I know that most people do a year in review at the end of December so I am late with this post, but I am doing it know because it is three days shy of a year ago that we left on a jet plane to fly here. Wow what a year it has been. On January 19, 2015 we left Grand Rapids MI with a wonderful group of people at the airport to pray and send us off. We landed in Manila Philippines two days later on the 21st. We spent 2 days in Manila to rest, adjust time, and finish processing my visa papers. We then flew on to Cebu where my nephew met us to assist us the rest of the way to Bohol. We arrived home at about 3:30 or 4 in the morning. We first woke up and surprised Jonah's sister and then went to serenade and surprise Jonah's dad for his birthday. We started to settle into life in our new home but it had to be finished first. We stayed with my sister-in-law and family for the first month while our house got finished. We moved in and took another month and a half or so to get ourselves adjusted and used to our new life and schedule. Getting used to a new life that was soon to change again. We then started work on the orphanage and took about two months to complete. We had some amazing people from the church working hard to finish the project. Our first two orphans are cousins to the original three that lived in the first orphanage. It was about a month after they moved in that we received there younger brother. It was soon after that when Marvin moved in. We had James with us from the beginning as well. So within four or so months of living here I went from mom of two to mom of seven. The beginning of January this year we received four more children a sibling group who was extremely malnourished and very ill. They are 14, 5, 2 and 7months old. We just recently where told by the mother that we could adopt the youngest if we wanted to so we are going to be starting that process soon as well. So in a years time we went from parents of two to parents of 12 children. It has been an adventure with ups and downs but God is always faithful.
Our ministry here took on some new aspects as well that we did not expect but God has called us to start a youth fellowship ministry to reach the non Christian youth of our community. With the help of the young adults we hold a monthly youth "camp" Sometimes it is a one day event and other times we do an overnight. Every event though we have worship, a message or two and fun games for everyone. These events are so successful in reaching the unreached because we have implemented the bring one policy. For every young person from our church that wants to come they have to bring a friend. then we announce the next event and encourage everyone there to bring a friend. Our largest youth fellowship was about 150 people. Most of the time the event is just held at the church but sometimes we try to go to the beach or a resort of some sort that has a pool. These events are at no cost to the people that attend and are sponsored completely by us and the local church. The biggest cost is the food because they are fed meals and snacks for the whole time they are at the event. A lot of you have been very generous in helping to support these events when we ask for special donations for these events and we can not thank you enough.
God bless and part two will be coming soon with some pictures.
