A Day in the Life of a Missionary Family - Malaybalay

     Today was a beautiful day of being a missionary. We started the morning making 2 cups of "hand-brewed" coffee and oatmeal for the family. Up until recently we had 1 pot and 1 pan. Recently we were given a second pot! We feel a bit spoiled, but it sure is nice to be able to make coffee and oatmeal at the same time!

Who needs a coffee maker when you have a funnel and a handkerchief? 

     Then we headed to the house of the "single ladies" (our missionary team of young women) for Morning Prayer with the community - 5 families (including 15 kids) and 5 single ladies sitting mostly on the floor of their little house. It was an awesome time of singing praise songs and joining the world-wide Church in praying the Liturgy of the Hours. It is very powerful to know that we are praying the same words that are being prayed as the sun rises over monasteries, convents, rectories, mission houses, homes and apartments the world over.
     Then we loaded 15 people, 1 guitar, and 1 digital projector and laptop into our little van and drove to the local jail. After greeting the inmates and singing a couple songs of praise I was blessed to be able to lead a teaching on the Peace that only Jesus can bring. Peace that can break through the locked doors of fear, even when we are scared, hurt or angry and the gift of the Holy Spirit which strengthens us with Supernatural power to love, serve and forgive (John 20:19-23). Then we were humbled to hear the testimony of faith in Jesus which has brought forgiveness, peace and strength to an inmate who was falsely accused. I have been floored to hear many stories of how the regular visits of the missionaries have changed people's hearts and set them on fire for Jesus!

     Then we came home and ate a quick lunch. Angel started working on home-school with the younger 3 children while Eddie (our 11-year old son) and I went out to find some groceries for a family who can't go back to their home in the mountains to work, while they are awaiting their daughter's surgery. We also bought some medicine for a patient we helped to see the doctor last week. After delivering the food and praying with the family, we visited with a few more families in Isla Bonita.

    Then we took the medicine to a local missionary family who knew the patient. Please pray for this family as they are trying to get their visas to go to another country in Asia. Their faith and generosity blows me away! They give so generously the little they have to care for the poor around them and are putting all their trust in God to provide benefactors/sponsors to help them go forth and proclaim the Good News to the Nations. It is very challenging for our Filipino missionaries to raise the needed funds as their family and friends spend most of what they earn just to put food on the table. (If God puts it on your heart to help them out, even a one time gift or becoming a $20 per month benefactor would make a huge difference for them, please let me know and I'll get you their newsletter. Thanks!).
      As we were driving and walking through the market Eddie and I were able to talk about the joy that he saw in me as I proclaimed God's love in the morning and the sadness felt by the people who shared their struggles with us in the evening. Eddie still wants to be a famous soccer player when he grows up but I hope and pray that today's experiences, and the life we are blessed to live, will help him to become a holy man who makes a difference in the lives of the people he meets, whatever his career may be.
     After this we met the single ladies to let them borrow our van so they could travel out of town for a mission/service trip, then they dropped us off at home for dinner. After dinner the other kids colored and played games while Angel helped Eddie get a little home-school in as I washed the dishes. Thankfully the water stayed on long enough that I could get a quick cold shower in before we got the kids ready for bed. After praying with the kids, Angel read a chapter from C.S. Lewis' "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" aloud as they (& I) fell asleep. After that we finally have time for our personal prayer time. It's 11:10pm and Angel has finished her prayer time and is now asleep (pregnancy will do that to you) and I'm now done writing this for you (and me). Now I get to spend some time with our Lord in His Word before heading to bed. Thankfully we made a commitment to pray at least 15 minutes in private prayer, with Scripture, each day. This has been such a blessing for us!
     Thank You Jesus for a blessed day of living in Your love! Salamat sa Dios! And thank you for making this day possible by being our partners in mission through your prayers and financial support! May God bless you!
         

Look at What You Did!

      As I am sitting in the Malaybalay jail, I am contemplating our life here. I often think about all of you back home, especially our donors and prayer partners. There have been many acts of kindness and generosity that have been done because of you and by you...and you don't even know that you are doing them. Today is Easter Tuesday and you are visiting the jail and sharing with them very Good News - that Jesus died for them and conquered death for them, that He loves each one of them personally and passionately! I am not sure how many of these men and women have ever thought very much about God's love for them and many have not been shown His love very well in the past. Today you shared this message of love and you delivered Easter eggs to them, a festive, healthy, and filling snack. In a jail where they are served only the basics like rice and a little fish, this weekly snack is greatly appreciated. You also passed out 260 individual packets of hygiene supplies, coffee, and snacks. In the prison here, you are not automatically given these things, especially if you have no money or no family who will buy them for you.

     Separate from jail ministry, today you are also listening and praying about helping with a situation that would reunite a mother and sister with their baby far away in a place that has more job opportunities. You have allowed a different single mother to earn a fair and living wage in order to help take care of her two little boys, while allowing a pregnant woman a break from doing laundry by hand (that is me!). You are not even counting the small moments where you were are able to witness to people in stores and on the street by simply saying, "Maayong hapon!" (Good afternoon!) "No, I don't speak very much Visayan yet, and yes we are Catholic Missionaries from the US. We have come to help people fall more in love with Jesus, and to serve the poor." And throughout the day you allowed many prayers to be offered for the poor, for missionaries, for you! and for those whose lives you are trying to change.

     I attempt on a regular basis to figure out what God has for us here and whether we are doing enough. The answer I realized today is that I am not doing anything. God is the one who does everything, through you, through me, and through His many people that cross our path. The only questions I need to ask are; Am I seeking God today? Am I listening and obeying the creator of Heaven and Earth? Am I reading His Word each day and allowing Him to speak to me through it?
    If the answer to these questions is "yes" then it does not matter whether I am at the jail, riding in a motorela, at our local sari-sari store or parenting our children - then I am doing the will of God!

Letter Home

Dear friends and family,
      It has been a long and yet quick month since our family has arrived in the Philippines. We are continually trying to adjust to our new normal. Often as soon as we manage to figure one thing out, we find there are ten more things we don't know how to do. Our use of technology has actually been one of the most challenging adjustments, so we apologize for our slack in this area. It's been challenging making the internet work and making the time to write updates. I thought I would try and catch you all up on some of our activities.

    Family life, parenting, cooking, washing the dishes and laundry by hand, grocery shopping, and figuring out the kids' schooling has absorbed a lot of our time. We have decided recently to try home schooling with the kids which will be a blessing and a challenge. It is amazing how much time gets spent doing everyday things! I could write an entire blog on adapting to a new way of cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping all while trying to parent four kids! However, I also want to include some of the ministry things we have been doing as well.
In coming to Malaybalay, we were joining an already active ministry group. Part of our time acclimating this month has been getting to know our community and praying together as a community. We are one of five families and we also are blessed to have four single women in our community. In addition, there is at least one other family from here who are interested in becoming missionaries and are currently serving in the role of missionary interns. One of the ongoing ministries that this community started is a weekly Bible study with the wonderful people from one of the poorer neighborhoods. Through this neighborhood, we were also blessed to experience a "Jericho March". There have recently been a few suicides in this community so we went to their neighborhood seven days in a row gathering with many members of the community marched around and prayed with them and for them. Each night we walked once around the community while praying and on the seventh day, we walked seven times around and were even able to have a missionary priest from S.O.L.T. celebrate Sunday mass in their community center. It was a very special blessing for our family to become part of their community through prayer, friendships and time. Eddie, Luke, Dominic and Cabrini all pray often for the people of Isla Bonita and all ask to go visit often.
    
Through the community of Isla we have all been able to help buy some medicine and pay some hospital bills. It has been a shock and a challenge to adjust cost of living differences, exchange rate as well as daily wage. Bryce and Eddie have also been able to visit a few people in the hospital and pray with them and for them. Some of the visitors to our house and to our gate have formed relationships with the missionaries who lived in our house before us. It is a blessing to be invited into many people's lives so quickly but also difficult to continue the good things that were previously instituted. Bryce and I have been blessed to participate in a Filipino group wedding and a baptism.
The prison ministry was a bit intimidating to me and I actually presumed it was a men's only ministry. I have since learned that the prison we visit in Malaybalay is very different from the prisons in the United States. The men and women are kept in the same prison but in different areas. They are very open to learning about God and when we visit the prison even the children are allowed. One of our mission partners was inspired by the Pope and had us wash the prisoner's feet. It was a very humbling experience and helped me to feel more comfortable there. It was also amazing to hear the testimonies of the prisoners who shared their great gratitude for the missionaries who have helped them come to know a God who loves them and has changed their lives!
One of the more recent things we got to experience with our community was a retreat with our fellow missionaries from Camiguin Island also in the Philippines, about 7 hours from Malaybalay. It was a blessing to be together in a large group and to be reminded again of God's call for our family and the life He desires for us.  

Thank you so much for your spiritual, emotional and financial support! Without you all, there is no way we could do this! We thank you for joining us in helping share the love of Jesus with the people the Lord has sent us to. We are praying for you all and beg you to continue praying for us! Thank you!
        And as a reward for making it this far into this blog; we found out we're having a girl!!
In the Peace of Jesus,
Bryce, Angel and kids

Extraordinary Love

     God is calling you! He wants you! So you should be willing to change your life but not in such an extreme way as to become a foreign missionary...
     This message or one similar to it seemed to be presented several times and in several different ways during the months Bryce and I were quietly discerning God's call for us to become foreign missionaries.
     Lately it has been echoing around my mind again and the reason is this, Our God is Extraordinary! He is the creator of the universe, He is beyond time, beyond space! He knows all of his creations intimately! I am even more deeply aware of His extraordinary nature during this time of year. God chose to send his only son here as an infant so that Jesus could eventually save all of us from our sin and our death by dying on a cross and rising from the dead! In our Catholic faith, we believe God did all of this and allows us to partake of Him and be intimately united with Him when we receive Him in the Eucharist!
     I was reading the book of Luke in the Bible the other day and I came across the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and I came across this verse Luke 24:15 "Jesus himself drew near and walked with them." It may not seem like much to you but when I read it, I was floored by the extraordinary love our God has for us! Jesus, who is God, chose to be close to us, so close in fact, He became one of us! He walks with us in our struggles, in our pain, in our sin and in our suffering just to unite us with our heavenly Father!
     So back to my original question, why would our God ask us to do something extraordinary? Because our God is extraordinary and He wants us to be like Him! He did not create any of us to be ordinary. He does not love us with an ordinary love. He calls all of us to the extraordinary so He can reveal even more of Himself to us, so He can pour even more extraordinary grace upon us!
     Just to clarify, I am not saying everyone is called to be a foreign missionary but I am saying God does have something extraordinary for you, just ask Him!
     Merry Christmas!!!

Dish-Washing Discoveries

With the noise and bustle of the kitchen and dining room around us, Mel and I start the dishes together after lunch one day. I wash, she dries. Mel is a new friend, a lovely lady who has two young sons and a kind and wonderful husband. She and I are talking as women do about motherhood, babies, our joys and our struggles. We are talking about how we try to control everything for ourselves and for our children and how often God has to remind us that He is actually in control.
As we are sharing it strikes me how we have many commonalities and yet we are so very different. Mel is from Asia and I am from the United States. Our cultures are drastically different from each other and our experiences are so very different, yet we have many similarities, many shared joys and shared struggles.
God made us both. He made us for Him. He made us both to need Him; His love, His grace, His joy, His forgiveness and His salvation. God made all of us and within all of us is a need for God. Here is a secret, when our family decided to become missionaries, I was uncomfortable with the Family Missions Company charism of evangelization. I did not really know what it meant and what it meant for me. Through many teachings, studying of the Bible and Church documents, I have discovered that I should not be afraid to share this gift of Jesus with others, this gift of eternal life. We, as humans, do have a variety of experiences and yet at our core don't we all have the same struggles, same joys, the same needs?  God wanted each of us to know Him and to know His plan.
God has destined us for acquiring salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us,  that all of us, whether awake or asleep, together might live with Him. - 1 Thess 5:9-10
If I truly believe in God's plan for my eternal salvation, shouldn't I not only be willing, but actually be seeking opportunities to invite others to know this gift, this love, this plan of ever lasting life?

 

My Real

Our good friend Kristin White asked Angel to be a guest blogger on her blog, if you are interested in checking it out, here is the link:
http://joyfulmysteries.me/2015/08/14/august-14-your-real/

Let it Go, Let it Go...

     As with many other homes across America containing little girls "Let it go" has become a much loved, and often hated, musical mantra in our home over the last year.

This running soundtrack of our life has lately become our life goal as well. After our year of discernment, doubts, denials, questions and finally, acceptance and joy in this call to be missionaries, we knew our next step was to learn to let go. It has been challenging to let go of our beloved family and friends, parish community, job, neighbors, most of our stuff, and home. One week ago we spent our last night in our home of 13 years. It was the only home our children ever knew, the home we fixed up, repaired, remodeled, and tweaked until we got it just right (well almost) - our safe place, our place of comfort, our place of peace (especially when the children were sleeping)...our Home. During this process, the idea of letting go of our home was particularly challenging for me.
     God has been so amazingly good to us! Thankfully a few months ago God transformed our hearts one major step further! There seemed to be less fear, greater zeal and more excitement for this calling. The morning of the move from our home to someone else's home, I awoke with another one of those, "Are we really doing this? This really is crazy!" moments. And as I was praying I realized that we were not leaving so much as we were following. "I will go before you" (Isiah 45:2). Although the end result may seem the same, the attitude seems to make all the difference.

    Throughout the week before the big move I finally took on the "big purge". Unlike my wife, I thought it would be best to wait until the end and just give it all away...well, yet again, I am shown the wisdom of my wife. So, as I was toiling through the nooks and crannies of the garage, the 13 years worth of "just in case" items as well as the tubs of childhood memorabilia and random stuff from the last 39 years, I found myself oscillating between wanting to hang on to as much as possible, and just wanting to let it all go. The morning of the big move was no different.
    After we moved all of our things to our new home (a nice little above-the-garage 3-room living space, with bathroom and kitchenette, so generously offered by our friends the Taylors), I was still feeling a bit off and perhaps a little sad about all the things we had let go of.

Then I had a few minutes with our new friend "Eb". Eb is the Taylor's huge chocolate lab who loves frisbees and even more than them, he loves to be pet and any attention you'll give him. "Eb" is short for Ebeneezer. I haven't had a chance to ask the Taylors why they named him that, but similar to the original Ebeneezer, he likes to collect and hoard. As you throw him a new frisbee, he will run after it, frantically yet skillfully flip it so it's facing the right direction and then add it to the collection in his mouth.

After he collects up to 14, or you run out of frisbees, he will go off and sit with his frisbees. He protects them and won't let you have any of them back. Even though he loves the game of catch, and he loves the interaction, he seems incapable of letting them go. Throughout the last few days I've also noticed that when he doesn't have his collection occupying his attention, he is free to come over to seek and receive attention from his master and others who pass by. Yet when he has accomplished his goal of collecting and guarding as many frisbees as possible, he seems hindered, conflicted, almost addicted. He wants to come back to be in community yet he doesn't know how to do both, so he whines within the moment of conflict and confusion and sits all alone with his hoard. 

    Then it dawned on me, here we are in this beautiful new "home", even though we can't officially call it, or any other place, "our home", in the way most people use the term, it is, for now, our home. It is beautiful and just what we needed! 

 With a play structure, watched over by mama Mary. 6 other live-in instant best friends for our kids. Basketball court. At least 2 acres of property to run around on.

 A beautiful view of miles and miles of the valley, 4 mountains, and a huge Christmas tree farm next door for the kids to play in and to remind us of the impact Jesus has had on this world. And best of all, a 5 foot tall statue of Jesus in the backyard!

It also seems to be the perfect transition to missionary life for us. Living in community, but with only one family for now. Smaller living arrangements, but still very comfortable with some of our own furniture. Great Catholic "neighbors". Just what God knew we needed!

     So, as I was lamenting the challenges of letting go, I thought of Eb and how burdened he was by his possessions. As they were possessing him, I realized how similar we are to that silly dog. How often do the things we "own" get in the way of our connection with our Master, with others who are passing by, with the the things in this world that really matter. Kind of like the clinched hand, holding something so dear that it can no longer open up to receive. And as we all remember from "Where the Red Fern Grows", that poor raccoon that just won't let go of the shiny thing, and therefore chooses to stay trapped. So, for me, letting go seems about as challenging as falling down a hill, it's just hard to muster up the courage to simply tuck and roll....knowing that God's at the bottom of the hill saying, "it's ok, go for it, I gotcha". 

    Thank you Lord!  

     Jesus, I Trust in You.