Padens in the Philippines

Dear Friends, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plan to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 29:11-12 We have been thinking a lot about these verses as we went through this last week… Last Monday our area director came up to Baguio City for a meeting with us. We knew that this must be important news, as it’s a 7 hour bus trip to come here from Manila. The short of it is; we were told that we must leave a year early for our home service. This means that we would be coming home this summer sometime. Of course this was not in our plans! We still have another year and more before we were suppose to be finished, but due to our low support level the council here has asked that we go back early and try to raise the support needed. (Many ...

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 ...