“Homes” for the holidays

Posted by: wrguptill on Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Hangar trusses coming up

Dear friends and family,
We're wrapping up a most wonderful time of busyness and fun! Besides a couple trips to Balabac for medical evacuations and a medical mission to Abo Abo, most of our time has been spent working on the houses. With lots of help from friends and God we were able to get both mission houses to a livable state before everyone arrived. We moved in on Sunday the 20th and went to pick up our family a couple days later on Thursday. We had such a great time with my family! They didn't even complain about the enormous amount of bugs (no screens yet) or trickle of water for showers (still working on a decent well). Sabbath we worshipped with the Cabar church, including the newest church plant group from Limbasan. My family donated Tagalog/English hymnals to each family and a guitar for the Limbasan group, which will greatly help their spiritual growth.

After "camping" at our place for the weekend we enjoyed a few days in Puerto relaxing and snorkeling. We all opted to be together for the travels so we had lots of bonding time crammed into various vehicles and hanging out the back! New Years Eve we travelled back to Manila (to my parents place) in time for some games and fireworks with friends. We had a delayed "Christmas Dinner" on New Years day, then on Sunday Scott and Mindi (my brother and sis-in-law) and Dwayne and I took a road trip up north to visit an S.I.L. aviation project (Wycliff Bible Translators) and the famous Banaue Rice Terraces. Unfortunately the terraces were socked in by fog the whole time, but we still had a great time (Scott and Mindi are headed to a remote hospital in Niger so it was the last time we would be able to spend time with them for awhile).

Thursday night we picked up Andrey from Puerto and then his wife and daughter arrived at midnight from the Ukraine. It has been a grand reunion for them! They were able to spend some good time making friends with the Ukrainian/Russian community here at AIIAS campus. Today we all head back to Puerto where we will hit the ground running!

Hope you all had a great holiday season. Thank you so much for the "gifts" and prayers from many of you this Christmas! We will try to keep you updated, though our internet will be greatly limited in our new place.
It is obvious and sobering to see how the time is so near. We don't want to miss any opportunities to reach more people before it's too late. As God continues to bless this work by providing month by month for our needs, we are grateful to Him and each of you for your part in making this happen.

Enjoy these pics of the housing progress and hangar trusses coming up by hand (with pulleys)! and time with our visiting family.