak in the fellowship and see what God has and is doing. There are many men and women in this region who are teaching many people throughout their region. Such an army that God is raising up.

            While there at the conference, a plastic chair collapsed under me and a piece of plastic stabbed me in the rear end. Ouch!!! It was pretty bad for a while, but I have basically recovered now.

We had a beautiful baptism there on the last day of the conference and then travelled back home the long way as it had been raining and there were several landslides on the quicker route home.

 Cauyunan Region  

            This is the region that Deb and I cut our teeth on and we continue to be greatly amazed at how God is using our brothers and sisters there. Everything happening today has grown out of this one small, initial church. God has hugely multiplied them and continues His might work there to this day.

Lapoc Region

            There are many churches in this region and one of their great works is their outreach into the primary schools where they teach many 1000’s of kids each week.

            Please continue to pray for all these regions as the Lord brings them to your minds; the work is hard with many stresses and dangers. We need help with these through your prayers and also we need tons of wisdom from above. We know God answers prayer.

Paul and Deb

            We continue to fit in where God allows us to. The New Testament should be off the printing press real soon as typesetting and 2-3 layers of proof reading have taken time but are done now.

            Deb and I are also currently working on revising the translation of our Old Testament portions as it was some of the first translation that we did – many, many years ago – and God has grown us so much in translation ability since then so we want to revise all of this translation.

            Also, we are continuing to revise all of our evangelistic materials and are currently on the 5^th lesson. This project is going to take a year or so but when we finish Lord willing, we should have this material up on the web in 3 different languages in different formats for people to access. We feel that the technology of the day will help us reach so, so many more people than before, so we want to keep ahead of the wave and make all of this accessible.

            It has been a super time for us since we have been back and later in December we will go home for Christmas and then be back in mid-January for another round. The good thing is that we can work on materials and translation from anywhere in the world which frees us to spend some time with our families each year, although most of our time will be invested in the ministry over here.

Health wise – Deb is almost fully recovered from her shoulder surgery. My leg is a bit dodgy but gets me where I need to go, and we are happy and encouraged. 😊

This is a looong update as I got to reminiscing a lot while I was writing; so much to be thankful for and recognize our Lord’s hand in!

Ricodo Church Conference and Baungon Mission......!

The church conference in Ricodo was wonderful – we had an amazing time of ministry and fellowship! The church leadership had done a superb job of planning and preparing.

One of the highlights was 22 new believers being baptized!!

The river was flooded, and the current was swift, so it was quite funny at times watching the struggle it was to hang onto the people being baptized! 5 of the bible teachers did the baptizing.

Over the past year, the Ricodo church has had about 50 baptisms.

BAUNGON

During the evening service, the speaker stopped and announced that the evangelists who had been teaching that day in the new outreach to the Baungon area had just arrived. He asked them to come up to the front and these 7 very humble servants of God went up. The whole building erupted into great applause!!! All the churches are so thrilled that the Gospel is going out to Baungon and they are doing all they can to help!

No one likes to be on a remote road and to see Men step out of the forest like they are about to ambush you but this is what happened to udi and his fellow-evangelists as they travelled to Baungon. They stopped, expecting the worse, and the ‘Ambushers' said, “we know who you are, you are the ones preaching the way of salvation in higaunon. No one has ever come here sharing that message in our own language. we want you to come and teach us in our village too!!!

Pray with us about whether Baungon is the next place where God would have us open up a new work and send a missionary team to live full-time! And an update on the couple we asked for prayer for: God had the victory!!

New leaders of the Ricodo church were prayed for along with their families.

We arrived safely.....!

We had a safe arrival back in Mindanao – thank you for praying!

Jen and Udi and kids came out from Cauyunan to spend a couple of days with us and to celebrate Jen’s 39^th birthday  – hard to believe that it is 26 years since Jen came to our family as our permanent foster daughter! We had a wonderful couple of days with them and are very excited about a new outreach that Udi is heading up in another new region - Baongon region. We had some great hours talking about the amazing things God is doing in that area and about how the churches in Cauyunan and Tumpagon are rallying together and helping with some of the costs of this outreach. It is a tough trip to even make it in there and we are so thankful for Udi and his team who are excited and eager to preach the Gospel and who are giving up two days of their week to go there every Thursday and Friday.

Of note a key shaman (witch doctor) there along with many other people have given themselves to following God’s word and they even made a fire and burnt their amulets and other things they used in their worship of the evil spirits. God is so powerful!!! Our son in law is not the most gifted teacher but his heart is fantastic and he serves in an amazing way and God has used him along with his fellow servants to plant quite a few churches. I guess the truth is – if we allow God to use us, He will.

This weekend we are travelling to a big church conference in one of our regions and we would love your prayers for this time, there are a lot of people travelling from afar to get there, a lot of preparation for catering, there are speakers (including Paul) preparing to share the Word and there are new believers excited about getting baptized during this time.

Today we launched into our new project of writing new Evangelism Materials. Our alarm didn’t go off at 4:30 as I had miss-set it, but thankfully we were woken up at 4:40 am by our little beloved doggy Ducky, so we didn’t miss it by too much. The water from the tap was just a trickle this morning as water pressure here can be a problem, but we are old hands at catching trickles of water in a bucket and bathing in a few dipper-fulls. Getting a cup of coffee took a bit of effort as the grinder was not functioning properly because our coffee beans got too old and hard while we were away. 😊 That was worse than the bird bath shower as we love our coffee in the morning. All the little hiccups of daily life, hey!

Please keep praying for us. Church planting and missions always involves struggles and pressures, attacks from within and attacks from without. Already in just one week we have been experiencing heart-aches and stresses along with the joys and the progress. One couple who labour with us in the Gospel were just here this morning going through some severe testings, overwhelmed almost to the point of wanting to surrender and leave the work that God has entrusted to them. Our hours of counseling them, comforting them and reminding them of God’s love and promises may help them and if we could only just take their hearts and turn their focus back on Jesus and on His work, how we would love to do that, but it needs an act of their own wills and their own personal surrendering to the Lord. So we entrust them to Him and pray, and if you could pray too that would be such a help.

So please pray for this couple who are struggling, for the church conference this weekend, for the baptisms and for our work on the new Evangelism Materials.

But the BIG PICTURE is our amazing and wonderful God who has us and each one of His precious children in His hands and no one and nothing can snatch us away from Him! How awesome is that?!!!!!!

A bit like tortoises......!

We were at the Perth Zoo with Jubab a couple of weeks ago and saw these two giant tortoises. There was an interesting fact we learnt about these guys:

“The tortoise likely would not beat the hare, but when strongly motivated these big fellows can hike right along. They have been known to travel 3 or 4 miles in a day on rugged terrain.”   The two of us are sort of like these old tortoises, we’ve been on the road for a long time, wouldn’t likely beat the hare, but we can hike right along when strongly motivated and the Lord has put a huge motivation in our hearts.

Please pray for us as we fly back to Mindanao on Saturday (Oct 19) evening, that our hearts will stay captivated with our Lord Jesus and focused on Him right to the very finish line! He has given us a job and we are so grateful for the part He has given us in his great work – that of planting churches in Mindanao and spreading the Gospel – and we want to hike right along doing as much as we can before He calls us home.

Deb’s shoulder is doing much better since her surgery, Paul’s leg is getting stronger with the physio and we have had a beautiful time of spiritual refreshment here in Perth and very special family times. Our hearts are being wrenched at the goodbyes and separation we will endure again, especially leaving Jubab here in Perth, but we are grateful beyond words that we can serve our Lord Jesus in Mindanao.

We are so excited that our Talaandig New Testament is finished and the time is fast approaching when we will distribute it (hopefully coming off the printing press the end of November). So much effort and years of work are finally being paid off and such joy for all our Talaandig and Higaonon brothers and sisters that they will soon be able to read the word of God in their own tongue! We know without doubt that it will grow their faith even more and that many others will be saved!

Our new focus on our return is going to be developing new Evangelical materials. This includes producing these materials in both Talaandig, Higaonon and English, putting them up on the web and having downloadable study notes for people who want to use them. We would love prayer for this, that God will give us great wisdom. We believe that these materials will not just be greatly used by the Talaandig and Higaonon speakers but we feel that they will be used also greatly by English speaking folk.

Please pray also for 2 church conferences that will be held in the next months – one in Ricodo one in Lapoc – We will be at both.  Another big prayer point is a new work just opened up in the region of Baungon.  It started with a few families asking to be taught and within a couple of weeks, more and more people were being added to their number. We are asking God if this is the next area that He would like us to put full-time workers of the Gospel into.

May our GREAT God who is the source of all our hope and life, bless you amazingly!

2019 Church Camps Full Of Fun

Trekking around the regions.....!

As we have trekked around the mountains recently visiting some of our churches, it has been a blessing beyond words to see first-hand the things that God is doing through our team of Gospel workers. It was truly an incredible and overwhelming privilege!

In the photo above is the church in Man-ai, the newest region that the Gospel has reached. The two missionary families in Man-ai are our youngest and least experienced missionaries but God is bringing many people to Himself through these two couples. The work has grown so much since they moved in there Aug 20th, 2018. They took us on an afternoon walk to meet some of our new brothers and sisters in Man-ai and we were thrilled to see the deep relationships they have formed in just 8 months…..every person has an incredible story and that story is packed into the photo above, a new living baby church being transformed by our Lord Jesus!

In one of the churches in the Ricodo region, we got to talk to, eat with and comfort a young couple who are ministers of the Gospel, who we hadn’t seen since their 4-year-old son died from pneumonia. Their tears fell but their faith strengthened us as they talked about God’s goodness and their trust in His plan.

No one could pour on the hospitality better than the churches throughout the regions that we went to – even in the areas that are hurting for food. They had teams going out hunting, the ladies went to huge lengths to cook special things out of cassava and coconut and goat meat and plantains and the church-family meal-times were amazing to see and to eat! It was a lot of work but so much fun and done with so much love.

We have just sent out the video about this trip so you may have seen this already. Other news is that we are going to take a few months of home assignment in Perth which we are really needing. The Talaandig New Testament is scheduled to come off the printing press in October, and as we wait for this, we are going to take some much longed for family time – with Jubab (who is enjoying Uni in Perth) and with our families, especially our two Mums. We will be doing some sharing in churches and a little travel and hoping the Lord opens doors for us to see you! Please pray for our travels and especially for the printing of the New Testament.