Mobilization and Training

Several years ago, we realized that the most effective way to reach the Agta was to mobilize and train believers from another tribe to do it. Of course, the tribe that occured to us first was the tribal group where Jen's parents served for so many years. We dreamed big - what if we could mobilize them to send out some of their very own to reach the Agta? While this was an exciting prospect, the barriers were staggering. However, we serve a big God, don't we? No barriers stagger HIM whatsoever. He orchestrated the founding of Global Empowerment, and we have been privileged to partner with them in their first project - mobilizing and training the Bogkalot tribal church to send people out to reach the Agta tribe. This has become the focus of our ministry for a year and a half now, and the southern chapter of Bogkalot churches sent out 2 teams this past year. These 2 teams (2 families and 2 single men) are living in Agta village and studying language. Lord willing, they will be ready to start teaching in January!

Well, as God has been prompting our hearts, we have kept on dreaming big, and we are praying for 6 more teams to move here this next year. After we mobilized in the southern Bogkalot churches, the northern churches asked us to come and do the same thing in their area. Steve and my dad went up there last week to start the mobilization process with a seminar on the book of Acts. Here is the group of men... ...and women who attended the seminar.

By the end of Steve's time up there, it was evident that the northern churches are even more passionate about being involved in reaching the Agta than the southern churches were at the beginning. 7 families and 5 single men already approached Steve and told him that they would love to be sent out to reach the Agta. As a result of this level of interest and passion for the lost, our family will be moving up into that area to spend 2 months mobilizing and training the Bogkalot churches about how to send out their very own - it is critical that the churches catch the vision, not just the ones whom God is calling to "go". We did this same thing (spent 2 months there) in the southern area, and God used it mightily to provide some wonderful co-workers. We are praying that He will again move mightily, this time in the northern churches.

We will leave home the end of September, and we will spend the months of Oct and Nov in the mountains about 12 hrs north of Manila, based in the village of Wasid.
We will live in the village community center kind of building. It is located right next to the school in the middle of the village. Should keep us hopping!

This will be home sweet home for 2 months!

Steve will be traveling to different churches to teach/train every day during the week; and, at least on Sundays, we will all accompany him. Some of these trips will require a significant amount of hiking. Another one involves this river crossing on a raft - on which they load motorcycles!

He discovered a great place for a picnic while he was up there - the kids are excited to try it out!

Isn't it just beautiful?

This waterfall will be quite the hike from where we are living, but Steve can't wait to bring us there for a visit.

And these are some of the guys that he will be teaching the 2 months while we are up there. Exciting times!

As you can imagine, there a LOT of prep work that goes into moving your family into a VERY remote location for 2 months. We will be about 4 hrs from a grocery store/market, and we will not have a fridge so menu planning is a challenge to be sure! SOOO thankful for a sweet friend who sent me a bunch of canned chicken and some "instant" meals that will really help a ton. Then we have to pack up our schoolwork, bedding, kitchen stuff, medical equipment... the list is daunting. Please pray for us as we make all the necessary preparations. And we DESPERATELY need your prayers in Oct/Nov. We won't be able to be online much (we will go down to "town" once every 2-3 wks to download email and buy groceries), but whenever you think of us, please pray. It will be a grueling schedule and a challenging living situation in a remote location. Tnx for praying!!!

This Week

This past week has been hard. My (Jen's) Nana passed away. It was SO hard to be away from my family during this time, and it was made harder still by the fact that Steve was gone on a 2 week trip. We were doing ok, but let's just say that a LOT of tears have been shed this past week. Here is a picture of Nana (my mom's mom) and Mikayla with baby Zach right after he was born. Zachary Kenneth was named after Nana's husband who went to be with the Lord just before Steve & I were married. We will miss Nana so much but are so glad that she is no longer suffering on this earth but is instead singing hymns of praise in the heavenly throneroom.

Like I said, this past week has been really tough, and I was honestly dreading the kids' soccer tournament on Saturday. While they enjoy playing soccer with their teammates, the organization is not what I am used to for an event like this, and it is always confusing and stressful trying to figure out where to be when...and when you are trying to do that for THREE kids on FIVE teams, all in the same tournament, and trying to keep them all hydrated in this tropical heat... anyway, I was not looking forward to trying to handle all that without Steve. Not to mention, I have been asked to coach teams in tournaments like this before just because I am there. When you don't know the players' names, positions, or skill levels, this is a bit of a challenge and very stressful. ANYWAY... Steve showed up just as the tournament started and surprised us!!! We were SO incredibly thrilled to see him. He had driven through the night from up north to Manila, arrived just in time to catch the early flight to our area, then took a taxi straight from the airport. He got some huge hugs and massive smiles for his effort. :)

The kids played really well. I love the look of intensity on Zach's face here.
Mikayla has been doing great too. She currently plays on a boys' team, but yesterday she competed on that team as well as 2 different girls teams (1 for under 13 girls, the other for under 17 girls, but she was one of the few on either of those teams with any experience - one of the other best players on her team was only 7!). She was one tired girl by the end of the day, but we were so proud of her!

Since Steve had missed a whole night's sleep AFTER almost 2 wks of traveling through the mountains and not sleeping much, he was just a little sleepy through the day. He got his hammock out of his backpack and slept in between games.

It was STINKING hot all day, and since it was organized differently than what we would expect, we ended up with more than 3 hours at one stretch of just sitting and waiting. The kids did great, but the heat had just zapped all of our energy by the time the quarter finals and semi finals started up.

Mikayla's team lost in the semi finals, but they played well against a much more talented team that gets a lot more practice together.

Zach's team ended up winning their division! He played great defense, and we are so thankful for this opportunity for them to make friends and learn the life lessons that can be learned through sports. Ben's foot (which he hurt earlier this week) wasn't feeling well enough for him to be very involved this time, but there are lessons to learn from that as well. :)

Steve's trip up north went amazingly well, and we are VERY encouraged by what God is doing up there. I will do another post in a couple days to share it with you and hopefully encourage you as well!

Thailand Treetops

We recently spent a couple weeks in Thailand for meetings so I thought I would share some pics from our adventures there.

This is the main way that we got around town while we were there - it is called a tuktuk. Just like your average NYC taxi, right? :)

We made a lot of new friends while we were there. This is actually a long-time friend of my (Jen's) dad, and we were thrilled to finally meet him and get to hang out for a while - and he didn't seem to mind playing grandpa for a couple wks. :)
He treated us all to a day at the local zoo, and we had a ball seeing all the animals. The monkeys were one of our favorites.

Feeding the elephant was cool too.

We also saw this 2 ft creature on the sidewalk. At first we thought it was a snake or a worm, but it turns out that it was dozens of caterpillars, end to end, playing follow the leader.

cool stuff

The kids also posed with the elephant. But the trainer got the elephant to make a roaring noise just as they all posed, and I LOVE Ben's expression in response.

For Steve & my anniversary, we celebrated with a once-in-a-lifetime family adventure at Jungle Flight. Some new friends joined us, and we had a ball together with them. Here are the kids all harnessed up and ready to roll.

We had a short training session, then we started flying through the treetops. It was a wild experience! There was a total of 22 ziplines, 2 hanging bridges, and 3 free-falls.

Having a blast!

(Don't worry, Grandma, we were always latched securely to either the tree or the zipline!)

We were crazy high up in the tops of the trees.

Even though she is flying through the tops of the trees, Mikayla manages to look bored?!? Crazy girl!

That's better, Ben. At least make Mom think this is as nerve-wracking for you as it is for her! (Sidenote: we were supposed to wear shoes that strapped on your feet, but all I brought for the kids was flip flops...no problem, we just tied their flip flops to their feet with shoe laces! Click on the pic to enlarge and see their fancy footwear.)

Apparently flying through the tops of the trees is not enough for these adrenaline junkies - so they decided to try it upside down!

Here is the final free-fall - 40 m (120 ft) straight down.

It was a LONG drop!

Thankful for a "happy ending", new friends, and priceless family memories made in Thailand.

Pressin' On

Well, we arrived home last night from our meetings in Thailand. I will try to post some pics in the next few days from our time there (but you can see some pretty cool pics of ONE thing that happened while were there in the post after this one!).

But before I post Thailand pics, I wanted to post a few pics of what has been going on around here (even though we haven't even been around for most of it). While we have been gallivanting around SE Asia, Megan has been hard at work right here, continuing to cooridinate the translation of the Bible stories into the 4 heart languages of the Agta. Over the last couple weeks, they have cranked out the whole 1st draft for the In-Agta language story set!!! That is a HUGE job, and we are so thankful for her faithfulness to press on, even while we are gone.

After several sessions working with native speakers and some literate close-language speakers, this is what the stories look like. How would YOU like to be the one to try to type this up? :)

After it is typed up, it goes through many, many more revisions by various people to ensure its accuracy. It is a massive undertaking, but Megan just keeps plugging away, and we are gettting SO close to having these key stories in heart language for the people!

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We have been traveling so much lately that we have been trying to maximize every moment while we are actually here in Bicol. The main thing we are focusing our time on is training our new Bogkalot co-workers. They are deep into language study now, and they are getting more and more excited to start teaching. We had a training for them just before we left for Thailand. (Tnx to Megan for the pics!)

We had the training here, at the home of one of our new Bogkalot teammates. It was definitely a full house with all floor space, hammock space and even some tent space taken.

We always enjoy worshipping together.

Then Steve does some training time. This session was about how to learn the Bible stories to be able to teach them more effectively. The idea is that they need to start learning these stories in their heart language now so that they will be ready to teach them in the Agta language when the time comes. We always do lots of practice time in the training sessions - here are a few of them practicing learning the stories.

And while the adults are hard at work, the kids are hard at play.

This is Jerah, the daughter of one of our new Bogkalot teammates. She has been really sick and was in the hospital this week, possibly with Dengue Fever. She seems to be stabilizing now, but her older sister was starting to feel ill. Pls pray for this dear family - pray that Jerah gets well soon, that everyone else stays healthy, and that they would stay encouraged and press on in spite of this setback.

I Have Decided...

Today was an exciting day in our family - BOTH Zach & Ben were baptized!

Zach has had a clear profession of faith for several years now, but he has never asked to be baptized. It is very important to us that THEY are the ones to initiate it, not us. We have seen the HS working on him with this for a while, and this past week, he asked if he could be baptized. That prompted a great discussion, and Ben asked if he could be as well. We spent a lot of time talking with both the boys (particularly Ben since he has not had a clear profession for as long as Zach) to make sure they were really ready.

Since we are at meetings in Thailand right now, we all gathered and baptized them in the hotel pool. One of their good friends was baptized at the same time.

Praise God with us on this exciting day in our family!

Lil' Critters...and another trip

These adorable lil' critters just came to live with us. The kids fell in love with them in a pet shop in Manila and all pitched in from their savings to get them. Their names (I think they are actually final now - for a while they were changing minute by minute) are: Franklin, Peter, & Voyager.

We are all enjoying having these little guys around - they are just too cute to resist!
In other news, we are headed out yet again on another trip. O my. This time we are headed to Thailand for a required training with our company for several wks. Needless to say, we are more than a little travel-weary and "meetinged-out" after all our recent travels. We covet your prayers for strength and endurance during this time. Also pray that it would be a profitable training for us, and that we would stay open to anything God wants to teach us through it.