The New Year is breathing down our neck! Whew!!! Where has this year gone? New Year's in Manila is quite a sight! The streets are lined with Fire Work Vendors that set up shop just for the festivities. Some people, like our kids (Luke specifically) are enjoying the ability to legally play with fireoworks. Tonight the city will begin to sound like war has broken out....the sky will become like a festival, and eventually, the fireworks will be obliterated by the smoke from all the display.
We will be having a year-end worship service in our back yard with our friends from the neighboring subdivision Sampalukan and our friends from the Cainta Church of the Nazarene. They will be combining groups and meeting in our backyard so those from Sampalukan won't have to pay for transportation to Cainta. They will be meeting between 6 and 8pm, then we will go up to the kids school where we have full view of Manila from the hills of Antipolo.
We have recently gone through some mission strategy training and it was just superb!!! We are excited to see what God has in store for the coming year. We focussed on the divine appointments that God arranges for us to connect with people who need Jesus in their lives. We focussed on the importance of intentionally connecting with people that God places in your path. It was a great time!
When we returned home, we were trying to make up for being gone and the need to ready for two Christmas parties back to back happening in our back yard, one on Sunday and one on Monday. As I was hanging up Christmas lights in our back yard, one of our neighbors whom we have never met, was at our back gate excitedly saying, "MA'AM, excuse me, I am your neighbor! MA'AM, excuse me, I am your neighbor!" I went to the gate to introduce myself, finding this rather funny, especially concerning the focus of our previous week. After we made proper introductions, he proceeded to tell me that the previous night/morning at about 1:30 AM, there was a big snake (probably a python) about 6-9 feet and the diameter of a mans forearm trying to get into his yard, from our yard. He had shooed it back into our yard and called the neighborhood security. They arrived at our gate and beat on our gate for some time, but were unsuccessful at waking us, so they left us to our sleep, and to our snake. Our neighbor had come to alert us to this new visitor in our yard. He was especially concerned because he knew we had kids in our yard every Sunday. He even asked if he could come sometime :) We decided we better call the security to have our yard searched. Four guys came with big sticks and big bags to hunt for our guest, but they were unsuccessful in finding him. We later learned that there have been four other pythons killed in the surrounding lots recently (I was not able to get the word "recently" defined).
The funny thing in all of this is that through our snake, we were able to meet 5 new people in our neighborhood, plus the four snake hunters :) We later took our new friends Christmas cookies. We are praying for our neighborhood, and are looking forward to knowing the "rest of the story" in regards to meeting people through the "snake" in our backyard.
We think of you all so often, especially during the holidays. As the Lord brings you to our minds, we hold you up in prayer. We are richer people because the Lord has given us the blessing of your friendship. We pray that during this new year, you will come to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in a new way and that your relationship with Him will strengthen and deepen and you will hunger and thirst for more and more of Him.
Blessing to you all!
