Summer activities

Wow!!! It has been a busy busy summer and it is only half over. First things is to share with you all about the amazing successful school year for all of our kids. We had closing programs at two different schools and they happened to be on the same day at similar times. So it was a divide and concur situtation for Jonah and I. Jonah went with Precious to her closing in Biabas at the trade High school where she finished tenth grade. She ended the year with honors, two medals and a certificate for leadership. She started the public school system in fourth grade and has been an honor student ever since. I am so proud of the her hard work in school but more proud of her leadership in the church and ministry with the kids. I went to the closing program for the rest of the kids from the elementary school. Faith graduated from the sixth grade. She set the goal at the beginning of the school year to be first in her class and she met that goal. She ended the year with high honors, first in her class. She also recieved 8 medals, one of which was a govenors excellence award. Andrew also ended the fourth grade with honors. Mark and Marah completed third grade with good grades and a couple of ribbons each.

About a week later Jonah and Precious with about 45 other people from our church loaded up three vehicles and headed to a neighboring island for our churches annual national gathering. I (Jessica) remained home with the rest of the kids to care for puppies that had just been born the day before departure. It is a day long trip that includes a couple of sets of driving and two ferry boats. The National event was the 4th to the 6th. The group arrived home in the wee hours of the morning of the 7th.

Everyone only had a few days of rest before everything went into high gear to finish preparing for our annual summer youth camp. We just finished up that youth camp a couple of days ago. Summer Youth camp 2024 was a huge success where the youth where able to learn more about their Identity and Purpose in Christ. We had just under 190 youth registered for this event. The youth camp is a 2-3 day event and the youth all stay here at our church. Camp started with registration the morning of the 20th and we had activities till after lunch on the 22nd. We where so excited to have a speaker that works with young people in a campus ministry setting in the major city on the island. It was great to have someone who could speak to the youth of our day adn share Gods word and love with them. In the past most of our camps have just been from the five surrounding villages. two years ago it was everyone from our local school distract. Last year we did not have a camp for the youth because I was recvoering from treatments and awaiting surgery. This year we focused on churches in our town and encouraged all of the youth to bring a friend. It was an amazing time to see the youth renew there fire for Christ and to see some of the young people committ their lives to Christ for the first time. We thank God for such an amazing event and for the amazing volunteers who all helped out to make it such a huge success. Pray with us for the next summer youth camp in 2025. If you want to help out in any way whether in prayer, provide financial assistants or even help provide supplies for the next camp of even for any of our upcoming kids camps please reach out and let us know.

While working hard to plan and prepare for the youth camp I Jessica wit the help of a couple of the older kids have been getting ready for the start of our next big ministry project. This is the Bible training school. This ministry start the first week of July. We have four students committed and will be arriving in a few days to get settled in before it all gets started. Our first orientation meeting is July 3 and actual classes will start July 8. The funding for this ministry is covered for the first year but if this is a ministry you would be interested or feel God leading you to support then please let us now so that we can make sure your support is going to the ministry you intended it for.

We are also right in the midst of birthday months. Mark and Marah celebrated their ninth birthday on June 2nd. It was nothing big this year We had a lunch meeting for our youth camp activities and had homemade pizzas with some friends for supper. Precious has a birthday this coming Thursdy the 27th and will have a few friends from school for supper. It will be exciting to catch up with the friends as they came to camp and are unbelievers. So we will celebrate Precious and see what they all have to say about how camp went. Just a couple days later we will have Jonahs birthday. For his birthday we will lechon (grill) a pig we have been raising and have lunch with all of our volunteer staff from the youth camp. We will have lunch then a meeting to debrief youth camp. I am always evaluating our camps and other programs to see what we can do to make them better. We will then a have a break for a couple of weeks till July 12 when we will have Faiths birthday. She will have the "big party" this year. For her party she wants a family time so it will be Faiths party and our brief family vacation rolled into one. We are just going to go to a local hotel with a pool for a night to swim and be together as a family. We will have a couple of meals out also. School starts July 29 for our kids here. One more thing to put out there We are looking for anyone who would be interested in a short term mission project. We have a building project for the national church in Negros. All the churches are raising the money but laborers to help build a session hall on the property that was recenty purchased. So if you know of a church youth group or anyone else interested in a work project let me know. Lastly a quick update on the adoption front. We are so blessed and thankful to say that we are making progress and are still hoping and praying to be able to have it completed by the end of this year. We are going to be submitting the last of Our required paperwork to the social worker this week and we can submit to the main office in Cebu next week. After approval of this round then it will be interviews and name changes. Once we have new birth certificates with their new last name of Cajigas we can apply for passports and then Visa. We are looking at and praying about a visit to the States with the whole family in the summer of 2025 if not then summer of 2026 for sure. When we do come we will be there for a minimum of six weeks maybe even closer to eight weeks. For anyone interested in supporting us in prayer or financial You can give to Commission to Every Nationa with a note to indicate you would like the funds to be used for the Cajigas family serving in the Philippines. Money can be sent by mail to CTEN offices in Kerrvilee Texas at the following address, Commission To Every Nation PO Box 291307 Kerrville, TX 78029-1307 Phone: (830) 896-8326 You can also donate online just go to www.CTEN.org https://www.cten.org/usa-giving Your love Support and prayers are invaluable and our ministrry could and would not exist without them. I pray you have been blessed by hearing about our ministry this summer and hope and pray you all have a wonderful blessed summer.