Young People

Any ministry that plans for the future must be intentional to invest in their youth. We've been having regular tribal youth retreats, and it's fun to watch our team come together and invest in our tribal youth. It's also been so good to see the growth in these young people. 

We hoped and planned for about 100 youth, but around 220 showed up! Good problem to have but did have us scrambling a little. :) Pray with us that God would call up many from their midst to step out in faith and follow Him whole-heartedly.

This one isn't specific to youth, but there is a Filipino pastor in the area who has a heart to reach the tribals and has a long-standing ministry. We've partnered with him through the years, but we'd love to see a more solid partnership where they even send some of their youth through our Bible School and Boost programs. Steve spoke at their church, and we had some good fellowship with them. Pray that God would work through this friendship.

Lastly, we are once again partnering with Nehemiah Teams this summer. They send college-age young people from the States to serve on our teams for a couple months. This year we have 2 teams. The ladies will serve on our Boost farm and join in local outreach groups. The guys will travel to more remote areas, doing survey and broad seed-sowing to see where the response is the greatest, so that our teams know where to focus the follow up for church planting. Pray with us for health, safety & for God to work mightily both IN and THROUGH these young people this summer!

Tribal Team Training

We gather our tribal time 3-4x/year for fellowship and training. For this one, we had some guest speakers in for a couple days and some folks came to help with the kids program. We started out with just part of the group, split into two. The Bible school and Boost teachers spent some time continuing to modify their curriculums to incorporate more orality principles. Our friend Cameron & his family came in to help lead this time. Then there are 2 couples and a single guy who are getting ready to deploy to new areas for church planting, so we had some strategy review time with them. 

Then the rest of the group came in and joined us, and Cameron started us off with a day of orality training. Good thing we scheduled that first because Steve and I found out that morning that we needed to make a quick trip up to Manila to immigration for our visa! We booked a ticket and flew up, went to immigration, and then flew straight back. What a whirlwind, but thankfully the training was able to continue without us.

We studied through Philippians as a whole group, then we had quite a few group activities, including some planning and mapping time as outreach teams. The ladies also sang happy birthday to Steve while the guys greeted him, and we enjoyed a fun dinner to celebrate his birthday together.

So very thankful for this team!

Construction Continues

As you hopefully saw in a recent post, we completed our team house on the property, but that doesn't mean that construction has stopped. It's been crazy all that has been continuing to be developed! 

1. Our team house. 2. New goat pens. 3. New BOOST classroom. 4. New BOOST piggery. 5. New BOOST guys dorm & staff house. 6. New Bible School piggery. 7. New farm to market road around the upper section & farm developments.

This one shows the different sections of the campus. 1) Tribal Bible School. 2) BOOST (Bicol Out of School Training: livelihood training combined with church planting training). 3) IMB Team house. 4) Church planter houses. 5) Basketball court (gets used daily!)

One of the big projects going on right now is switching the "light materials" out for longer-lasting ones. So rubber mat walls with bamboo is getting switched out for concrete and actual wood doors. The light materials allowed us to get a quicker start to get the Bible school up and running, but now we've seen it's time to make it more permanent. You can see the new dorm in between the old staff house & the staff house that is in process of being changed out.

So thankful for partners who have come alongside to allow construction to continue on these development projects!

Look what God has done! We broke ground in May 2022, and at that time, there was only one tiny 1-room structure on the property (about the size of our current piggery!), down by where the fish ponds are now in the lower right. All the other structures have been built since then. It's been a busy 4 years! All glory to  Him for all that He is doing with Tribals Reaching Tribals!

Family Time

Ben graduated magna cum laude from college! So very proud of him, especially with all the learning challenges he has faced. Wow, he has learned to excel in spite of challenges! 

We were sad we couldn't be there and instead watched online in the middle of the night, but we were thankful for those who were able to celebrate with him, including Mikayla & her boyfriend, my mom, and Ben's fiance & her family. 

It was strange how graduations worked for our kids - they all had only 1 sibling who could attend, but they alternated who that was. Zach attended Mikayla's, Ben attended Zach's, and Mikayla attended Ben's. :)

A few weeks later, Ben & Katye went to visit Mikayla and Austin in Michigan, and they had a lot of fun. Sad we couldn't all be there, but thankful they take the time to invest in one another like this!

Ben & Katye also got their engagement photos done. These are just a couple of them, but we are so excited for this sweet couple and how God is going to use them together in the years ahead. 

Also in May, Steve spent most of a week in the hospital. Thankfully, the myriad of tests ruled out some really scary possibilities, and we were left with a fungal infection...it seems like treating that has been helping him get his strength back. Pray with us that this is all it is and that he'll be back to full strength soon!

House Celebration!

As you all know, we've been working on a building a house on our compound in Bicol where our teammates will live, AND it will provide a place for us to stay when we're down there that's NOT a tent. :) After almost a year of construction, our teammates were able to move in, and we had the house celebration on the roof. We are so thankful for this place and pray that God will use it mightily.

The finished product!
The door on the right is McCoy's 3 bedroom, the middle one is for our journeyman, and the one on the right is the studio where we will be able to stay when we're down there.

One of our tribal partners who are doing church planting with the Manide tribe posted this cute pic that I thought you all would enjoy. :)

Since Mikayla has posted about this now, we also wanted to let you all know that Mikayla has been dating a wonderful Christian man for about a year now.  Austin came over to meet us in January, and we had a great time getting to know him. Pray for guidance as they seek Him together.