We pray that each of you will enjoy the season with celebration, family, friends, and of course, the Word. We commemorate the most significant event in history; the day that God came down to live with men! The Christian faith is unique in this. Christians are the only ones who claim a personal relationship with the God we worship! A lowly event in a manger 2000 years ago still captures the attention of the world. Emmanuel-God with us!

During these days, remember those who are without Him, and those who suffer greatlyfor Him. Also, remember to intercede for those who are recovering now from horrible flooding, earthquakes, and personal tragedies.

Following the update forwarded from Pastor Dimver Andales in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines, I was able to talk with my other pastor friend, Ruben Sulapas who is in Iligan City. These were the two hardest hit metropolitan areas.

Ruben’s church building was literally wiped off the map. The assistant pastor who lived on the property with his family lost his wife in the flood. Several other members of his church are missing or have family members who have been killed.

Ruben is not only a pastor but has headed up a team of brethren who have translated the Bible into Cebuano. One of the translators is among those missing.

They have a large quantity of scriptures and tracts in storage and miraculously that was spared with the water coming within inches of the boxes.

Both of these dear pastors have suffered as their people have. I know they would appreciate your intercession. Most likely their people could use temporal help also. The government is calling for outside help at this time also.

The best thing I can do at this point besides asking your intercession is to give you their contacts so if you wish to have more information you can get it from them directly.

Pastor Dimver Andales, Lapasan Baptist Church, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines.

dimverandales31@yahoo.com. Bro. Andales is sending out e-mail updates. If you wish to contact him I am sure he would put your address on those updates.

Pastor Ruben Sulapas, Riverspring Baptist Bible Church, Iligan City, Philippines

rpsulapas@yahoo.com. Bro. Ruben will be making some e-mail updates for those of you who are interested to contact him. We worked with Ruben when we lived there. He was finalizing some translation on our behalf when this happened.

I am absolutely certain that there are other good men who pastor people who are affected by the flooding but these are the ones I personally know. Please pray for them.

Many of you have seen the news of a massive flash flood on Mindanao in the Philippines. It happened on the heels of tropical storm Washi. The flooding has affected a huge area but mostly inundating the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan. In fact, we were based in Cagayan de Oro for two years.

We just got an e-mail from our dear friend, Pastor Dimver Andales of Lapasan Baptist Church, Cagayan de Oro. There is actually a missionary from his church learning the language here in Chiang Mai now. I am simply going to quote his e-mail here and give his address for contact. We have not yet heard from other brethren we know in the areas affected. I know that they would appreciate your intercession. The following is the e-mail.

Greetings!

Just a quick note to get this link to you. It is for our December prayer letter. For those who normally get a snail-mailed copy, that will be on the way soon.

The trip to the border was blessed in many ways. I will report on that soon. Still waiting on feedback. We had asked you to pray about some networking problems we were having. Apparently, those problems are fixed. I have no idea how. God answers prayer!

THank you for standing with us in intercession. Please read the newsletter found at the link.

Greetings Brethren,

Please pray as four of us travel five hours tomorrow to deal with some shipping issues. Our vehicle is DOA in the driveway so we are traveling in a rented car. We will be working with some brethren who have had to cross borders for this meeting.

The end of the year is fast approaching and at least for the local staff it means travel to visit family and friends. Please pray for safety as the roads here become treacherous with travel during the time leading up to the New Year.

One of our co-workers from Burma will be leaving us next week after being here nearly 3 years. His help has been invaluable and will be sorely missed. Please pray that we can finalize the projects he has been working. As these things go, his computer workstation; completely configured for the languages of Burma, melted down on Friday and we had to rebuild it today with new components. Oh how the enemy fights!

We are also fighting some computer network and server issues. This affects every project we are involved with now. Please pray!

It is such a blessing to know that many of you intercede for us and the work here. I can assure you, we would not want to undertake it without your involvement. Thank you!

Greetings Brethren,

I have just returned from a trip to Incheon Korea. This was a survey trip of sorts to look into the possibility of an outreach during the Asian Games which are scheduled for 2014. Partnership with brethren in Korea, as well as the USA is crucial to make a successful outreach of this nature possible.

It was obvious that the Lord had paved the way beforehand. The trip was especially blessed in that strategic contacts were made A lot more follow-up needs to be done before plans are firmed up, so please continue to pray. We will share more about it as information becomes available.

Strategic contacts were made also concerning publishing in the nearby countries.  Maybe I will be able to say more about that in an upcoming update. But it was very satisfying to know the Lord was in charge of the meetings.

Not only were many praying for this trip, but several gave, and all of my expenses were covered! As I said, it was blessed from the beginning. For each of you who had a part in it, Thank You!

The rest of this month will pass quickly as we continue on with the work here. We hope you will enjoy the season with loved ones. Brethren, pray for us!

Greetings Brethren,

Beforehand let me apologize for the long e-mail… Your patience is appreciated.

Shipping: Many of you interceded and also gave so we want to report that next week a large shipment of Burmese Bibles is scheduled from here. All of the needed funds to complete the one smaller shipment we were trying to make has been given as well as a good portion toward another! This should about clean out the last container from the USA! We will update you after that has transpired. Actually it is quite overwhelming how it all came together. He is faithful! He wants His Word published and distributed more than we ever could imagine! All Glory to Him, and THANKS to each of you.

Flooding: Please continue to pray for the flooding situation in Thailand. Millions of people have been affected and great numbers have had to live with this for 5-6 weeks now. Areas of central Bangkok are just now being affected. It is estimated that it will be another month until the situation is closer to normal. Thousands of businesses have been damaged and hundreds of major factories are closed until the floods recede and repairs are made. Of course not only are people homeless but out of work. The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

The neighborhood and house we lived in while in Bangkok was flooded. That means Jeff Lange’s house was flooded as well as they still live there. They evacuated three weeks ago and are here in Chiang Mai now. We know of a couple of more missionaries who also had their houses or facilities flooded as well as several churches and of course their members. Pray much for them please.

Translation: A three day consultation with our Hmong co-workers and a Hmong/American missionary just completed today. Several important issues concerning translation were dealt with successfully. We appreciate Ge Chang coming to help with this. It was a sacrifice for him.

Tract Distribution: Over the next two evenings we will be handing out tracts during the annual Loy Krathong festival here in Chiang Mai. It was actually cancelled in the areas being flooded now, but in full swing here. Please pray as most of our co-workers will work on the streets with us during these times.

Survey Trip: We also wish to ask prayer for a survey trip I will be making to Incheon, Korea along with a couple of pastors from the USA. We are looking into the potential for an outreach during the Asian Games in 2014. Funds to pay for my trip have been supplied, Praise God! I will fly to Korea on the 26th of November. Please pray.

By no stretch of the imagination is this everything happening. Just the most pressing issues at this point are listed. We so appreciate your intercession. Your faithfulness to pray for the work here makes a difference. Please don’t stop!

Dear Intercessors,

We have been awaiting word from several people before planning a shipment of Bibles, New Testaments and Gospels in Burmese. We feel that we now have a handle on it. Much has changed since our last shipment which was held up part of the way to its destination and took 3 months to arrive. Transport costs have gone up. There are several factors causing this but it is a fact.

We have diligently searched for other, cheaper ways to transport these materials. We even heard of ways that were possible only to find that they were not viable. We also wanted to make sure that the recipients were men who were distributing these materials. Now that the proper amount of time needed to survey this has been spent, we are ready to make the shipment.

While this was being done several smaller strategic shipments were made to various places from which we had received requests for Scriptures. We even made a shipment to Malaysia where people from Burma are working! We still have more of those smaller shipments to make but now need to handle this big one.

We have on hand approximately $4,400 of the $7,500 that will be required to get this initial shipment underway. There has been some interest expressed in helping with these costs, so we ask you to pray. I was asked recently if there was a cheaper way to do what we are doing. My answer was… “Probably, but we have not yet found it, and if the question demands an answer today, I would say, ‘do nothing'” Doing nothing however is not really an option as these materials are stored in facilities we are paying rent on each month. Besides that, the need great now. By the way, two of these shipments could be made now if funds were available.

As an example I would like to share with you a part of an e-mail I received yesterday. This is typical of many…

“There are so many things that we needed in the ministry. But the greatest need of all times is Bible, the word of God. We badly need the Bible and Burmese literatures. (Most of) the churches have no Bible. It is such a joy to know that you have seen the great need of Bible in Burma and even around the world.”

In upcoming updates, I will have testimonies from distributors as well as photos. Please pray! Prayer has always worked in the past.