Pressin' On

Well, we arrived home last night from our meetings in Thailand. I will try to post some pics in the next few days from our time there (but you can see some pretty cool pics of ONE thing that happened while were there in the post after this one!).

But before I post Thailand pics, I wanted to post a few pics of what has been going on around here (even though we haven't even been around for most of it). While we have been gallivanting around SE Asia, Megan has been hard at work right here, continuing to cooridinate the translation of the Bible stories into the 4 heart languages of the Agta. Over the last couple weeks, they have cranked out the whole 1st draft for the In-Agta language story set!!! That is a HUGE job, and we are so thankful for her faithfulness to press on, even while we are gone.

After several sessions working with native speakers and some literate close-language speakers, this is what the stories look like. How would YOU like to be the one to try to type this up? :)

After it is typed up, it goes through many, many more revisions by various people to ensure its accuracy. It is a massive undertaking, but Megan just keeps plugging away, and we are gettting SO close to having these key stories in heart language for the people!

****

We have been traveling so much lately that we have been trying to maximize every moment while we are actually here in Bicol. The main thing we are focusing our time on is training our new Bogkalot co-workers. They are deep into language study now, and they are getting more and more excited to start teaching. We had a training for them just before we left for Thailand. (Tnx to Megan for the pics!)

We had the training here, at the home of one of our new Bogkalot teammates. It was definitely a full house with all floor space, hammock space and even some tent space taken.

We always enjoy worshipping together.

Then Steve does some training time. This session was about how to learn the Bible stories to be able to teach them more effectively. The idea is that they need to start learning these stories in their heart language now so that they will be ready to teach them in the Agta language when the time comes. We always do lots of practice time in the training sessions - here are a few of them practicing learning the stories.

And while the adults are hard at work, the kids are hard at play.

This is Jerah, the daughter of one of our new Bogkalot teammates. She has been really sick and was in the hospital this week, possibly with Dengue Fever. She seems to be stabilizing now, but her older sister was starting to feel ill. Pls pray for this dear family - pray that Jerah gets well soon, that everyone else stays healthy, and that they would stay encouraged and press on in spite of this setback.

I Have Decided...

Today was an exciting day in our family - BOTH Zach & Ben were baptized!

Zach has had a clear profession of faith for several years now, but he has never asked to be baptized. It is very important to us that THEY are the ones to initiate it, not us. We have seen the HS working on him with this for a while, and this past week, he asked if he could be baptized. That prompted a great discussion, and Ben asked if he could be as well. We spent a lot of time talking with both the boys (particularly Ben since he has not had a clear profession for as long as Zach) to make sure they were really ready.

Since we are at meetings in Thailand right now, we all gathered and baptized them in the hotel pool. One of their good friends was baptized at the same time.

Praise God with us on this exciting day in our family!

Lil' Critters...and another trip

These adorable lil' critters just came to live with us. The kids fell in love with them in a pet shop in Manila and all pitched in from their savings to get them. Their names (I think they are actually final now - for a while they were changing minute by minute) are: Franklin, Peter, & Voyager.

We are all enjoying having these little guys around - they are just too cute to resist!
In other news, we are headed out yet again on another trip. O my. This time we are headed to Thailand for a required training with our company for several wks. Needless to say, we are more than a little travel-weary and "meetinged-out" after all our recent travels. We covet your prayers for strength and endurance during this time. Also pray that it would be a profitable training for us, and that we would stay open to anything God wants to teach us through it.