We're back!

Well, the trip up to the Mountain Province of the Philippines was a long, windy, and very dusty ride, but we made it there and back without much of an incident.

The New Testament dedication was held in a tiny town called Barlig, which is nestled amongst some of the rice terraces that you might have seen on TV. (I wish I could show one of the thousands of pictures I took, but I can only be on this computer for a few more minutes--everybody else who went on the trip would like to check their email. I'll try to post some tomorrow.) We stayed in a house with electricity, and were quite comfortable. This family had actually hosted some Bible translators in their home before, so they knew a little bit about the "needs" of the Americanos; like hot water--some of our friends were quite jealous to learn that we had a heater hooked up to our shower head.

The dedication itself was phenominal--it lasted all day on Saturday, and was performed almost entirely in the local language--but some of the visual images (again, more pictures to come) were quite striking. One of the most prolific scenes was where the five ministers of area churches came together for the first time ever to bless the Bibles. Because of the disagreements between these denominations, these men had barely even spoken to each other, and now there were all coming together in a show their unified support for a Bible in their own language. Another striking image was the multi-cultural diversity that could be seen when scanning the crowd: Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Singaporean, American, and Canadian are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.

Anyway, thanks for the prayers for my family member. He is still in the hospital, and Ellen and I are hoping to re-route our flight home to Florida so that we can spend some time with him for a few days. Continue to pray for his health.

His,

Dan