Who will go work in My field?

When we had been attending the church for 3 years, a decision was made that someone was needed for missionary work in the Philippines. We had been married 2 years and we had just had our first son. We had a large hospital bill and were not sure if we could go. We talked with the hospital about our income and surprisingly, they forgave all our debt. We took that as a go-ahead to go to the Philippines. You are probably thinking by now that our church doesn’t do things the way most churches do. We don’t have board members, or the average set up of a business-church. When there is a need, our church looks to take care of that need. There was a need in the Philippines, so someone was needed to go there and help. The church chose us.

We arrived in Mindanao, the southern island, in May 2007. We brought 2 backpacks with all of the belongings we could fit in them. Our son had just turned 1 the week before we went. The plan was to stay a year since our visas were only good for that long.
The first few months were a time of adjusting. We also just found out that I was expecting our second child. It is very hot there and there are inconsistencies with the electrical companies so we were without power a lot. We would just sit around and eat ice popsicles to keep cool. My husband was gone most of the time to meet with people so our son and I were at home alone. I started to get very homesick and was having a difficult time. I felt that I was living on another planet. We didn’t know the language yet, so it was very hard communicating with anyone. I went through a state of depression and finally told my husband about it. I know that God’s grace helped me through that difficult time. I was willing to do whatever He wanted me too, be it however miserable, and when I was at my weakest point, He was there to help me through. About the time I was really struggling, we went to visit a family on the northern island of Luzon. While we were there, our house burned down in Mindanao from an electrical fire.

We had come in contact with more people while visiting Luzon for a few weeks, and really had no serious contacts in Mindanao at that time. We had been in Mindanao to help a man who was with the SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) church, but he had seemed to be in disagreement with what we were doing and teaching by the time we left to go to Luzon in Sept. Because of this, it was decided that we should stay in Luzon.

Our second son was born in Luzon a few months before our visas expired for the year. We had planned to try to have a natural birth (our first son was an attempted home birth that resulted in a C-sec) and everything was going well with the pregnancy. I was due on Feb 20th. On Feb 7th my water broke and we went to the hospital. Our son had to be delivered by c-sec since they could not induce due to me having a c-sec with our first son. When didn’t know it at first, but our son had what is called GBS (Group B streptococcus) It was so severe that it caused both of his lungs to collapse. He also had severe Pneumonia and was put on antibiotics immediately. He was put on life support and was not taking in oxygen due to his lungs, and his is O2 levels were at 20%. The specialist that was called in told us that we had to administer a drug within 12 hours of him being born for it to work. This drug would cause his lungs to start taking in the oxygen. There were many problems with this, a few being that it may not work because it mainly works for preemies and he was full term, and we had to come up with the money for the drug(2000$) in about 6 hours. Our bank was in the US and we have all these time zones to go through, so it was a real challenge to do it. I can say that it was nothing short of a miracle. We were able to get the money and but the medicine within a few hours left of the time. We didn’t know what the outcome would be for the next 12 hours. We just prayed through the night that the Lord’s will be done and that if He wanted to take him, we were surrendered to that. After 2 ½ weeks in intensive care, we were able to bring our son home. He will turn 1 this Feb 7th and is a precious joy to all of our lives.

We just returned from a brief 4 month stay in the US for financial reasons. We have church in our home here, with 2 families that have decided to follow Jesus. My husband is now teaching ESL in a Korean school to help support ourselves. That’s about as up to date as it gets. If you read this testimony and had any questions pop up in your mind, please look at our website (it’s the Church of Monett link). We address all the doctrinal beliefs on it and also what we are doing here and in the US. If you have any feedback, feel free to post.