A Blessed New Year
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
Hope you're all enjoying your holiday time with loved ones. We're here at AIIAS with my parents, enjoying watching the blizzards, ice storms, and floods from afar! Glad to talk to many of you and know that you're safe and sound.
Land
Things have been moving slowly still on the land purchase, BUT we have made some significant progress! After God provided a donation to purchase the land, we then were waiting on the final paperwork to go through for our non-profit corporation to be officially incorporated. But, just before we came down for Christmas last week, we finally got the papers! So, now we can purchase the land under our official corporation, PAMAS (Philippine Adventist Medical Aviation Services). Dwayne will be able to start that process when he gets back up there in a few weeks (see below). Please pray now that the land purchase will go smoothly as, some of you know, there are many problems and land issues that often arise in this country even with the best precautions. It's all in God's hands, though!
Visit to Rice Terraces
Before we came down last week, we decided to take a day trip over to
the famous rice terraces (supposedly they were starting to be built 2,000 years!), which are only a few hours drive from our place
now, on a shortcut, dirt road. We had a great time! It was a perfect, clear
day and such a beautiful drive. We ran into some landslides--one that held
us up a couple hours, but not too bad. And we were glad for our 4 wheel drive in several places where it was very muddy, But, it was a grand adventure to explore new areas. We took a hike down to a beautiful, little native Ifugao village where the views of the rice terraces were amazing. I'll attach a few pictures (though pictures hardly do justice!).
FCA Indonesia!
Next week we head to Indonesia, where we will be speaking at the first Faith Camp Asia in Indonesia! We will also help with some of the afternoon break-out sessions and anything else we can do to help support. It seems God has something special planned for this event. Besides the unexpected miracle that we received when some of our dear relatives offered to pay our way as a Christmas gift, we have heard of many other miracles in relation to this program.
Visit to Palawan
Then, as soon as we get back from Indonesia we will head to our Palawan project. We have some new missionaries arriving and other visiting nurses coming to see what missions is all about. Dwayne has some things to check on and things to do on the helicopter. He will probably just stay a few days, but I will stay another couple weeks. I will do a little medical training and then we will also hold a "medical mission" (as they call it here) down in Balabac, the southern most islands of Palawan. One of the PFM (Philippine Frontier Missions) projects will be doing their first evangelistic meetings and they've asked us to do a couple days of free clinics and health education before it starts. Our missionaries in Palawan just did another one like this the other day in another PFM project. You can read about their exciting adventures on their blog on our website pamasmission.org (bottom left under "Blogroll" and " PAMAS missionary blogs"). This was their first real medical mission without us--and for some, the first one ever--but sounds like they did a great job 
You can imagine our need for a larger helicopter since at the moment we can only take one or two other small people besides the pilot!
God will provide
We thank you so much for your prayers for the project in Palawan as well as the new project in northern Luzon. We know that God will provide as He always has and in His perfect timing! We will be ready to start building again (another hangar and adjoining housing, just like before!) in a very short time. So, we appreciate your prayers for the funds needed for this exciting new project as well.
Aircraft update
We are still waiting for God's timing and provisions for new aircraft. Our first priority is a helicopter for this new Luzon project and a bigger one to replace the Palawan helicopter. We also need an airplane for longer distances and inter island use.
We have much to praise God for as this year comes to a close. One of our biggest blessings is each of you--our dear friends and family who pray for us and support us in so many ways! This means so much to us and really does keep us going.
We hope you have a restful holiday season and a blessed New Year. Though this world is full of pain and uncertainty with things only getting worse each year, praise God for the hope we have of His soon coming and an eternity of perfect joy with our Saviour! May we each be ready for this fast approaching day.
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