Reporting All That God Has Done — Acts 14

0:09 Well, morning everyone. Good morning. Wow, it's nice to be here. It's very nice to be here. First of all, I'd like to just say thank you that we have been gone a long time, but we have not felt separate from you.

0:25 I'd like to thank you for your prayers. The weekly emails we get from, usually it's Carlin, saying, hey, what are your prayer requests for this week? And then we know that the prayer warriors are lifting us up each week and it's almost like we have this bloodline going home. It's really, really an encouragement to us and we want to thank you for that. Also want to say thank you for your financial gifts.

0:53 It's a practical aspect that feeding a family of five requires money. And that money comes from sources all over the world. We are amazed that the Lord has met our needs for these past five years. We've been in The Philippines. We've been in a developing country.

1:13 And we've had to basically start from scratch. When we went back this time, friends of ours had said, Hey, we're going on furlough. Could you delay your finding your own home one more year and stay in our house? And it took me at least ten seconds to think about that because it was a really nice house. And so we were subletters for the fourth time and we moved for the sixth time in five years.

1:41 But we were so excited that a year ago about right now, I think it was June 17, Miriam said, we're packing. We have to pack. We have to get out of here. Or June 7. I can't remember which day it was, but the bottom line was we had no home to go to, but we started packing.

2:00 And then the Lord provided through fellow missionaries who had been here, kind of kicked us off way back in 2009. Dave and Ruth Harvey said, Hey, we're going home for the summer back to The States. You can stay in our house until you find your home. Well, the day that before school started, we moved into our new home. It just happened to be the first home that we moved to when we went to The Philippines.

2:23 It was a long circuitous route, but the people that were living there were fellow CMML missionaries from Chicagoland area. They wanted to go to another house that we had found, which we thought that's where we were going. They said, kinda like that one better. Would you like to take ours? We go, hey.

2:39 We... This is great. So it was a a a neat testimony to the Lord's provision. And after looking for literally six months, the Lord provided for us. So we also purchased a vehicle while we were over there.

2:53 We sold one of the vehicles we had here and purchased one over there. It's another little small miracle. It was a 2006, but it was owned by two American soldiers who only drove it around the base. And then one guy, when he left the military, he went into sales. And he said, I only drove this one because they have color coding in the city of Manila, where basically you have one day every week you cannot drive in the city because of the pollution issues.

3:27 And that's one little way they try to fight it. And so on that day, they call it your coded and you get a ticket, which I've experienced because I forgot one time and you get a ticket if you drive on that day. And anyway, we were very grateful for that vehicle. Only had like 35,000 miles on it when we bought it in 2013 and it was a 2006. So God has provided for us and we know that that comes from folks like you and others who have a heart for seeing the gospel go into all the world.

3:58 Now, some of you may think, well, what is this all about, this report? You know, that's a pretty common term, but it's something that came out of scripture. Acts 14 verses 26 to 28, you don't have to look it up. I'll just read it for It's talking about the end of that first missionary journey that Paul and Barnabas had. And it says from there, wherever that spot was, they're giving a little history lesson here.

4:24 From there they sailed to the city of Antioch, okay? From which they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had accomplished. We have returned to our commending assembly. And that's Westlake Bible Fellowship. When they had arrived and gathered the church together, which is what we're doing right now, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how he opened a door of faith to the Gentiles, and they spent a long time with the disciples.

4:53 We won't be spending a long time here, unfortunately. School starts on August 5 at Faith Academy, and they always have a pre event for all the students, I'm sorry, for all the staff that we have to be back for. So we're flying in and I think I get one day to recover from jet lag and then we start. So when we left, literally the last day of school was a half day and we flew out that evening. We did not go to bed that night.

5:20 So we have pinched it on both ends. We got seven and a half weeks. So it's been a pleasure to be here already. A lot of the things that I'm going share with you today, I've shared with some of you already, some of you are like, don't even know what's going on with you guys. Here's one thing that I would just encourage you right now.

5:35 If you would like to have a detailed idea idea of what's going on, come to prayer meeting on Wednesday night. Alright, that's where most of the news is is shared because that's where the bloodline is going. Wednesday night prayer meetings, they know everything that's going on in our life pretty much. If that's not something you can do and you don't get the newsletter, we do have about two ninety people on our newsletter list and we would be glad to add you to that as well and share with you. It's a monthly thing that Miriam does such a great job of putting together, and we kind of divide up the different ministries we're involved with.

6:51 If you're not familiar, this is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Yes, that is not edited. That was taken by someone who lives in Manila. And this is Pasig City. Probably can't read that right here, but that's about, well, as the crow flies, it's probably only 10 miles from our house.

7:11 But as the vehicles go, it's about forty minutes. Okay? Because it takes a long time to get anywhere, as you can probably imagine. You might wonder what these lines are. Well, those are either large roads or streams.

7:25 Okay? Canals or maybe even a river. This is a picture of the subway which is actually an elevated system. And this density that you're seeing here is everywhere. This is also the cleanest stream you'll probably find in Manila.

7:43 And this is as we were walking along the sidewalk going from one train station to another. They literally build the houses side by side interconnected with whatever materials they can find. This is the nice train. You can see that it's still very densely populated. Here's the tough one.

8:04 Now those people on your right are trying to get in. Here's Miriam trying to get out. So literally you have to keep your hands in your pockets because you're right here and that's where you'll be until you get off. There's no way to move. Amazing.

8:18 That's Downtown Manila. This is for Denzel. This picture I wanted to put in two. We were at a basketball game downtown and we were walking back to the train station. And I just thought, this is an image that I got to keep.

8:37 And here, you got the subway here and this long road of shops here and then the sidewalk. Well, sidewalk was hard. You can hardly walk through it, as you can see here, because all the people that can't afford to rent space to sell things are selling things along the sidewalk. And yet they got their family. So here's this little munchkin in a stroller.

8:56 Dad's got a spur shirt on and he's pushing around, having a great time on a Saturday morning. But that's life in the city. What about the province? Well, the province, you see these wonderfully decorated jeepneys. Well, they're everywhere.

9:10 The ones in the provinces are a little bit more decorative and attractive. They don't get hit as often. There's a trike designed for five. I think there's 12 or 14 there. That's very typical.

9:24 Then you got this a little bit more once you get up to the coconut plantations, riding a burrow and putting some kids in the side pouches. This is a peddler that comes into town. We see him a couple times a year, brings in his wares to sell. They do have beautiful tropical orchids out in the province. Pineapple plantations with the rows of pineapple.

9:51 This is a very, very common scene. The caribou, which are the water buffalo preparing the fields. There's also some mechanical methods, but most of the villagers use the old standard of the carabao. Here's Rice fields. Rice fields, yes.

10:08 I'm sorry. These are all rice plantations I'm showing you here. And so this would be the beginning after the plowing takes place, the dredging, I should say. Then the folks come in and they plant the seed packets, all right. So you got your little sprouts there, and they plant them every so often.

10:24 And as time goes on, they become a beautiful green field waiting for harvest. Bananas grow very, everywhere you are there's bananas, coconuts. This is another interesting, we were driving along the road one time and it was raining and I saw this guy fishing. He's fishing off his front porch because there's water all around. So this particular house was built on stilts.

10:53 Here's some of our favorite house pets. It's called a gecko. Now the geckos you see in the commercials, those aren't real. I'm sorry. That's not what geckos really look like.

11:02 And what do they sound like? Gecko. Gecko. Gecko. And they do it about 12 times before they stop and they do it any time of night.

11:10 And we've, if you have one living in your house, it resonates. They're very, very loud. And yes, they will bite if you mess with them. So this one was hidden behind a picture frame. We took it down and there he was.

11:23 This is also one of our favorite spiders. No, no. Just to give you an idea, that was about the size of, about that big. But you get used to them. I'm serious.

11:33 It's amazing what's happened in five years. My kids hardly scream when smaller lizards land on them or, you know, it just, it happens. You get used to everything wherever. But I know you guys like that stuff as DJ just said. All right.

11:46 What's the thing we miss the most? Now if you ask my kids, they'll say Five Guys, Chipotle. They'll talk about all these restaurants and food and ice cream that actually has cream as a number, or milk as the number one ingredient instead of water. They talk about all these things that we maybe just take for grand here, like orange juice that it tastes like oranges, you know, it just... So if you ask us that, we'll tell you, all right?

12:16 But the biggest thing we miss is family. It's Christmas. So we're glad to be here. We flew China Eastern this time coming home. I don't recommend flying through China.

12:46 Anyway, it takes a while. So we flew from Manila to Shanghai. First time I've ever been in China. Flew over the Polar Cap, came down to JFK, and then from JFK to Cleveland. Their longest flight was fourteen hours.

13:01 My legs were already sore after two and I thought, this would have been Japan. This is where we usually would fly out of. So it's a long flight. And those of you who've been over to see Drew, I guess, you had to experience some twelve hour flights. Fourteen's even pushing it a little bit further.

13:15 But it was a good, a relatively good price. This was welcoming home. People stayed up late to greet us. We got to see my parents a couple, a week and a half. Nice to see them again.

13:30 And then we got to go to Boston last week to spend some time with Kirsten and her family. As you see the bottom left, Tessa, who was born 11/04/2013. So this was the first time we got to actually hold her. And Elliot is now three. He was two months old the first time we saw him in a year and a half when we had to say goodbye.

13:55 And now Clover is seven years old. So they're all growing up around us. Not like Micah. Oh my goodness. Micah.

14:04 Whoo. He grew at least a foot since at least a foot. And the Buttress Boys grew about fifty pounds. Mean, woah. Woah.

14:11 That, isn't it neat to see kids? You're probably going, is that Katrina? Are you kidding me? You know, and Joshua, well, I don't mess with him anymore. Okay.

14:29 That's where I'm holding munchkins. But all the other stuff is going to be from The Philippines. So what's going on? Well, I'm going get more detail about my ministry. But specifically, I want to talk about Miriam for a little bit.

14:42 She is still crunching through her first full year of Tagalog. Tagalog is known to be one of the most difficult languages in the world. And now she respects it even more than she did before. We're talking about prefixes of prefixes and suffixes of suffixes and little syllables they stick in the middle of a word to change it and make it almost like a complete sentence. And so when you have every syllable, I'm sorry, every vowel is pronounced.

15:12 Every vowel is pronounced. So all of you World War II buffs who say, oh, you remember the Battle of Bataan and on the Bataan Peninsula and then you got Corregidor Island and all that kind stuff. Well, it's Bataan, B A T A A N is how they pronounce it. Both As are pronounced, Bataan. So that's just a little example of that.

15:32 So she's been working on the language. She studies it with her tutor who comes to our home. And then she also teaches at the school that's affiliated with Hillcrest Christian Church. It's called Lynncrest Christian Academy. So these are just a few shots we got last week of getting to know kids again.

15:55 What's going on with our three children who are with us over there? Well, we start with Heidi. Heidi went back this second term and was a senior at Faith Academy. I don't know if you remember. While she was here, she was taking college courses to get her general ed classes online out of the way so that she actually was a sophomore before she got back to take her senior year.

16:22 Sophomore in college and then stepped back and be a senior. But she had a great year. She was able to participate in drama. This was a senior play called Gaslight. It was the first time I've ever been so riveted to a drama, you know, murder mystery kind of thing where I wanted to get out of my seat and go strangle the guy myself because he actually, he was strangling my daughter every night.

16:43 I didn't like that. Anyway, he looks nice here, but he's really not nice. Anyway, so the Gaslight, it's a great play if you've ever heard of it. And then this was the crew, the cast there. She also got to be in the end of the year musical.

16:57 And the end of the musical was the Midsummer Night's Dream. And the way the director put that one together was kind of amusing. There's no holds barred kind of deal, and you can do whatever you want to do with it because it's a dream, right? So, they mixed modern music with kind of out there new age kind of stuff. They had wild costumes.

17:22 This was the wedding party at the end. And they brought in a little, even Justin Bieber showed up on the stage. It was pretty interesting. She graduated in May of 'fourteen with about 60 or 70. 60, okay?

17:39 And so there's her finishing her senior year. Two weeks later, she started up college again. And she's been nonstop until the week before we left. The last class she took, she could not take the test in Philippines, though we were able to find testing centers a short hour drive away in the Downtown Makati business district. So she was able to take tests there.

18:05 But this last one she had to take here at L Tri C. And so when she finished that, she became a senior. So she is right now a senior at Liberty University online, and she just graduated a year and a couple months ago. If you want to know how to do that, just ask my wife and ask Heidi. But it's amazing story.

18:24 Very different from my educational experience. My brother-in-law calls me Doctor. Ike and I are because I've been in college so much. Anyway, this lady I'm showing you here is a wonderful woman. She taught for two years at Faith Academy in fifth grade.

18:36 And she asked Heidi, or Heidi, she had talked enough to give Heidi the experience. So this entire past year, Heidi has been working in the morning as the fifth grade assistant teacher every day. And then she eats lunch, comes over to my office in the band room and does her studies. So this has been a wonderful experience for Heidi. These are the fifth graders who are going to be sixth grade when I get back.

18:59 And these children are phenomenal. They are the epitome of the mix that you see at Faith Academy. We have Koreans, we have Germans, Americans, Swiss, and I can't remember what nationality she is. Is it British? American, Filipino, if you want.

19:19 Okay, Filipino. Sorry about that. All right. So anyways, that was a great experience for Heidi. And we move on to Joshua.

19:27 Joshua got his fingerprints so we could get our immigration cards. And because when he came back, he was older than 14. And whenever you hit 14, you got to get a whole new immigration card. Joshua found his niche in sports. So volleyball became his fun in the first season.

19:47 And he went on to play varsity basketball by the time he was his sophomore year. This was the tournament we had last winter, which Faith fortunately was victorious. As he and his little buddy last week And the other little buddy. There's our remaining three generations. Katrina's big news was she got baptized.

20:21 About two weeks before school ended, Faith Academy traditionally has offered students to be baptized in the faith pool. And Katrina said she wanted to get that done. So rejoice with her in that. She too stepped into volleyball. She, by the way, her first year back, Faith Academy could not accommodate an eighth grade high school mixed curriculum.

20:43 They didn't have the scheduling. They didn't have the experience with that. So Miriam gave her one more year of homeschooling. So that first year back, Miriam was focusing on Katrina alone. And I think that was a really, really good experience for her.

20:59 So she stepped into Faith Academy as a sophomore. She was the only one that did that. Did quite, quite well. Like I said, played JV volleyball and made some great friends. She was selected as the most improved player award.

21:13 So hopefully next year she'll be playing some varsity. If any of you volleyball coaches out there want to spend some time with her in the next few weeks, I'd appreciate it. How hit an overhead serve. That's what's missing right now. All right.

21:25 She also had the privilege of being in the spring play this year, which was the Into the Woods, Into the Woods. Not the Disney version, but the Faith Academy version. So she was one of the wicked stepsisters, beautiful in form but not so fair in heart. They get blinded. That's what the sunglasses are for.

21:44 So that was a great experience for her towards the end of the year. This is Clover. Like I said, she's seven now. Elliot is now three and Tessa is 19. They, Lord willing, will be here next week.

22:01 Wanted to share this photo with you. I shared it with you last time. This was taken, well, maybe I didn't share this. No, I didn't. This is from October of 'thirteen, October '13.

22:13 And this is at our annual CMPI retreat. The missionaries, as we go left to right, these folks are the Keatings from Chicagoland area. The Carters, they actually were from down south. He grew up in Germany. She grew up in Manila as an MK.

22:32 Miss Sharon Agnew from Canada. She runs the ministry to unwed mothers, expecting mothers. The gentleman behind her is from New Zealand. He was there visiting for the summer. The tall guy in the back and the silver haired man and the silver haired lady, our son and mother, father, they're from New Zealand.

22:56 They just, their oldest son, the gentleman in the back, graduated with Heidi. And he went back to New Zealand and had been praying for a long time about what the Lord would have him do now because he'd been a Bible translator in Manila. And they'd lived in The Philippines for twenty years. And listen to this, all you midlife people, at the age of 40, late 40s, they just moved to an island in The Philippines called Palawan. Yes, it's one of the endangered areas because of Muslim unrest, but that's where they feel the Lord's called them to go.

23:29 And the last month they've been building their house out of thatched leaves. And they're gonna start a brand new work to translate the Bible into this particular dialect. Not Tagalog, not Sibuanu. He learned all those already, but a brand new language in his mid forties from New Zealand. The gentleman with the hat, that's a guy named Ivan.

23:52 His parents are over here, the tall, the very large man, all right, with a blue shirt on, and his mother is right here. The reason I point them out is that within, see that was October, within a month, that's what their house looked like. You might remember Typhoon Yolanda. They came through in November about the same time Tessa was born. That typhoon hit their island and their city of Giwan.

24:21 And the whole island looked like that. This actually, believe it or not, had three people hiding under it, and they survived. Their house is about 10, maybe 10 yards away from where this picture was taken. And they were able to climb up as the storm surge was coming in off the, you can't see the, but the water's over on the other side of that hill there. As the storm surge was coming in, they were able to get up into the 2nd Floor.

24:50 The roof was blown off, but they were not blown away. So they survived. Their church building had the roof blown off of it. And people actually, and their entire assembly survived. Unfortunately, we'll go back to this picture.

25:06 Let's see, are they here? Okay. The gentleman behind this lady with the silver mustache, he had worked in another area of the islands, the Central Islands. And that family had a loss. They had loss.

25:26 This gentleman was from Australia, and his wife's sister and husband lost three children. They were drowned. So it's not the nicest place to live, all right? We'll just get over that. But in this case, we are thankful for the mercy the Lord gave.

25:46 The other people that are listed up here, I won't get into detail, but some folks are Filipino missionaries, some are Korean, and then, you know, a few of the other folks in my family. What about the ministry to the students and staff? By the way, I also want to mention Daniel. Daniel, Ikenau, my son. Hopefully, will be here next week too.

26:30 All right, what's going on with Faith Academy? Well, Faith Academy, for those that aren't that familiar with Faith Academy, let me give you some specifics. It was founded in 1957. And the purpose of it was to serve the educational needs of missionary families in Southeast Asia. Some of the original families that started Faith Academy were from the assemblies.

26:51 It is not an assembly school. I know sometimes it appears that way when you read the Assumed Mail magazine, but we're trying to clarify this. All right, there's definitely an assembly influence there. We hope to make it stronger. But we are one of many, many, many families that make up Faith Academy.

27:12 They continue after fifty seven years. It's interesting, 1957 and this was the fifty seventh year and are going strong. 85% of the students are from missionary families or full time Christian workers. Now, that didn't mean a whole lot to me when I went over there. I should say it meant a lot, but it means a lot more now, because as I've been getting more contact with other international Christian schools, we have found a wide variety of how they do business.

27:43 Faith Academy sticks with the word faith for a reason, and they're not budging. They're saying we're gonna go by faith, and when we don't have staff, we're gonna pray them in. Other schools have said, we can't do this anymore, and they hire everybody. So they're international Christian schools, but their teachers are paid salaries, their students are charged a lot of money, And the percentage of missionaries goes from 85 at, I just know, I can tell you about three. 85% of Faith Academy, Morrison Christian Academy, which started about five years before Faith Academy, has about 20.

28:25 They pay their staff, but they also take missionaries. And then the money that they would pay the missionary who's being supported by other folks goes to the mission and they can spend that money anywhere they want, like sending kids to school with it or whatever, okay? To the third one, 2% of the third one in Hong Kong, International Christian School of Hong Kong, 2% of that student body are missionary kids. Now, it doesn't surprise me when I said, well, what's your tuition? They said, oh, for missionaries, it's 50% off.

28:54 It's only 20,000 a year. But if you've ever been to Hong Kong, you realize the cost of living there is pretty high. So don't take that too much of a shock. Everything's expensive in Hong Kong. But 40,000 for the typical student.

29:06 And so as I said to, was told by one missionary, says our mission does not send people to that school if they are serving in Hong Kong because 20%, 20,000 a year we can't afford to send kids there. So this is Faith Academy looking at it from the North. This is looking at it from what we call the circle. This particular day we decided, I shouldn't say we, the administration said it's time for another group picture. So that was 2007.

29:36 Here we are 2013 and they took another group picture. This is during the midst of the craziness of trying to get 500 kids in one spot. This is our tradition to have a flag raising. Give you an idea, the Faith Academy represents a lot of countries. We have over 20 countries represented at Faith Academy.

29:58 Also wanted to point out that the high school students, 20% of those are boarding students who not only pay the tuition, the capital fee, but also pay to have room and board there too. And some of those missionaries that you saw represented in that picture earlier, though they weren't in that particular retreat, we have folks from New Zealand and also Korea who send their students to Faith Academy, and they are boarding students there. As I said before, to keep tuition costs affordable for missionaries, all the teachers and support staff serve as missionaries just like the folks going over there to present the gospel by Bible translation or by church planting or evangelism. All the teachers and support staff are also receiving financial support from elsewhere. The school does not pay them a penny.

30:56 They represent over 50 mission agencies too. Here's a typical chapel for the elementary. My first three years at Faith, was able to lead music for the chapel. This is my main job there now is I teach high school choir. This is our top concert choir.

31:19 We've gone on tour locally to the malls and share our music. This is at Christmas. So the kids, they really do come to enjoy one another. The bond is phenomenal and really a pleasure to work with these guys. It's interesting.

31:40 You put a man in a monkey suit and everybody is following around you. This was at a mall and they had this camp, so it's at Christmas time, so the mall says hey, we'll have this day camp. Parents can go shop. And this was after the concert. They came running up on stage wanting to get their picture taken with the musicians.

32:01 This is a combined choral piece I had the privilege to direct a couple years ago. Another big change that happened for me personally was because we trust the Lord for staffing, sometimes He doesn't provide. We've been praying for a band teacher for over two years, still have not had one on campus that stayed more than a month. So it's not because of the job, it's because we haven't had anyone that was able to commit. So when I got back, they said your new job is to take the middle school bands.

32:33 So new experience for me. I've enjoyed it greatly. Another opportunity to invest in the lives of these kids, in the lives of their families, And so their missions can keep going. This was a combined middle school band piece. The parts that I like the most, and I think the students do too, is when we get off campus and we get away from the grind of rehearsals in the classroom.

32:58 So Miriam has that wonderful gift of hospitality that even I get benefit from. So we invite the kids over every month to rehearse in our home, and she feeds them. And they'd really like that. Whether they're from Korea, The Philippines, Germany, or United States, they like to eat. So, this is just a few examples.

33:23 I've also offered the students to say, hey, your families have ministries. If you have a ministry that might be able to accommodate a rehearsal dinner, you know, maybe you want to host this. So, one of the ladies in my group is from Korea, and her family runs a ministry to, it has like, it's pastoral training. And so, they have quite a large home and very well laid out. So they had us over for kimchi, which is spicy cabbage, and, oh my goodness, kimbap, kimbap, all right, which is rolled up rice with vegetables and other, maybe some meat, like seafood or something inside seaweed.

34:08 It's actually good, all right? Sounds weird, but it's actually really good. So I've learned to appreciate a lot of Asian foods. And as I said before, get to know these kids. This particular area of ministry is new to Faith Academy.

34:22 And I call it a ministry because that's how administration, why administration jumped into this. For many years, Faith Academy has been involved with the Department of Defense, Department of Defense, and they moved out, the military moved out of The Philippines. And so we needed to find other schools to compete with athletically and also to do joint music activities with. So, joined the Asia Christian Schools Conference, which has schools located in Guam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, The Philippines, and Thailand. And so at the end of every sports season, the varsity team will either host or go to one of those countries to have the concluding tournament.

35:18 And as of two years ago, when I got back there, they appointed me responsible to start up the ACSC music festivals, specifically the fine arts side of this consortium. So, the first year I accompanied the honor choir to go to Hong Kong. Heidi was one of the students in the honor choir, so she got to go as well. And so that was the performance there. They also do an outreach ministry.

35:47 They do, as you saw this one back here, this was actually on the harbor at Victoria Harbor, I think it's called. And it's right next to the art museum in Hong Kong. So this was an outreach and they were singing Beethoven, Glory to God in the highest in English with all these Chinese people around. It was quite the testimony. And then just this past March, Drew, who I'm sure you've heard from him, was appointed the responsibility of taking an honor strings group to Taiwan.

36:18 He'd never taken a group before, and his assistant had never done that either, so they appointed me to be the travel guide and chaperone. So, this is the gang all from Korea. And we all headed to Taiwan. They had some fundraisers to help cut the cost. So, Drew did some sectionals there.

36:39 And he actually performed with the, there's Drew in the orange on the far right, as well as the other two strings teachers at the school. And then their outreach was going to a school for the blind. A school for the blind. And here's a photograph of many of the students there. What I was amazed by is how many of these students not only had the physical limitation of blindness, but also other physical limitations as well.

37:09 One of them kind of befriended me. So this is a picture I had with the guy that we watched the whole concert together. And these are two Korean ladies that Drew had the privilege of working with this past year. The one in the middle in the black has since moved to Singapore where she'll be getting her Master's and the one to her right is going to continue to be assisting at Faith Academy with the strings program. And that was the concert there.

37:35 I'm going to go much more rapidly now because I'm looking at time, but this is the Outdoor Ed program. This is a middle school ministry. And you basically, it's like Camp Leolai on steroids, okay? You go someplace, you're responsible for a cabin of kids, but you're never in the same room one night after the next. So one night you might be in a nice cabin in a dormitory setting.

38:00 Next night you're sleeping on a beach. Next night you're sleeping on stones or in the middle of a jungle or a volcano. This is the group that I had my first year. Yes, we did go to a volcano. That little tiny island there is the only place in the world where there's an active volcano with an island and a lake and an island and a lake and an ocean.

38:20 Little trivia. We did go down along the caldera and walked amongst the sulfuric rocks and heard the hissing of the air escaping from the earth's mantle. Kind of scary. We also went to a coral reef where the students learned how to snorkel and scuba dive. All part of their, all part of the package.

38:47 This year, you can see Drew in the front row on the left there, we went to Subic Bay. Subic Bay is most known in The United States as the location where military jets flew from to do the bombing raids in Vietnam. It also was a huge naval base, Clark Air Force Base, Subic Bay. So you might talk to people who are older than I, and they go, oh, I was there for two months, stationed there. Anyway, so when we went, we had more of a jungle nautical theme.

39:18 So this was the jungle that we trekked through and swam in and drank water from. That is a vine that had water in it. And this gentleman here is second generation guide. His father was the one that trained military for The United States during the Vietnam War. Now they do it as a tourist attraction.

39:44 So that vine is, Drew's drinking some water there. This is where we slept in the jungle. And we ate in bamboo steamers. So the guides chopped the bamboo, split it for us, and then we put the canned meat and dried rice inside, put some water in there, reattach it, lay it on the coals, wait for about a half hour, take the top off, and you've got dinner. And you just pull off a big leaf from the jungle and you got chairs.

40:23 And I don't know if you can see the drinks right down here. That's a plastic drink container. This is a bamboo drink container. So they can cut out and use it as a cup. We also had an outreach ministry there where we went to a local village school.

40:40 This was a classroom. My boys are in the background. By the way, Drew and I worked together on this squad. They put on a huge presentation for us. I could show you it for hours.

40:50 The beautiful, beautiful costumes, and they love it when people visit them. They're out in the middle of nowhere. So we presented the gospel using wordless book bracelets. By the way, in the back presentation, there are some of these bracelets that you feel free to grab one. Those are made by another ministry I shared with last time I presented to you called Threads of Hope, and it's to keep women out of prostitution.

41:14 And they make the bracelets, and then people sell them here in The United States, but they're free. Grab one. So they made some of those bracelets with the, with the, like the caterpillars and the wordless book. You got all the different colors, and we shared the meaning of each one, presented the gospel to the children and sent them home with a bracelet around their wrist and a smile on their face and a little bit of food in their tummy. And they heard the gospel with music, story, and our, not my Tagalog, but other people's Tagalog presentation of the gospel.

41:44 The last event we had there was something that I thought was actually incredible for students to experience, but they went to a turtle conservation location where they will go walk the beaches or see turtles lay their eggs. They dig out the egg, the nest to preserve them, take them back into a safe environment, and oversee the hatching process. And they also oversee the delivery process. So these hatchlings that you see there were hatched the night before we got there, about 150. And the kids lined the beach.

42:19 They were each given a little plastic container so they wouldn't be touching them because that diminishes their chance of survival. And they laid them down when the sun started going down. And instinct, God's design, of course, kicked in and they headed to the shore. Hillcrest Christian Church looks like that, especially at 04:00 in the morning on sunrise service. That's why it's dark outside.

42:48 I've had the privilege of preaching there. You see our children involved with some of the youth group activities. This would have been a social gathering. This was a Christmas party, and the Lord provided some ice cream through us to make it a special treat for the folks there. You can see the dog under the table, the cat rather on the table looking forward to some morsels.

43:11 We've had the privilege of doing some child sponsorship. Not so much in supporting them, but they asked, would you be my child's godparent? That has a lot to do with the fact that we're white, traditionally. We also have been asked to be sponsors of marriages. This was one of the elders daughters.

43:33 She asked us if we would be a sponsor to their marriage as well as godparents to their son. We've had some opportunities to work out in the community. This is within about 50 yards from the church. There's a gym, I'm sorry, a concrete court. They play basketball there and they also play volleyball.

43:57 You can see Katrina jumping in there with the ladies playing volleyball with the people that live in the community. Yes, those are houses around there. We've had the ladies over to our homes for fellowship. This was a card Christmas card making kind of like scrapbooking idea. We've had the youth over for things like bunco parties.

44:18 We've also invited our assembly to some of the Faith Academy functions. If there is a theatrical event, they diminish the ticket price so we can purchase tickets for as many people want to come for a reduced rate. This was how they celebrated Easter this past April. As you see, a little bit different than maybe your menu. But Miriam jumped in with everybody.

44:49 That's called Bongoose and you just cut it right open and eat up. I just want to point out that Drew does bless us with his music over there too. Joshua had the privilege of being asked to be the import, as he was called, for the Filipino Church League Basketball Tournament. And so this was in the last month we were there. He got to play four or five games with these guys.

45:17 They only lost one, continued the tournament after we were gone, and they won the tournament. So I was pretty excited for the chapel. And this is the last ministry to share with you. This is Lynncrest Christian Academy. This is where Miriam works.

45:33 She teaches music there once a week, and they bless her. This is teacher Donna. She's a sixth grade teacher and also the principal. They are also the custodians. They are also the ones that give children who can't afford a pencil out of their own income.

45:48 Found out that the typical private school teacher in The Philippines makes 9,000 pesos a month. Now to equate that, that's about 9,000 pesos is $200 a month. That's before taxes and before they pay for the supplies for the children that can't afford it. So it is a they are just as much missionaries as we are. This is the classroom that she taught in this past year.

46:20 Notice some tables to the left, some chairs to the right. This was, they love pageantry, so this was the Christmas program. You make do if you don't have a pig and a, you just draw one. But don't you like the toys right down there? I just, that was great.

46:42 This is a friend of mine came in from Chicago to Faith Academy. He said, is there anybody else that I can minister to with my music? He's a brass specialist. He's 72 years old. He's been to Faith Academy twice now to share his specialty.

46:55 He he puts videos together of different locations in Bible... In the Bible land, okay, in The Holy Land. And then he plays spiritual praise music and he brings over like four instruments every time. So that's a silver plated baritone or euphonium. And he played that for Miriam's school as well.

47:18 This was their international day. And this was towards the end of the school year. They graduated at the end of March. And this was the first ever sixth grade that Lindcrest had. So Miriam got to know them pretty well.

47:33 This is the annual kindergarten graduation and this was the first ever sixth grade commencement. We are involved with a few other ministries besides those at faith. I did want to stress before I go to these last ones. One of my friends asked me, he said, how do you justify what you're doing over there? I mean, it kind of challenged me.

48:00 It kind of challenged me. I thought, well, I thought you, of all people, would understand this. But I think what he was doing was he wanted me to clarify. So if you're out there going, oh, look, Ike and I was getting a vacation for two years. You know, this is so nice.

48:11 You get all these exotic experiences and living great, you know? I just want to clarify, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of our being there? For every missionary that you saw in that picture before the typhoon came through, they have to make a decision when their kids get to be school age, right? Do I leave the field?

48:32 Do I homeschool? Or do I find a school where they can be educated? If it's not gonna be, oh, oh, and I could also go to the local public school, all right? There's four options. There's four options.

48:46 Similar to what every person here in The United States has, right? But if you go to the public school, you're probably gonna be in a classroom size of 40 to 50 kids. And most things are taught by rote. And creative thinking is just, it's not there. It goes all the way through the culture where if you go to give change and you say, well, I just want a 50 peso back, so I'm going give a little extra.

49:09 So just so you give me a 50 peso bill, they freak out. Because that's just not how they were taught math. Okay? So you can go there, all right? But you also have a language barrier there.

49:20 You can do homeschooling, but not everyone has the resources that we have in The United States, and they don't have the homeschooling consortiums. So it's very, very difficult to do homeschooling in developing country. And then you have, well, we can leave the field and go back home where we know our children are going to be well educated. That fourth option is why Faith Academy started in 1957 and why it's still going. There are people that were in that picture that said even with the fact that Faith Academy is about one fifth the price of the lowest, cheapest school, maybe one sixth the price of the cheapest school that has an American curriculum above ours, one sixth of the price, they said the dorms are still too expensive for us to go.

50:11 And they had to take their kids and send them back to Australia for education. Or others, others who are in Korea, their ministry is also down in that island region of Cebu, the central between Luzon where we live and Mindanao here. There's 7,100, 7,100 islands, okay? The two big ones, and there are thousands in the middle. And their ministry is in one of those islands in the middle.

50:36 They have to fly their kids up to Faith Academy, stay in the dorms, and then that's how they've chosen to allow their ministry to continue. So we not only minister to the kids, but we minister to their families, and we minister to those who their families reach out to. And I say we because it's all of us. We're your representatives. We represent you.

51:26 This was put together by some of my colleagues from Westlake City Schools who said, hey, we want to be part of what you're doing over there. These aren't even believers, folks. They just really like education. And they put together Scholastic books. They're all over, these are some of the nicest books that are in our library at Lyndcrest now.

51:45 As you see, How to Tell Time, you know, notebooks, pencils. A lot of the kids that Miriam works with cannot even afford pencils. It's that real. This is another area that we've considered. We want to be the place where kids can come.

52:01 I know some of you have already said, I know the don'ts that... I mean, you ever go to the don'ts, there's kids there plus their own kids, you know? It's always that spot to go to. We wanna be that to kids at Faith Academy, that if they ever wanna come over, hang out with our kids, they're welcome. So we'll plan events for our children to host their friends, game nights, after parties, whatever, things like that.

52:24 And it's been very fruitful. I'm not going to tell you who's in here, but I can tell you that in this picture alone, one of the wealthiest families in The Philippines is represented. There's also a family represented in here whose father is in the anti child trafficking area of ministry with the social justice act, social justice ministry where they're after the bad guys that are grabbing Filipino kids off the streets and putting them in slave markets and prostitution. And his daddy is in that ministry. He couldn't even come to Manila his first year.

53:03 Son was boarded at the boarding school and he couldn't have any pictures taken of him. And he's not even in the picture, but he's there. So, the variety of the kids that we ministered to range from the ultra wealthy. You say, well, what are they doing at Faith Academy? Well, family is a family of believers.

53:25 And that just like you have a family of believers that might have money here in Westlake that said, well, I could send them to St. Ignatius or somewhere else that's really more prestigious, but I'm gonna send them to Westside Christian Academy or to CCS, right? Because they want them to have that Christian education. And so these folks could go, they could send their kid anywhere in the world, literally, anywhere in the world. And they've chosen to send their kid to Faith Academy.

53:52 Of course, comes with two bodyguards and a very large car. But you know, that's, it's different. It's different because he's in that picture and you would never know. He's just a normal kid. But that, I just wanted to give you a little bit of idea of that ministry.

54:07 This was something we've tried this year. I don't know if we'll do it again next year, but we started a faith community choir. So this is a representation of staff. Yes, even some graduated students, Heidi and her friend. All right?

54:21 And some of the missionary families. So we can minister to them too. They came to Faith Academy once a week to rehearse and then we did some Christmas caroling and sang at an end of the year concert. And this is our last one. Some of you have visited The Philippines and you've come at Easter and you've seen that Catholicism in The Philippines is like Catholicism on steroids.

54:47 I keep coming back. But it's like people crucify themselves, they whip themselves, they do make these massive floats to show, you know, with all the pictures of Mary, icons, statues, Jesus, the saints, the apostles, and they cart them through with their pilgrimages. Well, there's one pilgrimage that just happens to walk right past our subdivision every Maundy Thursday. Millions of people walk past our subdivision every Maundy Thursday. And the Lord gave us opportunity, our first year there, to go witness it with the readers.

55:25 They were there at that time. And we had, I don't know, 15 tracks that we had in our hand at that time. Like, wow, we could have passed out thousands, you know? So the next time we got to do it was last year because this house my buddy lived in is in that same subdivision. And so we passed out 600 tracks in about fifteen minutes.

55:45 So this time we said okay, we'll go with 1,200. Took us twenty five minutes. Now, to give you an idea, every second, seven people walk by. So, like your row. Every second, your row, your row, your row, your row.

56:03 What are they doing? Where are they going? They might have started 10 miles away in the morning. Some of them try to go barefoot because that shows that they're more repentant. Some of them will, I'm not seeing this on our street, but other places around the province, they'll whip themselves as they walk with leather straps.

56:25 And the blood starts gushing soon. And that's because they're lost. It's because they're lost. They think they can earn their favor with God. And all these people are coming up this steep hill to go to a big Catholic church that has mega bucks, because every year this happens and people give an offering up there.

56:45 And I asked one guy who used to be one of those pilgrims. I said, why'd you do it? He goes, I had no idea. I just went because everyone else was doing it. Majority, that's it.

56:55 It's a thing. It's cultural. It's a thing you do. But as you see here, these little books, you're involved with that too. That's Bible School of the Year.

57:04 That's an assembly ministry in The Philippines. They put out the tracks and we put them in people's hands. I can't follow-up. I don't even know who these people are. But we've had the opportunity to do that with people that visited.

57:17 We did it with Drew and Diana when they came to visit at Easter time. And people take them. It's not like in The States where people, oh, never mind, they take them. And this is the very last one. This is Christmas.

57:31 Another tradition in The Philippines is that the Catholics celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. I'm not saying that's Catholic, but I'm just telling you that's what they do, okay? And they stay up all night and they party. And then in the morning, after they wake up, they walk around and they play trick or treat in a way. That's how I call it.

57:51 But they go door to door to door. Typically they would do that with relatives to get more gifts, Okay? But in a subdivision, they just go knock on your gate or ring a doorbell and expect you to come out and give them some. Okay? So the Lord, you know, for a while it was quite annoying because that's when we celebrated Christmas.

58:10 So the first year, there were tears. You know, kids were upset. These people are bothering. They're so annoying. I'm like, you can't fight it.

58:17 They're going to ring the doorbell, you know. So ignore them. Well, they can hear you talking because the windows are all open. It's 90 degrees, you know. So finally we just said forget it.

58:25 We're going to have the, we talked to other people. They said have a little gift available. Put a track in it, maybe a couple coins, and go out there and greet them and wish them Merry Christmas and say, hey, read this. And this is just a little example of some folks that came out that Katrina gave them the track. You see a little girl with the track in her hand?

58:44 And you know, you wonder, right? Don't you wonder, do people really read tracks? This is a kid who's stationed at one of the busiest intersections in Manila. And right next to him, a little bit to the right, is a blind man. And we presume it's his wife or sister or something like that.

59:07 And they walk around to the stopped cars, trapped there at this two minute long traffic light where you're backed up 30 people, right? And they come up to you and they smash their face or his hand right there. So they expect people to put the window down and put a coin in there. We usually carry little peanut packs because it's lot of protein. This is what was recommended to us.

59:31 And a track, Okay? And we'll hand it out. This kid dashed to the curb and ate the peanuts and read the track. And this is very typical. They are open to the Gospel.

59:49 They want to read it. But they have to have someone to show them the difference between tradition, the lie of Catholicism that's all wrapped up in the church, salvation is in the church, instead of salvation is in Jesus Christ and His blood alone. You have a ministry to Faith Academy, to The Philippines. This is the largest cemetery outside of Arlington of Americans. It's in Manila.

60:23 But I thought it was very poignant to point out that people die every day, right? Millions die every day without Christ. But your ministry through us to The Philippines can your lead people that when they die, they go straight to heaven. And it's gonna be much more beautiful than a beautiful cemetery like that. This is a view of...

61:09 This isn't the Eichen hours. This isn't even Westlake Bible Fellowship. It's not even CMML. It's yours. You've allowed us to be part of it and you've used us and I pray you would continue to use us here in Westlake, here in Cleveland, here in Ohio, in Mexico, in Florida, wherever you take us, Lord.

61:33 I pray that you would continue to use us. We thank you for the Lord Jesus. We do all this in his name. We're not trying to earn favor for ourselves. You are our merits come up empty.

61:46 It's only in the blood of Christ. Father, help us to keep that in mind. Help us to continue to rely upon you in all things. I thank you for these folks. I pray that this time together would be a blessing to them, and I pray that they have any questions that they'd stick around to ask.

62:01 I thank you for this time, Lord, in Jesus name. Amen.