Time is going by so fast, one day i look and it is sept and the next dayi look and it is almost the end of October. The past 2 months we have been falling into a busy routine being really involved in the church and continually building up our community project. As well we welcomed Fred and Barb back Sept 18. They had gone back to the states at the end of June for the General Conference and also a small vacation with their children and grandchildren. We have enjoyed their company again. They are in the stages of moving out of the ministry and having the filippinos take over the ministry because they will be reitiring in 2013 from being here for 32 years. So since they have been back they have been visiting the different areas of where the church has grown to and Adam and I have been able to go with them so it has been a blessing for us to see how these people are so committed in serving God and growing His church. I just got back with them on a trip to Butuan which is a 5-6 hours drive we just stayed for the weekend. We went for the 1 year anniversary of the OLM church there. In one year they have grown past 500 people. It was a wonderful celebration especially because it is so neat to know that many of these people were living a horrible life of drugs, alcohol, abuse and poverty and are now born again christian and they have so much Joy beaming out of them! Adam did not come with us because he has been sick for the past 12 days and we just did a xray and blood work yesterday and he has out done himself he has pneumonia both lower lobes. So he is out of commission for the next week or so until the antibiotics start working!
We are starting to really feel comfortable being here and starting to have some good relationships. We are starting to build up so much compassion for the people we work with as well for the community we are in. God continues to take down the barriers for us to get closer to the filippinos. We are hoping that we can start integrating the community development project into the church development model so that we can change not only the spiritual aspect in their lives but also health, finiancial and livelihood. The long term goal would be to increase their way of living and get out of poverty. This project is extremely needed for these people based on what we observe every day. From what we have witnessed a community development can take up to 5 years in developing so that it will be able to run primarily by the people in the community and not by outside help and that is where we really want to see this project develop to. Last week we met up with a fellow Canadian (Jeff) who has been in the philippines for 6 years and has started a development project in a few communities and they are just in a beginning stages but have seen great improvements and committment from the community. We are going to partner up with him and his training materials. Which we really feel is very compatible to what we feel will work in the community we are working in. We are very excited to see what will happen when the training begins! We are also looking to do a Quail project that Jeff has started on this land and has some filippinos help him. They sell the eggs every day and get just a little less than $200 a month in sales with a net profit of about $100, which would be very helpful in funding the community project. We just have to make sure we set it up properly because when money gets involved, these people become quite jealous, which can destroy a project very quickly, so obviously we want to avoid that. Because of their poverty mindset they feel that things should only be given to them, so if they see others getting something and not them they could get mad and try to ruin the project. We are hoping to be able to start the Quail project by December and in Novemeber we are going to do many training sessions so we can have everyone together with one mind for the project. We always want to make sure that this project is not looked upon as ours but owned by the church members and the community. So the project is moving slowly but we are seeing great things happening and are looking forward to seeing more developments.
We have been really feeling called to stay for another year because we have just started the development of the project and really would like to see it develop farther. Again the goal is that the community will be more involved and the project could be run by them alone but at this point we are not there yet. To stay for another year we are going to need financial help so we are just waiting to see if the help will be available as it was for this year trip. If you feel that you are able to help please contacts us and we can give you further information. Contact us at bikesforgod@gmail.com. We are just excited to see what will happen!!
