Padens in the Philippines

Dear Family, Friends, and Prayer Partners, Greetings from the Philippines!! We hope this finds all of you well in this New Year 2009. Below is a list of our praises and prayer requests, but first we would like to show you some pictures! Hopefully you can get a better “picture” of what we are doing and life here. Just scroll down to see the prayer and praise section. Thank you all for keeping up with us and for your prayers and support! It’s wonderful to have a great team of people like you who care about and support what we are doing here in the Philippines. Ministry Gilmer’s main job is to work with the Youth. This includes both High School (there is no junior high here) and College groups. This is one of his Men’s Bible Studies that he does once a week. Some of the youth at a youth group meeting. Nhaya and Caleb got to go along with Daddy and the youth, while passing out Christmas Baskets (ok yellow bags!) to some poorer areas we are working in. The tradition in the Philippines is ...

Just a few Experiences Once, shopping with my friend in Manila I bought something from a Filipina at her stand. She gave me a good price since I was the first customer of the day, but what she did with the money I gave her was the interesting part. She proceeded to take my money and fan/touch all of her products that she was selling and mumble something. I said to my friend, “Did you see what she did?” She didn’t notice, but as we watched her I explained that the vendor was blessing the rest of her things so that she would have good luck in selling many items and getting rid of any bad spirits. This also happened when I was pregnant and I was able to get good prices on many things because pregnant ladies must be good luck! Spiritism is a very real part of everyday life in the Philippines. Even though it is considered to be a Christian country because of Catholicism, the Filipinos as a whole believe very strongly in spirits and the influences that they have on everyday life. Another exa...

(see bottom of letter for pictures) Hello from the very rainy Philippine Islands. We have been back now for about a month and are still trying to settle in! Thank you all so much for your prayers as we traveled back. The flight back was SO much better as the kids were able to get some sleep on that long 12 hour flight to Hong Kong. Thank you also for your patience for us writing an update, we feel like life is going 100MPH and we are just holding on trying to keep up the pace. Our time in the States was great. It was so nice to see our family, (old and new members!) friends, and supporters. We were so blessed by people who gave of their time, houses, cars, etc- while we were back. It’s not always easy coming back to no car and no house but we felt that God provided all that we needed through His people and even some that we didn’t know. We were only in the States for a short 2 months (that seemed to fly by) and are sorry that we did not get to see more of you guys. We did have a chance...

Update on US Trip As of a couple days ago we now have tickets to travel to the States! We are scheduled to leave on June 18th and return to the Philippines August 14th. As you can imagine we are very excited but at the same time still a little hesitant. Let me explain why. We bought tickets based on what the man at the Embassy said but we still have no documented proof that everything will go as he said and as we hope. So, we are taking every step possible to be ready for whatever situation might come up during our travels. We have called the Homeland Security again (and have a funny- long- but funny story about that!) and tried to get anymore information about our problem based on the fact that Mr. Lee from the Embassy said we can just board the plane. As of now we will still plan to go but we need all of your prayers for everything to work out. We can not be fully relaxed until we are through immigration in the States and on a plane to Tucson! This is a very stressful time for us as ...

Dear Everyone, We have some really exciting news! Thank you all for your prayers for us concerning Gilmer's papers to get back to the States. We said in the last email that we hoped somehow God would be glorified by our situation and we believe that He was today. Let me try and recap what happened at the Embassy this morning... We went early and waited in line at the Homeland Security window, after talking to the man there he referred us to the US Border Safety (or something like that) since they are the ones that control the transportation Letter we were told to get. The security guard there said to wait outside, and when they came into office they would call us by who came first (there was a big stack of papers). Since we also needed to get Josiah's SSS number (Social Security) we did that while we waited. After that was taken care of, we were waiting outside and I went to check to see if there were seeing people yet, which they weren't. Gilmer, by then, had made friend...

Dear Praying Friends, We have a urgent prayer request that we would like to share with you. If you have been reading our updates you know of the problems that we have been having with Gilmer's paperwork to get back to the States. Things right now continue to look grim. We spoke to an Immigration Officer last Friday and, according to her, there is no hope that the re-entry permit will be reissued. This comes as a shock to us considering we have spoken to 3 other Immigration Officers that said to just wait. They did not say that there was no chance. She also told us that the only thing we could do is ask the Embassy to give us a Transportation Letter. We had not heard about this letter before even though we asked them repeatedly to let us know if there was anything else we could do. So feeling like we need to exhaust all our options, and at least find out if there is anything the Embassy can do, we are headed for Manila in the morning. We could not send this out earlier due to a t...

Baguio - our new city! As you can see Baguio City has a lot of people. It is always very crowed here. We dressed up in traditional dress with friends when we went sight seeing one day. In A New City “There is no way!” said Gilmer when one of the church members at our new church told him he would be wearing the tribal dress called a “bahag.” Traditionally this clothing is worn by the mountain peoples. One group being the Ifugao. It is just a small piece clothing worn around the waist, almost like a loin cloth, and is to be worn with nothing else underneath! We had a great time last month as our new church named Cordillera Bible Christian Fellowship welcomed us - complete with a tribal dance, (see pictures below)also when they asked Gilmer to wear the bahag. They made us get up and try the dance too! Even though we looked rather silly, it was fun. The church members show us part of their culture. We are glad to be here at our assignment and are excited to see how God will use us to re...