It seems that God really has planned for me to be here, because He has not stopped blessing the time that I have been here!! Some might thing that at this point I might be getting tired or ready to go home, but that seems not to be the case. (Don’t get me wrong I still miss you momJ) Everyone here has really come close together and it feels like I am a part of the family of God here, everyone in the province knows my name and calls out to me or smiles real big when I pass bye, it’s such a huge blessing! Let’s see though where did I last leave you off . . . that’s right God had given me a crazy vision, which is still going strong and my brain is going crazy with ideas, and we were starting on another hut for a family real close to me.
The start of week seven was great, Ate Maria and Joe Joe left the house and it was just me and pastor Al, only the guys!! Which can be a good thing, and a bad thing all at the same time, it was nice to have some deep one on one conversations, but the bad thing was there was no (sweet and wonderful) woman to do her God given gift of cooking!! And seeming that I am an American and incapable of doing to much, I was not allowed to cook, so Pastor Al took it on himself to be the cook. Long story short I got so sick, that I was incapable of doing anything for two days!!! That Monday night was bad, sore throat, stuffy nose, but in the morning I thought that I could still go to work, maybe try and shake it off. Lucky for me Pastor Al decided that today was a good day to burn everything!! That’s right me with a throat that can hardly breathe normal air, is now haling heavy objects into a fire that was blowing smoke right into my face!! So that being said, my illness elevated to the extreme, and I got a cough, throwing up, and major headaches on top of everything else. So for the next few days I couldn’t do anything, which proved to be a set back with all that I had done. The reason I say this is because I am American they believe that I am not use to working or serving, and I had spent all that time proving to them that I was different, and they finally believed me. But after I got sick a lot of that work went out the door, because they thought I worked too hard and I needed to slow down. It ended up being ok because, I kind of went behind Pastor Al’s back and told Maria that it might have been his cooking that almost killed me!
As some of you may know I have had the opportunity to preach every Wednesday night for the church and that means about 600 plus people, so with me being sick and all I had a lot of time to really get the message to heart, which proved to be a great blessing. Cause in the middle of the service the power went out!! Which is a common thing, but this was the first time it had happened on a Wednesday night, but that did not stop anything, me being an American I have a voice that carries much further than a normal Filipino, due to that they are all very soft spoken people. . For the most part that is. So without even losing a step, I continued to preach, sore throat and all. It went very well, l preached on how we can trust in God to take care, and I was able to use a visual illustration that worked great!! I took a chair up on stage and started to talk about how we trust this chair without even thinking, but do we do the same thing with the creator of the universe? Anyway I won’t go into details but it worked out really well.
Getting late into week seven and into week eight we had to move out of the house that we were staying in, for reasons to long to explain, and now we are staying in the church. This has proven to be very hard, because there are no naps for me anymore!! I know what you’re thinking “what is he ever going to do!!” But taking naps here is something that everyone does around noon due to the extreme heat and hard labor, but I can’t cause my bed is literally in the kitchen! So there is a lot of traffic and I kind of feel weird sleeping right where everyone is walking by and looking at me. . . So really what I am asking is please pray for some heavenly sleep at nights!!
Week eight has seemed to be like I am with my family and friends, and it kind of hurts to think of leaving them, we have come to be closer and closer every day, and knowing that I will be leaving them in less than two weeks brings a small pain to my heart. It might seem easy for someone to say that leaving them should be easy for me because I will be going back to my awesome family and friends, but that’s just it. . . I will be going back to comfort and luxury while they are all staying here working hard with each other to build a community in Christ, and I will miss it. But like a famous American once said “I shall return!!” (for those of you who don’t know history that person would be General McCarthy who is one of the most famous Americans in the Philippines). But to end this week I was able to meet a lot of the local pastors form the community that are coming in for a Pastoral conference, and I got a chance to play some basketball with them, and I met a man named Toto who really wanted my information, so I gave it to him and I think he wants to either have me work with him in the future or help me get set up over here in the Philippines as a missionary! In fact it looks like a lot of the pastors were talking to Al about me and they all showed a big interest in me. I really think that God can use it and I hope that it leads to building His vision that He gave me for the Orphanage/safe house. But only time can tell, in the meanwhile everything is in God’s hands and yes I can take my own message to heart, trust in God, just keep serving Him and loving others!!
Prayer requests
- SLEEP!!! I am very tired, in fact I am getting to the point that my body is moving much slower, and it’s even getting hard to dunk!! (This is huge for the people here!)
- That the transition of me leaving can be in Joy and not sadness/ that these next few days can be awesome and finish strong.
- Continue to Pray for the vision that God has given me that it might continue to grow and form into reality!
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