Hello, my friends

It's rockin' good to be back with people we know here in Puerto Galera (on the island of Mindoro) and continue to work on Tagalog, chilling with our neighbors, and helping those doing healing in the tribes around. It's heart wrenching to look at the rest of our time here and know that we truly only have a few weeks left to love and be loved in this season in the Philippines. As Jenna mentioned, we went to two tribes on Sunday. Pastor Toto (whose real name is something like Alfena) grew up in one of the tribes and has begun an awesome church there. He would like to establish contact with some of those who have not yet heard much of Jesus. We are considering helping him and the other Philippinas do a medical outreach in the area. However, we really covet your prayers on this. It's not as simple as it seems. The needs of the people are massive...malnutrition, despair, lack of opportunity, lots of infection...doing a medical clinic that even just includes white people could enforce their sense of inferiority and hopelessness by only being a drop of balm on a gapping wound...a reminder of what they do not have access to tomorrow. So, we are attempting to train the church leaders to do what we do...differentiate serious illness from basic and become masters of prevention and education (which is by far the most important aspect of health for the whole person...behavior change...real connection with the healing God and the resources He has given us). Instead of doing a medical clinic, we want to do house visits/family check-ups and prayer in which the Philippinas play the major role; and then doing a few funny, educational skits for the whole villiage that includes Philippinos as actors. Then, we want to leave as many resources (books, medications, prayer, relationship) as possible with the church leaders. We are not sure if this is the right aproach or even a good one...but this is what we came here to be...healers part of a healing community. May God cover and infuse every interaction with heaps of grace and tastes of true transformation; and may the effects of our "Americaness" shrivel to nothing.