TDTS Graduation

On December 19, YWAM Mountain Province held commencement exercises for the Tribal Discipleship Training School that began in June.

Not only was it great to see these students complete this focused time of personal growth and discipleship, we also had the blessing of seeing some friends from our own DTS.

(You can read about our experiences in the Crossroads DTS by going back to June 10, 2007 in this blog and reading forward.)

Dee Smith was one of the staff of our Crossroads DTS in Salem.

Harry Smith, Dee's husband, was the guest speaker. Harry and Dee have lived in the Philippines much of the last 20 years or so.

This is a photo of 2 Normas. The Norma facing the camera is one of our CDTS classmates. This was the first time we have seen her since our class graduated in 2007. It was so good to see her again. The Norma with her back to us is one of the students from the TDTS.

As part of the celebration, the students from the YWAM Student Sponsorship Ministry performed a dance that represented the 3 major regions of the Philippines.

The mountains of northern Luzon...

The many islands of the Visayas (the central part of the country)...

And the southern island of Mindanao.

The students of the TDTS also performed a dance they had practiced. They used this dance during their outreach to help share the great love of God.

Congratulations to the students of the Tribal Discipleship Training School and to Patrick, our base director and school leader!

PNP Christmas Party

On the afternoon of Friday, December 18, a policeman knocked on the door. When I answered, he presented me with an invitation to the Christmas party for the Bontoc police department.

Actually, it was a bit more than an invitation. As I read the program, I found that I was on the schedule for the opening prayer for the event. I was honored that my family was invited to be part of their celebration and that I was asked to have a formal part of the program.

The only problem was that the party was the next morning and was scheduled to begin at the same time as the graduation for YWAM's Tribal Discipleship Training School. I would have declined the invitation, but we have desired and prayed for relationships to grow with the police officers. We decided to go first to the police Christmas party then go to the graduation shortly thereafter.

We were excited to spend a little time as a family with the officers and their families.


We are growing in our understanding of Filipino Time, but were still a little concerned about how things would work when two events were to start at the same time. But there was no need to worry. Although the police were not ready to start their festivities at the stated start time, when things did begin I opened in prayer then we headed for the YWAM base for the graduation. By the time we arrived, we were nearly an hour late but things were just beginning.

We had hoped to make it back to the Christmas party with the police after the graduation and YWAM celebrations. But it was over when we made it back to the plaza.

We continue to pray for opportunities to get to know the officers more personally and in so doing share the hope that is within us.

Grace,
Tom

Catch-up Time

It has been a while since our last post. This is in part due to the common phenomenon of being too busy to post with the stuff about which you would post. It is also in part to taking a vacation from as much as we could.

Over the next week, we hope to get caught up with some of the things that have happened since our last post.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Although we do not have many of the familiar sights of Christmas, (definitely not going to be a white one) it sounds like Christmas. Frequently in the evening, we can hear the joyous voices of carolers singing in our neighborhood.

Today my grade 5 Values Education class sang for me God Rest You Merry Gentlemen, Do You Hear What I Hear?, and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

I was thinking of my lesson about God fulfilling His promise made long before by His gift of Jesus and the beautiful music of the Christmas carols. I thought of how amazing it will sound when all of us from the east and west and north and south gather to sing in Heaven.

Looking forward to being in that choir. Hope you will be too.
Lisa

Rosewood Jesus

This afternoon, Lisa and I went marketing, like usual. But as we were walking past the plaza, we were surprised to find that several booths were set up. Vendors were selling food, baskets, woven items, carvings, and even wooden furniture.

One booth had nativity sets. When we were packing things in the US before coming we left the Christmas decorations behind, but we had thought we might get one of the hand-carved sets here in the Philippines. We had always enjoyed how the girls play with the nativity figurines and act out different parts of the story. Well, we did not get one last year, but we both liked one set at the booth today.


As soon as we brought it home, we were glad we bought it. All of the girls were excited and Annalise and Alayna began playing with it immediately. (The older girls might have also, but we were trying to get supper made so there was a lot of vegetables being chopped at the moment.)


Fortunately, I was able to take a short break and join in the fun.

Grace,
Tom

Tis the Season to Shop?

"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;
a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
- Luke 12:15

The older girls and I are studying Luke this term and this verse seemed especially relevant for this time of year. While we miss being with family and friends and the snow, there are several aspects that we do not. We do not have television, sales ads, and store displays telling us all the things we need to have for a happy holiday. It is much easier to communicate to our girls that Christmas is not about shopping at the mall and stuff wrapped in bright paper.

Lisa

Irritatation Level HIGH!

I am extremely frustrated right now! The other day somehow most of our digital photographs got deleted. "Fortunately," I thought to myself, "I have them all backed up on CD's and another external hard drive." So I put all (well most) of the pictures back in their appropriate folders.

Today I was working with the pictures and found that things were not as good as I had hoped. It seems that the CDs with most of November's pictures are corrupted. The files are there. Thumbnails of the photos show up. But the pictures will not open properly.

One of the disappointments is that the girls had done a dance at church that I was hoping to post. The video I was hoping to post of that is among the items that are cyber-scrambled.

Irritation level VERY HIGH!

Tom