Going on Vacation!

Well, after this past week, our upcoming vacation couldn't come at a better time - we are certainly feeling the need to get away for a while. The kids smiles in this picture show how excited we all are. We leave on Sunday the 10th (right after Steve preaches his first sermon in Tagalog - out of Romans 6!), and we will go and pick up my (Jen) brother & sis-in-law at the airport. Then we will drive all over the northern Philippines - Zoobic, Corregidor, the tribal village where Dave and I grew up, a flight base where we spent many childhood years as well, possibly even up to the famous Banaue rice terraces. We are so looking forward to some down time and wonderful time with family. Thanks for praying for safety for us as we travel and try to find our way around. We will be back in Manila on the 20th for some Dr. appts and meetings. We plan to come home the 23rd.

As for the stolen ipod -- we still don't have the whole story, just suspicions. There were 3 people there, and 3 different stories as to what happened. All claim to have no idea what happened, but we know some of them are lying about parts... The latest development is that it was "returned" - in the sense that it was chucked over our gate outside so that it broke (or was broken before it was chucked?). We will try to send it in to see if the warranty will cover it, but it has seen a lot of abuse in the last few days, and we are not sure that they will honor the warranty because of that. Please be praying for us if you think of it - we still don't know if our one helper is on all this or not. So tough to know how to handle it with her...

This week has been awful as we have tried to wade through this mess and find out what really happened. It has been good language and culture experience, but miserable. To make it worse, Steve was gone in Bicol for nearly all of it, and our other helper was home sick! What a week!

PTL, Steve's trip to Bicol went well. We have not come to a final decision, but we at least have a town that we are leaning towards locating in!!! Thanks for continuing to lift us up in prayer - we need it more than you know.