The year 2009 in the Philippines, finished as it always does, with a bang! Fireworks are a huge part of the celebration of both Christmas & New Years and so my advice is that you should never plan on a full nights rest here in the Philippines during that time. It really doesn’t matter where you go (except perhaps the mountain) fireworks are common & abundant throughout the country.
Of course the highlight of this time is spending time with family and so with “maraming kamag-anak” (a lot of relatives) here in the Philippines, we were excited to spend the holidays with many of them in Cebu. Christmas was celebrated with traditional pagkanin (food), the highlight of which was lechon baboy (whole roasted pig).
On New Years eve we again enjoyed a huge feast with family in Cebu before catching the last flight of the year on Philippine Airlines back to Manila. We arrived in Manila just in time to see again the fabulous display of fireworks.
We are looking forward to all that the Lord has in store for us in 2010 and already it has gotten off to a great start. Your prayers are greatly appreciated & we are blessed by the love & support you have showed us.
Praise & Prayer:
Praise the Lord for the great time we had with friends & family in Cebu over the Christmas break. Please pray for us as we consider how best to be a blessing to family here in the Philippines without losing focus of our primary mission to see unreached peoples reached with the gospel.
Praise the Lord for the time we had with our partners here in the Philippines at our recent field conference. We were refreshed with great teaching, great fellowship, and challenged for the task that we all as members of Gods church have been called to.
We have been asked to begin praying about the possibility of joining an existing work in northern Philippines at the completion of culture/language study and so we would ask you to join us in prayer regarding this also. This of course is contingent upon obtaining a capable high level of fluency within the national language & so we would ask that you pray in this area also.