Everything is fluid. That’s the World Racer’s slogan out here. Things often change a half dozen times before they happen, and at least once or twice as they happen. For instance, Christmas wasn’t going to be on a beach in the Philippines, but now it is. Not all changes are bad. Some are more difficult than others though. My team was originally going to be staying here in the capital city, Manila, for our time here. However, due to other changes and their implications, we are now going to Dumaguete on Negros Island, an overnight (23 hour) ferry and a five hour bus ride south of here. We will be joined by three members of team Beloved One: Renee Padgett, Kari Stembel, and my fellow British Columbian Jen Fancy. So, it’s a team of Ten for this month, doing just about everything under the sun for ministry. We’ll be driving out to a different pastor almost every other day, meeting each ones needs in some way whether that’s children’s ministry, putting walls on a church or a roof, evangelizing in an area, praying, preaching, doing bible studies, worshipping together or delivering a much needed motorcycle to a pastor who rides for two days each way, with his wife on the handle bars the whole way, just to get to pastor meetings every few weeks.
The change was really hard to take for some members of my team that have definitely been called here to Manila. We’re not sure what God is doing with this calling exactly, but it’s not been easy for them to put it aside for now. Christie wrote an excellent blog on what she’s feeling through this if you’d like to check it out here. Pray for us as we work through this.
On the note of Christmas on the beach here, I know some of you have asked about Christmas presents and such. Two things to know about that. First is to keep in mind that I have to carry everything with me in a backpack and planes have weight limits, as does my spine. Second thing is that though I love my sister’s ginger snap cookies, hedgehogs, and many other things that would make it more like Christmas here, if it costs $150 to ship a box of cookies to me it might be more economical to stick $30 in my bank account and tell me to rent a jet ski for the day with it. So, with those things in mind, if there is something you want to send, please get it to my parents before December 10th with whatever it will cost to ship so they can put everything in one package and ship it here by Christmas (with 60 people coming here for Christmas we want to keep package numbers low). If you need their address or phone number, email me (click ‘Get In Touch’ on the left if you don’t have my email) and I’ll send it to you. If you can’t get it to them though, let me know, I’ll give you the address here so you can send it directly.
