Gods work in our ministry and life

It has been way to long since I have updated and there is no excuse. With that said I will do my best to share what has been happening the first six months of 2025. Wow it is so hard to believe this year is half over already, Time has flown by and sometimes it would be nice if it would slow down just a bit. The start of the year was not much just a lot of planning for the year ahead and the holidays. We have our church Christmas party on new years eve most years and was the same this year. The Christmas parties are usually by department. We went into high gear planning our first kids camp of the year wich was in March. We also had a our short term traveling leadership/discipleship training. In January I (Jessica) and Faith traveled to Negros to kick off and teach for a week at the first of two sites for the a leadership training. This first site had training for one month. I taught for the first week then came home and had a fellow missionary teach for the next three weeks. Faith and I traveled back to Negros for the closing of the first site and then traveled a couple of hours to the second site for a one week taining with a focus on leadership and evangelism. The end of that training but us into mid February. Two weeks after we got home from the training we had our first kids camp of the year. Our first camp of this year, the same as past years, was held at our local barangay (village) of Juagdan. This year we worked with a theme of the Lord is my Shepherd. With our theme verse coming from Psalm 23. The kids enjoyed hearing from a couple of young parents from our church that where speakers for us. They also enjoyed doing a number of crafts relating to sheep and shepherds.

The kids also enjoyed a morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and games.

A month and a half after our first camp was school closing, meaning that start of our summer break. Andrew, Mark amd Marah had their closing on April 14. Andrew ended 5th grade with honors and a few ribbons. Mark and Marah ended the year well with a few ribbons. I could not be more proud of the work they have put into school this year. They worked hard and it shows. precious had her closing on the 15th of April and she also ended the year really well. She had high honors and was 2nd in her class again.

Soon after closing was time to prepare for our local churches annual thanksgiving celebration. Precious and Faith where part of the invocatory dance and a couple of dances the youth department did and Precious helped the two Sunday school classes prepare songs. We had Lunch and fellowship. Sorry no pictures of that. After Thanksgiving it was time to go into overdrive to finish last minute plans for our second kids camp of the year. This camp we used the same theme but had to put a lot more work into it as we had to travel to another island to do it. The second camp was in combination with our denominations National gathering and our second childrens ministry training. So half of our team of 30 left Bohol on MAy 23 and the rest of the team left on the 24th. The first half of the team traveled from home to Cebu and then an overnight to Mindanao where we arrived at about 6 in the morning and then still had a five hour drive ahead of us. By the time we landed by boat we where alreacy exhausted and ready to be done. God used this as a chance to remind us that we are to operate in his strength not our own. After all that travel and we reached our final destination we only had time to unpack the van and eat lunch and then we started our childrens ministry training. We had about 20 young people from 6 different churches that came. some of them already teaching Sunday School and others wanting to start teaching. They where all so happy to be there and learn new ways of teaching and doing childrens ministry. The training went until afternoon of the 26th.

The rest of May 26th was spent in prep for camp and helping our national youth officers finish preping for the gathering. The national gathering was May 27- 29. I did not spend much time at the actual gathering, I spent most of my time with good friends Mike and Val Boado. They where at the gathering because Mike was a speaker at our first service. Precious spent all her time at the registration helping to staff the gathering because she is a national youth officer (treasurer). The rest of the kids spent the days swimming in the pool.

With the last day of the national gathering was also our second camp of the year. we used the same theme of the Lord is my Shepherd. We encountered our share of struggles with this camp from language to communication break downs. It was a great camp with about 150 kids. The kids where very excited for camp because a lot of them were there about an hour before registration. That puts us in overdrive and sets us up to not have the time we like to finish prep, but God always provides a way. I am excited to see what comes from this camp. We where able to turn all of our registration forms over to the local pastors and they are doing follow-up with all the kids. I am so happy to say that God called us to bless the local churches after the camp and we gave them all of our supplies. It was hard, but have to trust that God will supply us with what we need to re stock our camp supplies.

The week after we arrived home from Mindanao we knew we needed to get away as a family even just for a couple of days and go off grid and just relax and reconnect after all the activies of summer and before helping to prepare the schoolsfor back to school. We went to Negros. Our denomination has bought a nice piece of property and are building a session hall. The site has a nice little house on it already and is about an hour from the city. We decided to go there and spend three or four days there. We stopped in the city on our way up to buy some groceries and supplies. Of course as missionaries we can not seem to go on vacation without doing some kind of ministry so we bought basic school supplies for 180 kids and blessed 60 kids each from three different churches. We gave the supplies to the local pastors though and let them do the ministry work.

The week after we got home Precious spent a couple of days at school getting enrolled and helping to get the school grounds and rooms cleaned for the first day of school. School started on June 16 for most of the kids. Faith is in an online learning program. She is in online classes from 8-12 most days and 8-1 on Tuesdays. She has the afternoon to work on homework and projects. Her first day of class was not until June 23 with orientation and official classes started July 1 for her. It seems to be working out really well for her so we are thankful that God put us where we needed to be.

We are making progress on the adoption and are going to be going to Cebu this month or next for a big interview which will determine if we can procede with the adoption. Once we pass this interview then we should be able to complete the process by the end of this year or the very beginning of the next. We are praying this is true, because then we can apply for visa and visit the US next summer. We are off to a great start with the school year and starting Sunday we will start planning for the rest of this years ministry plans. What we have so far is our third and final kids camp of the year in September, a local youth camp coming up the end of October and a national youth camp in December. We will be asking if there is anyone that would be willing to sponsor any of the youth for the national camp. We would appreciate it. There are two different groups that will need to sponsor. One is the youth from Negros and it would just be the cost of registration which would be anywhere from $2 to $5 depending on age. The other group would be the young people from our church which would be more because it would include travel and registration. This group would be about $50-$55. If anyone is interested in sponsoring any of the youth please reach out via messenger, whats app or email. Thanks and God bless. Prayer request: Pray for the adoption interview to go well Pray for sponsors for the national youth camp in december $4,000 to sponsor about 200 youth Pray for local youth camp and kids camp that seeds will be planted Pray for the kids school, especially Precious as she has two major research papers this year with all of her other school work. Also Faith as this is a new program for her, pray it continues to be a good fit for her and our family.