Busy Spring

WOOSH.... That sound at its loudest is what it was like for us in the middle of December, as we where hit head on by a super typhoon we called Odette. She was really upset and decided to unleash her fury on the island of Bohol. Our house was one of the more secure ones in our area so most of our neighbors and friends from a nearby village used our home as an evacutaion center. We had upwards of 50 people sheltered in ur house the night of the storm and 20 people that lived in our home for the next two weeeks as they rebuilt or built new shelters for their families. We lost power and phone service with no clue as to when to expect it back. Our priority at that point was to get word to everyone that we where okay and to get a generator to run our water business and get clean water out to people. God blessed us with many wondrful people that donated and helped send money that two weeks after the storm we had a generator and were able to have the water bussiness running on limited hours and we were able to give water to people who came to us for it. Clean up began and life continued on the best we could. We were blessed with no injuries or death in our area but did sustain a lot of property damage, to our house the other houses in our community, the church and the orphange. We are still rebuilding some 6 months after the storm. It is a slow process and we have to set priorities as to what is done based on budget. All while this is happening I am still trying to recover from Chemo as I finshed that just a month before Odette. I was also having all of my follow-up appointments to set a date to have another surgery to reverse the cholostomy that was done In April. I was able to get an all clear from my oncologist and set a date for surgery the end of January. Again it was a complicated procedure as everything was not as clean as it should have been. It was supposed to be an hour surgery that ended up being three hours. It was also supposed to be a minimum of ten days in the hospital but with God all things are possible and I was able to come home 7 days later. I was really blessed to have Jonahs sister here for a couple of months post suregery to take care of things so I could recover. The rest of winter was uneventful here but the start of spring was also the start of a busy couple of months for us. The first week of April brought visitors from our sending agency in the US (CTEN). It was a couple that came on recently as the co-directors at CTEN. They had served in Cebu for five years. When we had the typhoon the end of last year they helped raise and send the money to buy a generator so we could run our refilling bussiness. They wanted to come see the "Beast" in action meet us. It was great to spend a couple of days with them and they blessed us with some gifts to use for our upcoming kids camp. About a week after they left we had our churches 2nd annual kids camp. It was a wet fun day. We had about 120 kids come. It was a day of challenges and growing as the old church building was not stable enough for a rainy day and the new church was not quite ready for meetings. We inaugrated the new church building and made it work as the kids camp was the first event to be held there. I was so proud of our team in that they went with the flow of things and worked together to make it the best day possible for the kids. the middle of April was a little bit of rest while we planned for more visitors, our shurches annual Thanksgiving, a wedding and another kids camp to coincide with our churches national gathering. The end of April our pastoral care couple from CTEN came for a visit. It was a great time to meet them and we where so blessed by there visit. A few days after they left we went to Anda for time with family as we celebrated my nephews wedding. It was a beatiful beach wedding and we pray God blesses them with many wonderful happy years together. Just a few days after we returned home from the wedding it was time to pack again, this time for a five day trip to Negros for our Churches annual national gathering. This year we where excited to go as we were preparing for the first ever national kids camp. The churches denomination has held gatherings for about 52 years now and always there has been activities for the adults and even the youth but never anything for the kids. Well with two local camps under our belts why not challenge ourselves and do it on a national stage. As it was a new idea we had only 120 kids, but the kids all had a great time of learning and growing in their faith. We have even heard from some of the kids since camp and they are always so excited to tell us what they learned and remember from camp. 41 people, only 6 adults and the rest young people and kids many of whom have never traveled before. It would require a lot of patience and answered prayers to make a trip like that work and that is exactly what happened on our trip to Negros. We had a few delays and were utterly exhausted by the time we got there but am so proud of all our volunteers who staffed the camp as they gave their all to the kids even when they felt they had nothing left to give. Some of our staff even went above and beyond to make the kids comfortable. It was very hot in the room where we were meeting so a few of the young men used covers from the tubs that we had for storage tubs as fans and they would spend hours at a time walking circles around the room fanning the kids and other teachers to make them all comfortable. Since we have been from Negros we have spent some time recovoring and trying to finish up the school year. We have also had visitors from Tagum that came to do a teachers training with about 20 of our childrens ministry volunteers. We learned a lot and can not wait to start making changes that will have a greater impact on the children and youth of our church as they grow deeper in their relationship with Christ. The younger kids are all done with school and Precious has one week left. We have also been able to make great strides in the adoption process and have hopes of it being finalized this year still. This has changed some plans for us as Precious, Faith and I were planning a trip to the US for a month this summer but instead we are putting it off for 6 months or so in the hopes that we might all be able to come later this year or the start of next. We are also in the planning stages for our next big outreach event which will be a youth camp. this camp will be the first weekend in August and will include the young people from 11 villages in our area. We have two big goals for this camp and they are to evangilize the unbelievers and to give the believers to grow deeper and learn more to grow their relationship with Christ. God bless. Current needs 1. prayers and support for the upcoming youth camp. 2. Funds to build two Sunday school classrooms 3. Funds to help us continue to rebuild our home and the orphanage 4. Prayers that the adoption can be completed soon 5. For our visit to the US