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.

Tribal Conferences

I'm sure this won't surprise you, but we hit the ground running when we got back from the States, and Steve went right away to a tribal pastors' conference on another island, then a quick trip to Bicol for the house celebration (see next post), then we were off to Thailand for a conference, then Steve headed north for the Bugkalot annual believers conference...now I'm at a ladies retreat. Been a crazy couple of weeks! But such a joy to see all that God is doing!
The annual Bugkalot conference is always such a blessing to see so many gathered to praise Him. There are now 39 Bugkalot churches (there were only 16 when we first started mobilizing up there in 2010!). 

The Mangyan pastor's conference & board meetings were also a blessing.

Ben & Katye

In the previous post you'll see we got to spend a little time in the States recently, and one of our main reasons for making the trip was to spend some time with Ben before he graduates from college. It was absolutely wonderful to spend some time with them and get to know Katye's family too. We got to know their church family at college, experience their first car breakdown with them, celebrate Ben's birthday, and go to a glass blowing place with them and Katye's parents. So very thankful for some precious time together.

Will you pray with us for these two as they look to the future of how God will continue to use them? Ben will graduate from college in a couple weeks, and they will be married in October. So excited to see how God is going to use them together.

Family Visit

In March, we were back in the States for a few weeks for some vacation and bereavement time. We were able to see some of our family & and a few of our partner churches, but if we didn't make it to your area, don't worry, we'll be back for longer the end of the year. 

We had a wonderful time with both sets of parents, some of it together and some time where I stayed with my parents and Steve with his. Both our parents are in Florida now, so it was fun exploring some new places. So thankful for our family and how supportive they are of what we're doing.

A Busy Week!

Last week was pretty crazy (thanks to all who prayed us through it!). We hosted a curriculum revision workshop for our Tribal Bible School, and we had folks that traveled in from many places across the Philippines for it (total of 8 different traveling groups, all with different logistics!). Thankful that everyone arrived and got home safely and for the progress that was able to be made in the course of the week. 

At the same time, we hosted a group of 8 seminary students from mainland east Asia on a vision/exposure trip. They worked with our church planting partners and went from village to village, sharing testimonies. We can't show pics of many faces due to security concerns.

Thankful for what God did with both of these groups and excited to see how He continues to use this time in the future. And now trying to take a little time to recover! :)

Trainings & Meetings

Something that is part of our regular life is hosting various trainings for different groups. 
Over New Years, we had a tribal team training - as well as some fun fellowship too.

The leaders of the tribal churches here in Bicol initiated a monthly leaders training about a year ago, and it's still going strong. Here are a few pics from the most recent one.

We have long since seen the need for some training for lowland Filipinos (non-tribals) who have a desire to (or who already) minister to tribal groups here. We recently had the first one of these, and we had a great group come together for it. We talked about what our core task actually is (entry, EV, discipleship, church planting, leadership development, and exit to partnership) and how to best implement that in the tribal context, taking worldview into account (and specifics like animism) as well as how Chronological Bible Storying can be very effective. 

Thankful for Filipinos who have a desire to reach tribal groups!

We also had a strategy meeting with some key convention leaders as well as a report from leaders of Philippine Challenge, who keep track of stats of Gospel presence and churches here in the Philippines.

We're thankful for opportunities to be involved in many different ways as the light continues to shine into the darkness. Thanks for the way many ways you partner to make all this possible!

Fun with Visitors

At the start of the year, we were blessed to welcome some visitors. They really came more to see Mikayla (it was her prior teammate, Allison, with some of her family), but we all had a great time at the beach & and down in Bicol. Even got in some wakeboarding & hot springs time!

While we were in Bicol, we were able to see Mt Mayon erupting at night again! Such an amazing experience. 

Can't beat the sunsets around here!

My (Jen's) dad also got to come for a visit, and we enjoyed going to see a musical together. It's not all mountains & beaches. :)