"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Philippians 2:5-11

Simbang Gabi

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!! 

This holiday season has been full of mixed emotions. While it is sad to be so far away from family for the first time on Christmas, God has been so faithful to remind us what Christmas is about. He is truly purifying our hearts and for that we are grateful. Christmas isn't about the gifts, the glamor, or even the family time. While I thought I knew this in America, it has truly taken refinement for me to realize these truths. And I'm only beginning to realize them. The Lord still has so much to teach us about the true JOY of Christmas. I ask you to examine your heart as well. If all that you've ever known as "Christmas" was suddenly changed, would you still worship? Would you still be full of joy? I found myself wishing the weather was cold or wishing I could help my mom and siblings decorate the tree while we sing our favorite Christmas songs. But that's not what Christmas is about. There's nothing wrong with family or trees or enjoying the weather. Those are great things.  But the moment my satisfaction is in anything but Jesus, something is wrong. And I praise the Lord that He won't allow me to wallow in false hopes. He is continually bringing me back to the cross. So this season as we celebrate His birth, we celebrate His life and His death. And we wait in great anticipation for His second coming. Finding our hope in nothing else, this Christmas will be about Jesus.
Though I've been a little homesick, I've been so thankful for how much Filipinos love Christmas. Some of them have been decorating since we arrived in September! Seriously, they consider all "ber" months as Christmas. September through December. Nonetheless, things are lively as the 25th grows closer. The market is busy and offers more than double the produce and items it normally does. You can just feel the excitement for Christmas in the air. They also sell special fruits like apples, grapes, pamello, and much more. Many people have been saving money since Septebmer to buy their Christmas meal and gifts. Aside from the marketplace, everything else pretty much seems to have stopped until the holiday passes. Schools are out and work is light. Most of the people we meet with for discipleship are taking time off to enjoy the season as well. We are in the 4th night of what is called Simbang Gabi. Simbang Gabi translated literally is "come to church at night." It originated in the Catholic church and was later adopted by all Filipinos. It begins the 16th of December and lasts until Christmas Eve. Each night (or early morning before dawn for more rural/farming communities) a service takes place where most of the community comes out to celebrate together. The Roman
Catholics and spiritists believe that if they come every night without missing a service, all their Christmas wishes will come true. While that seems a bit silly to us, it is very real for those who don't know the truth. But what a wonderful opportunity we have as believers to use Simbang Gabi to share the Gospel of Jesus. In our community, Simbang Gabi is held at our church. We sing Christmas carols, hear a small bit of the Christmas story each night, and pray together. It's a very joyful time and many of the members of the community who would not normally be interested in listening are present in hopes for their wishes to come true. Our hope is that their hearts would be pierced with the true story of Jesus and the true reason for Christmas. As the Body of Christ celebrates together around the world, join us in praying for the people in Maria Aurora. We have a few opportunities this weekend to serve and minister.  On Friday, we'll be helping facilitate a children's Christmas party, Saturday fellowship at Hot Springs, and Sunday I'll be joining the women in a Christmas cantata at Simbang Gabi.

In addition to Simbang Gabi, we've gotten a little festive around our home as well. Check out some pictures below!

Monica, Josh, and Kletz decorating the 'tree'.

Our First Christmas :)

Nativity mural

 (Josh painted this chalkboard on our wall last week. We wanted it to help with our scripture memory, writing to-do lists, just for fun, etc. For the rest of December, it's a reminder for why we celebrate)

Check out a close-up of Josh's skill!

The Great Commission

I promised to let you know more about Josh's sermon from last Sunday. Here are the notes I took. Enjoy!

• Our Mission- Get the Gospel to the Nations
• Our Promise- The Mission Will be Completed 
• Over 40% of the world has not been reached with the Gospel 
• Matthew 24:14 says "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come." 
• The Gospel has been taken to all nations, but when we refer to nations here, we aren't referring to Philippines or America, but peoples. For instance, the Alta tribe here in Aurora. 
• Revelation 7:9 says "After this I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands." 
• Matthew 28:19-20 holds 4 commands. As we read it, let's ask "Am I/Are we following this command?" "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." 
1. GO- not to be confused with come. I wouldn't go to a mosque. Why would a non-believer come to church to worship a God they don't know or worship? Example- Bro. Benjy (a local ice cream man) doesn't stay at home and shout 'Come!'. He goes to his customers. And our gospel is way more valuable than ice cream. 
2. MAKE DISCIPLES- not converts. 2 Timothy 2:2 says "and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." Make disciples who will make disciples. Pray, Go, and Give to all nations. Psalm 96 says declare His glory. God cares about this. 
3. BAPTIZE- all disciples must be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
4. TEACH- it doesn't say teach them all I've taught you. It says teach them to observe all I've taught you. This is more than passing on knowledge. We must teach them how to follow and obey. Knowledge is wasted if it isn't transferred into obedience. 

• Are we obeying this command? If yes, great. If not, why? 
• Here is a list of typical reasons why Josh believes we do no obey: 
• Lack of knowledge. If this is you, now you know. 
• We don't know how. There are so many leaders in the church who want to help you learn how. Please ask. 
• We are unwilling to change our plans. Ex- The church in America has many successes but one of it's major downfalls is their desire to build bigger buildings and pave parking lots. These in themselves are not bad, but the mission is not done! We must seek God's plan. Another ex- It's easier to invite people to church than to go to the people, but this is not necessarily what the Bible tells us to do. 
• Our satisfaction is not in Christ alone. Until we are fully satisfied in Christ, we will not desire to take His glory to the nations. 
• We are entangled in worldly passions. For example, involved in sexual immorality or maybe you care more about checking facebook and spending time on the internet. Sin keeps us from fulfilling the Great Commission. 
• We don't care about God's glory among the nations. Look at Scripture. God is passionate about His glory being made known! 
• Manny Pacquiao is known around the world. The #2 boxer is not really known outside of the Philippines. This is the difference in global vs. national fame. God wants HIS NAME to be KNOWN. He wants to be global. We go and we tell because Christ deserves the worship of all. (For all you ladies out there, like myself, who have no idea who Manny Pacquiao is, he is a world  champion Filipino boxer. Last Sunday when Josh spoke was one of his biggest fights of the year. The congregation loved that he mentioned him!) 
• 7, 107 out of 15, 565 people groups are unreached by the Gospel. This is 2.9 out of 7 billion people. Over 2/3 of the world does not worship Him. 25,000 are dying every day of preventable diseases. The command is urgent. We have to GO. 
• Our Response- Our only option is to trust Christ and obey what He said to do. 
• This life is a war and it is not easy. But our God is worth it and He has already promised that the command will be fulfilled. 
• 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says "For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 

Please really take your time to read these words that God spoke through Josh. I was both challenged and encouraged. May you be spurred on as well.
I hope you all have a blessed week.  

Life as of lately

Hey everyone, we've had some blog trouble lately so I'm a little behind and I feel like I have so much to tell you! Literally, I've had a few thoughts of "I should blog about this" and I couldn't! We've been busy lately, so I'll try to catch you up on everything as best I can!

For starters, we've been harvesting a lot of tilapia from Barry & Lilia's pond. This has brought a lot of visitors to our house to buy the fish. And I've grown a new love for tilapia cooked in coconut milk! Yum. The pond will be plowed this week and the process will start all over again.

Doesn't this kind of remind you of a Bible story?

We had an impromptu photo shoot on the way home from a campus ministry. Once a month we will be going to the high school in a community called San Isidro to help teach Christian values. 

Isn't the scenery BEAUTIFUL?

We've set out on the quest to memorize a book of the Bible during our time here. This is one of our Trek-X assignments. Josh and I chose Colossians. 

Josh preached at church on Sunday. He really did a wonderful job. He spoke on missions/The Great Commission and I was both challenged and encouraged by his words. (There will be a blog to come sharing with you exactly what he preached!) Praise the Lord for choosing to use him as well as Kletz, his awesome translator :) 

We've been doing a lot of strategizing, planning, and praying about our goals here and how to reach Maria Aurora and the surrounding areas. We desire to make disciples, who will make disciples. 

 We received a package from my parents!! It was so exciting to get something from home. In the package we received LOTS of our favorite snacks, some cleaning products, material for ministry, games to play with the kids, more snacks, medicines, and so much more! {This is a story for a whole other blog, but Lilia was also able to share the Gospel with the delivery guys and they both prayed to receive Christ. Please pray for Donald and his friend/coworker. Pray for God to place other believers in their paths that they may be discipled into maturity.} 

Our friends Ruben and Shiela (who are engaged to be married soon!) came over on Monday to cook lunch with us. We had Sheila's favorite--duck adobo with coconut milk. It is quite possibly my new favorite as well. It was so good and so fun to spend the day with them. We believe God will use this couple in beautiful ways. 

Duck, potatoes, carrots, ginger, coconut, and so much more.

Meet Shiela

and Ruben :)

Let's see, we've also celebrated a couple of birthdays with our neighbors, attended our language lessons, and continued to train some young people in the community of Calabuanan to reach their friends, families, and neighbors with the Gospel.  Monica and I went to a women's ministry Christmas party. It lasted from 9am-3pm! We did everything from sing, to play relay games, to share potluck lunch, to exchange gifts! I was also able to share the devotion for the day. The party brought out the Christmas spirit in me for sure!

As you can see, we've been up to a alot lately. It's been so fun, so rewarding, and pretty tiring. But at the end of each day I cannot come up with enough words to praise the Lord for His continued faithfulness. He alone has qualified us for His work. He alone is worthy of our praise.  

Enter His Courts with Thanksgiving

Well, we're a week to the day late, but hey, it's the Philippines. Tonight we celebrated Thanksgiving. It was a feast to say the very least. And we all had very thankful hearts as we went around the table and shared for what things we are thankful to the Lord. It was a really sweet time with an American menu which was sweet to my soul (and my tummy) :) It also happened to be my and Josh's first Thanksgiving together! Enjoy the photos.

"Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name!" Psalm 100:4

Malupa Baptist Church

In light of a beautiful day yesterday at church, I wanted to share with you all a little bit about our church family here in Maria Aurora. Malupa Baptist Church is a 2 minute walk from our home. Here we worship with Pastor Jojit and several of our friends and neighbors. We have worship service on Sunday, prayer meeting on Wednesdays where we circle up in small groups and pray for each others' needs, and a discipleship training time on Thursday evenings. There are also occasional men's and women's days held on Saturdays which last from about 9am to 3 pm!

Malupa has planted 7 churches in the surrounding areas. We are blessed to meet with the pastors of these churches every Tuesday morning over breakfast to be informed about their ministries and prayer needs. We are excited about the future of being involved in each of these church plants. Already, Josh has begun training Pastor Melchor (pastor of a church in the community of Calabuanan), and in the coming weeks we will be training believers within his community to do Discovery Bible Study with the lost people around them.

Nonetheless, we are currently worshiping at Malupa where we were quickly recruited to become Sunday School teachers :) I lead youth girls, Josh leads youth boys, and Monica leads the young adult singles group. Though getting people to show up on time (or at all) has been a challenge, we've had a few special times with our Sunday School groups. Particularly, I have a young girl named Karissa who truly seems to be seeking the Lord. She told me this week that she's been stressed lately because she wants to learn to make disciples but feels she is not capable and doesn't know how. Her words were so beautiful and innocent! I am delighted to continue meeting with her each week and seeking the Lord together to train us up to make disciples. Praise Jesus for the desire He has put in Karissa's heart to obey His command!

If any of you are not part of a local church body right now, I urge you to find a community of believers. Hebrews tells us not to neglect meeting together. We need each other. Overall, there's no excuse. As believers, we must be part of a local body. On our own, we are only one part of the body. We cannot function fully unless we are whole. We need both legs and arms, eyes and ears. The whole body. Please, don't neglect the church. 

Here are some sweet stories, funny stories, and just some of our favorite things about church:
* Joke-Joke (Barry, Lilia, and our dog) attends church with us every week.
* Yesterday, a little boy brought in a baby bird with it's feet tied to a straw rope.
    He was so proud of his pet and it chirped all throughout the service!
* Some of our friends comprise an incredible praise band, singing both Tagalog and
    English songs. 
* It never fails that about 20 minutes before service is over, the local ice cream man
    pulls up outside ringing his bell. Almost every child discretely walks out and then
    back in holding an ice cream cone or ice cream sandwich (in the most literal sense-
    it is ice cream stuffed inside a white bun!)
* A couple weeks ago, 2 young sisters sat with Monica and me. As time grew on,
    they snuggled closer and closer, finally resting their hands on our Bibles or legs. They
    would quietly whisper to each of us, "what's your name?", "where are you from?",
    "how old are you?" Then they would share their new-found information with each other.
     They were precious.
* One week the last 20 minutes of my Sunday School class was spent with the sweet
    teenage girls asking me if I personally knew some of their favorite American artists,
    such as Taylor Swift, Whitney Houston, Carrie Underwood, and Celine Dion :) They
    were convinced that I had to at least know one of them. Finally, they settled with
    telling me that I look EXACTLY like Mariah Carey. O, the things we hear!
*Josh's Sunday school class has ranged from ages 3 to 63. It's always fun to see who comes.

Malupa Baptist Church

Sunday School in the cubo

Inside the sanctuary. Christmas is almost here!

 "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." 

Hebrews 10:24-25

The simple life

Well everyone, we've made yet another trip to Manila! Our temporary visitor visas expired on the 17th, but we still had not received the necessary documents from the U.S. to get our 2 year visas. So, our options were to leave the country for a few days or pay for an extension at Immigration. We so badly didn't want to go back to Immigration and I so badly wanted to visit Thailand for a couple days! But, we were made aware that by leaving, our current visa process could be put on hold or even denied and we would be forced to start over. So, we hopped on the all too familiar buses and made our way back to Immigration.

But praise the Lord, this trip was a breath of fresh air. The process to extend was swift and easy (and pricy). We were there less than an hour when they told us to come back later because they had to process our forms. But, much to our surprise, there is a Starbucks across the street! So we enjoyed coffee and pastries while we waited. We then went back and were there for only a few more minutes and freed to go! This was much different than our typical 6 hour day at Immigration spent going window to window. So for now, we are allowed to stay until January. Lord willing, our documents will be here by then and we will make our final trip to the city.

All in all, the trip was somewhat fun, but it's always good to be back to the simplicity of life in Maria Aurora. Here are a few pictures Josh and I captured last week of typical life here. After spending a few days in the over-crowded, loud city, these pictures take on a new meaning for us. Enjoy..

Coconut trees in our yard

Local sari-sari stores sell meals, veggies, snacks, drinks, etc.

Praise the Lord for the abundance of water here

This speaker blares music every morning for the local high school students to exercise

Main transportation in the Philippines, called a tricycle

Lots and lots of rice fields

Water buffaloes aren't only found in Veggie Tales 

Rice and corn grains are dried in the street like this

Lots of fellowship over speed scrabble

Sheer Beauty

Please continue to pray for our visa process, language learning, and relationship building. Thank you.

How majestic is His name..

"O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babies and infants, 

you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, t

he moon and the stars which you have set in place, 

what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,

 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" 

Psalm 8

Take a look into our day..

This morning we went to the beach in Baler..

..and had breakfast of pandesal (bread), eggs, and coffee..

..with some of our friends here..

It was peaceful and beautiful.

The Girls

The Guys

We got stopped on the way by a school parade..

..but we made it to this beautiful spot.

..where we looked for fish, seashells and more.

Again, peaceful and beautiful.

Ruben caught an eel!!

Right across the street was a waterfall.

Enjoying the morning :)

Next we hiked to Amitan Hill

Monica, me, and Josh

A beautiful overlook from the top of the hill

Baler Bay

Right before we left, we found this little lady.

She entertained us for quite some time :)

We are very thankful to have gotten to spend the morning getting to know our friends more. The Lord is blessing us with wonderful friendships here.