Our Trip to Manila!

Joy, Dai Eve and I set out from home on a 4-day adventure to Manila. We had several purposes for the trip: renew Eve's visa for Taiwan, visit our colleagues in Manila, take a few days out for fun, and for me, to reconnect with a good friend from college.


Precept Manila is overseen by Ann Dy and Natalie Tan. Ann (seated with me) treated us all to a wonderful Filipino dinner in the restaurant at her bank (where she is a director). Natalie (2nd from r. in front) served as our airport transportation, tour guide, hostess and all around wonderful companion for our first day and a half.


We enjoyed seeing the suite of office, classrooms and storage that serve Precept Manila. This suite is located in one of the bank buildings. What a wonderful provision from God!


Scott and Cindy (my college friend) run a medical clinic which focuses on training people to do jungle medicine. They have a combination of local people and missionaries coming to them for 4 months at a time. They also offer a free clinic three times every week.


I thought Taiwan traffic was chaotic until I visited Manila!

January Prayer Updates

Thank You for your Prayers!
January 2008
Precept Ministries
1. Praise God for the good turnout for the classes that have just started this month. There are a total of 25 students divided between three different locations, this semester. That doesn't seem like a lot, but many of them are keen to become leaders and that is an answer to prayer.
2. We are rejoicing that the first 2 children’s inductive study workbooks have been published. Now we are really concentrating a lot of effort on promoting these books. Dai will be giving her first demo/training next week. I know she would appreciate your prayers.
3. We are working on producing more promotional materials for Precept including a three-minute promotional video. We are far from professional video makers and need lots of help. Pray that we will be able to find the help we need, at a price we can afford (free would be good!)
Hsinchu TEAM Church
1. Please pray for more spiritual vitality in the individual church members and a growing understanding of what a church is meant to be—with an increased burden for the lost.
2. While there has been some evidence of spiritual growth in the fellowship, a recent incident has caused distraction and mistrust to spring up. Please pray that the Holy Spirit would work in hearts to bring a godly resolution to this situation resulting in even greater unity in the body.
Trailblazer Camps
1. When I finish typing this, I will be on my way to a Trailblazer Camps board meeting. We have had real growth in programming and camp participation over the last couple of years. Please continue to pray for the new camp development process. There is still no new land realistically in sight.
2. We are especially in need of two personnel positions…..a national director for our missionary director to mentor and eventually take over, and a PR/Promotional person to work on fundraising. Please pray for God’s provision of just the right person or people. This need could be filled by one person, if we found the RIGHT one.
Nancy's Personal requests
1. I am praying about attending a couple of training sessions—one for TEAM and one for Precept—this July. Pray for God’s direction and provision for this.
2. Please pray for balance in my life as I travel more and teach more classes in more locations. I am in need of more physical exercise, but the busier I am, the harder it is to make myself squeeze this in. And the lack of exercise makes me even more tired.
3. Please pray for continued spiritual growth for me….to walk in intimacy with God.
4. Please pray for some new supporting churches and God's plan for my Home Assignment planning for 2009. I would really like to develop close ties to a few more churches, including some Chinese congregations in the US.

December was busy!!

As I am preparing to post prayer updates for January, I realize that I totally missed posting in December! Christmas and all the special activities that come with it always adds a busyness to the month of Dec. but this year was especially busy because of a special teaching opportunity that came our way. Every Sunday in Dec. I traveled to Taipei to lead a Precept class in the 5th course of the Genesis series, which focuses on the life of Joseph. It was a great class and there were a couple very keen students in the class. One that is especially notable is a middle aged man who announced as he joined us that he is not yet a Christian (meaning that he has not yet been baptized). But I rarely see this kind of fervor and commitment to study in any student! He also has joined the regular Taipei class which meets every other Tuesday night. Pray for Mr. Kao when you think of him, that he would soon grow to have confidence that he is saved by faith, and take the step of baptism.