God is so good!

Maayong Gabii one and all! You have all been in my thoughts and prayers. It is September already, can you believe it?! I have now been in the Philippines for almost two months and since looking back to my last blog, so much has happened in these last few weeks. Ginny is now safely back in Canada. She headed back early last week. Rhonda and I accompanied her to Manila to see her off. So now its just me and Rhonda back in Cebu City gearing up for new ministries. I am typing this from a Baptist missionary guest house here in the city with our Japanese missions team that we our hosting for the week. They have come to see the ministries Rhonda and Pastor Glemar (the partner in PADALA ministry with Rhonda) are leading in Cebu and work alongside us in livelihood projects with the poor. They arrived on Tuesday and leave on Saturday, so we will just have a short visit before they head back home to Tokyo. It has been great having them.
In my last post, I mentioned our mission team was preparing for a trip to the island of Bohol for a four day outreach and training experience. It went very well. We traveled there safely and met up with pastor Lito and his team to begin our extremely busy, but productive trip. We taught in schools, led various kids clubs', did feedings, helped in an evangelistic crusade, led Bible Studies and witnessed 10 people come to the Lord! God is good. And in the midst of all that, we even managed to take some time to see the Chocolate Hills of course! It was a great trip and one I was so blessed to be part of.
I am still going strong in my language study. I'm finding lots of avenues to practice what I'm learning. I find that I can understand a lot more than I can speak. When I listen to the radio for example, I can now understand quite a lot of what is being said. But ask me to repeat it, and that's another story.
Last Sunday, Rhonda and I met with the pastor I will be working with every weekend at the ministry of Stepping Stones. Him and his wife and baby live at Stepping Stones and help run the scholarship program for dozens and dozens of children every Saturday. He is also the pastor of the Alliance Church in the same neighborhood which I will be helping teach Sunday School and lead worship at on the Sundays I will be there. On Saturdays I will help teach the scholars during the day and in the evenings work alongside another Bible College student named Mark with the youth group. Since this ministry is about an hour away from where I am living in Cebu City, I will be sleeping over every Saturday night being hosted by some of the Filipino families of the children I will be teaching. I'm really looking forward to this and being able to live and work in this community who are so excited to have me.
Praise God that we saw (at least) 10 people come to the Lord during our missions trip to Bohol and praise God for our Japanese visitors who are bringing a lot of new ideas and blessings for the ministries here.
Please pray for continued safety and health. These last few weeks I have been sick on and off. I figure I am still really adjusting to the food and climate.
Also for my language study, that I continue to pick it up quickly and have the patience to learn even when its really tough.
Thank you for reading. You are in my thoughts as many of your are preparing to go back to school and back to work this September.
Blessings on you all.
Amanda
p.s. i have put some new pictures up on this blog for you. I apologize some are really small. I will continue to put more up as they come!