Steve's Travels

So Steve's travel schedule has been pretty busy lately, but it has been exciting to see how God is at work as he goes from place to place.  One of his trips took him up to our tribe house, and he got this great shot.  We love that house and are looking forward to being up there as a family for a few days before Christmas.

On that trip, he was meeting with tribal church leadership to discuss specifics on how the churches can better coordinate and cooperate to support the men and women whom they have sent out to reach the unreached.  They were blessed to have some men from a church here in Manila who accompanied Steve to offer input based on years of experience since their church has been used mightily in sending   out and supporting those they send. 

Often when Steve comes home from a trip, I find pictures like this one on his phone.  This is a record of the discussion from one of the sessions:

Something else that we were busy with this past month was doing an annual evaluation of our progress this past year.  This entailed computing the results from dozens of pages like this one to see how many groups and how many people are studying the Bible with our tribal partners in Bicol.

 For those of you who like numbers, here are some for you:

At some point in 2016, there have been 507 Agta studying the Bible in 51 groups (some house churches, some early outreach groups). Of these 507, 201 people are new attendees; and there were 19 new groups started in 2016.  

While tracking numbers can be tedious, it was good to see ways that God has been at work this past year! 

Steve's most recent trip took him 12 hours north to meet with more than 60 tribal pastors. They had a great time of discussion and training, and we are excited to see these men stepping up more and more to lead their churches in reaching out to those who have never heard.

Tomorrow morning, Steve will fly to another island to speak at a conference to challenge a group of churches to get more involved in what God is doing with tribals reaching tribals.  Please pray with us that he is able to communicate clearly and ignite a passion for His heartbeat for the unreached.

The Show Must Go On

It's been a big month for activities for the Hagen crew.

Ben's soccer team won a big game. He played goalie (yikes!) for part of it.

 Ben was also a pirate in a middle school production of Pirates of Penzance.  He shaved his head bald to get in character! (that's him kneeling down)

The cast did a great job, and Ben had a blast in his first (of many?) productions.

Our family got out of town for a couple nights over a long weekend

 with some friends, and Zach especially enjoyed the time we spent wakeboarding.

I like this shot of Zach and Steve hitting the kickers side by side.

We had another big production this month too; Mikayla was Antonia in Shakespeare's 12th Night.  It was a production put on by the advanced drama class, and several of her closest friends are in that class, so they had a lot of fun doing the show together.

 Unfortunately, Mikayla sprained her ankle during rugby practice on the afternoon before the 2nd of 3 shows.  But after some serious pain meds and strong tape, we got her back up on her feet and on stage.  The show must go on, right? :) 

 Thankfully, her character had a bit of an attitude and some anger issues, so the pain probably helped with that. :)

 Another highlight on the homefront this past month was that Steve and I got to get away for a couple nights, just the 2 of us! 

 It was our first time to visit this area, and the views were spectacular.

Once again so thankful for our family and all the ways that God has blessed us here in the Philippines.