Retreat Time

September was pretty crazy. 3 volunteer teams, 2 different retreats and a total of like 75 people. The first retreat was with our Global Empowerment team, and a couple of volunteers joined us to help with the kiddos. We spent a couple of days training with a smaller group who are doing church planting with tribal groups, then a couple of days with the larger group doing strategy planning as we move forward. Such an encouraging time!

Next, we had a retreat with our tribal team in Bicol. Another group of volunteers came in to help with kids, teaching, worship, small groups, & activities. Everything went very well, and we were all so encouraged by the time!

Getting ready to welcome the team

Worshipping & studying His Word together. The topic for the retreat was the love of God.

The kids had a great time while the adults were in session.

In the afternoon, we had some group activities, including the "snake story" and a rousing game of duck duck goose that included cups of water and some wet people!

This retreat was such a blessing to our entire tribal team - and wow, it's a big group now!

As the retreat was ending, another group of volunteers arrived on a vision trip to discuss possible future partnerships. It was great to be able to show them around the property and for all for both volunteer teams to join our partners out in the village for a couple of days.

So thankful for partners both here and from the States!

Summer Teams

One of the things that has recently been happening on "the land" (see post below) was summer teams. We partner with Nehemiah Teams for our student teams over the summers, and we highly recommend them! If you have any young people who might be interested in summer missions, we'd love to connect with you! We had a team of ladies who lived on the land for the summer, helping with the agricultural & livelihood projects during the week and outreach Bible studies on weekends. 
In addition to the "ag" team, we also had 3 interns who came independently and had various responsibilities, including helping to coordinate construction, surveying unreached people groups, then the interns & ag team joined together to do a couple of youth events where they discussed God's plan for relationships before marriage. 
We are so very thankful for these young people who gave their summer (and for those who supported them!) to serve so faithfully. God used them in big ways!

How cool that they got to be part of a baptism!?!

The youth events were well-attended, and we're praying that God uses those times in big ways moving forward. The topic was definitely counter-cultural, and a challenging one for them to shift to a Biblical model. Pray with us!

The survey team (you may recognize a few of them - it was wonderful to have our boys back for the summer to help with this! And then Ben's girlfriend Katye was here, and our teammate Claire joined in too. They split into different groups at various points in the summer to travel to new areas for survey; this pic is of the report-writing that was necessary after every survey to make sure we have good record of all the information.

A little time out in the middle of the summer to re-focus & worship Him together.

Many of the team said that their time with the Manide tribe doing outreach Bible studies was a highlight, and one of the ladies from the team is praying about coming to join us for a 2-year term. Pray with us!

A few final survey pics. Pray as we follow up on the surveys and determine the best ways to engage in those areas. 

Vision Team

Last month, we hosted a group of pastors & leaders from our team's key partner churches. The purpose was to see the big picture, all that God is doing with Tribals Reaching Tribals in the Philippines, then discuss together how to most effectively & strategically partner in the future. This will include bringing volunteer teams & other partnership opportunities. We traveled a LOT of miles over some very rough terrain, spent a bunch of days VERY wet in constant rain (and looked like easter M&Ms in our ponchos!), and met a lot of wonderful people. At the end of our time, we gathered for a couple of days of debrief to strategize future plans. It was amazing to see God work through that time, and we can't wait to see how He continues to use these partnerships in the future. I've put some pics below, but if you want to see more, just visit this FaceBook page & ask to join.

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!