Greetings. A belated Merry Christmas. With the kids here in the Philippines on vacation, and the kids out in the towns and cities crowding into the internet cafes and on their home computers our internet server has been jammed up so email not working real well. We spent Christmas here in our house in the Manubu’ village in the jungle. Celebrated with a lunch of pork chops and homemade cheesecake :-).
There was another reason also to celebrate. Sagli and Aylu’, the two Bible teachers still teaching at the village we call 50, arrived for a visit with the believers here. And with them came a whole bunch of believers ranging in age from kids to an old man. These believers hiked with Sagli and Aylu’ for two days to get here to our village. They are from a village we’ll call Mahay. We had never before met these believers. With them were Astun and his wife. Astun is a Bible teacher there at Mahay. We had a great time visiting with Astun and his wife and getting to know them. What an encouraging time to see all these believers who are a result of Manubu’ believers reaching out with God’s Word.
You may remember our often asking for prayer for Pablu and his family who started an outreach in the lowlands about 3 years ago. He now has some help. Tilmun, one of the primary Bible teachers here in our village and sometimes a translation helper is now going down to help Pablu each weekend.
Pablu is teaching the evangelistic phase to about 30 people. They have demanded to be taught every night! So Pablu is quite busy. You may remember that a few months ago that a group of believers from our village attended the wedding of one of Pablu’s sons there in that village. The unbelievers there were so impressed with the behavior of the believers from our village that about 30 of them said that wanted to listen to the teaching. Those are the ones that Pablu is now teaching.
Tilmun teaches the people there who are believers as the result of Pablu’s earlier ministry. They are very keen to learn and are willing to listen for hours to the teaching of the book of Acts. Pablu and Tilmun are, needless to say, very encouraged – and so are we.
One of the Manubu’ churches in the lowlands is planning to teach the evangelistic phase of the teaching in a village we’ll call Valen.
And there are other outreaches going on and planned.
Wow, lots of teaching of Gods word!
Please PRAY for all the Manubu’ Bible teachers and the ones they are teaching. For steadfastness for the teachers. For the unsaved to be saved. Those saved to be growing in their relationship with the Lord. PRAY for strength and safety as Tilmun travels to the lowlands each weekend. It is a difficult motorcycle drive with lots of deep mud holes, and Tilmun is not a real experienced motorcycle driver.
And please PRAY for God to raise up more Bible teachers.
Thanks for being a part of what God is doing here through your prayers. Won’t it be exciting to meet in glory these Manubu’ people you’ve prayed for?