They're here!

You prayed; God answered. Our teammates have arrived in the Philippines and are hard at work learning Tagalog. It has been such a blessing to get to know them better and spend some time discussing what life and ministry in the Philippines looks like. And we're loving having little kids around again. :)

Please join us in praying for them as they work hard to study the Tagalog language and build relationships with Filipinos. Please also pray that God would allow them to plug into effective ministries while they are in language study. 

A little bit of this & a little bit of that

The last couple of months have been quite the smorgasborg of ministry activities. Steve has been the guest speaker at several different churches & conferences, and we've also led various orientations for new personnel as they have arrived (we have 3 different orientations that we lead). 

We also got to visit the island of Palawan to visit this precious family. They used to live in Manila, and I (Jen) supervised them as they studied Tagalog. Now they've moved to the island where they'll be serving, and we had the privilege of visiting them and having strategy conversations as well as just enjoying them and their sweet kids. 

Then, the daughter of one of our tribal partners got married, and Mikayla was asked to be the maid of honor, so we traveled up to the wedding together. It was a fun time of road tripping together but also of re-connecting with old friends. 

Steve is down in Bicol this week, checking on various things there, as well as attending another wedding, this one the son of the first Agta who we baptized back in 2008. One of the things Steve is checking on is the progress with the new fish tanks that will hopefully provide livelihood for the Tribal Bible College as well as training for the Agta for something they can do wherever they live.

8 Steps Consultation

We were recently blessed to be able to gather a group of tribal leaders from the Bugkalot churches with the tribal leaders from the Mangyan churches. There were 16 Bugkalot who came down from the mountains, so that meant 20 of us in 2 SUVs for a couple hours travel to the port!

It was a wonderful time of evaluating what they are currently doing as they send out laborers into the harvest, and then discussing things they could change to be even more effective as they send. 

It was such a blessing to watch these men and women of God analyze the Scriptures and seek to put what they learned into practice in how they send.

We also worshipped together and played some fun games to connect the two groups and keep people awake for 4 loooong days of seminars from 7am-9pm. 

We are so thankful for these tribal partners in the work of reaching the remaining tribes of the Philippines.

Merry Christmas!

We were so blessed to have Zach & Ben visit for Christmas this year. While Mikayla still had ministry responsibilities, she was able to break away to enjoy some family time too.

On Christmas Day, we also got to host a party for Mikayla's girls, and we had a wonderful time.

After Christmas, we spent a couple of days with the cousins, wakeboarding, as well as a couple of days at a summer camp with friends. And the boys got to visit their old beagle!
Such a sweet time together. 

Visitors!

 For many covid years, we weren't able to have visitors or teams come visit, and we were so thankful to welcome dear friends from our home church for a sweet time of ministry and fellowship. And a huge bonus was that our boys were able to come too! We picked them all up at the airport and headed straight for Bicol for some time of ministry together at the Tribal Bible College.

We put on a Christmas party for our tribal partners, so we spent time wrapping presents and - in keeping with tradition - of course finding a giant toad to wrap up in one of the gag gifts!

3 presents each x 26 people means 72 presents!

We also spent some time worshipping together (and were requested to sing a special number), and we also got to visit several tribal areas and share testimonies. What a sweet time!

Next we were blessed to get to enjoy some refreshing time with them wakeboarding and then at the beach. 

So Incredibly thankful for these dear friends!