Update: Christmas, New Year's, Setting Goals

Dear Friends,

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year here.  We had a huge Christmas party for all the children in our community, which was around 300! It was a fantastic day for the kids, and we did a carnival with all sorts of games and had snacks and presents.  We also had our church Christmas party which was a huge success as well.  Our goal was to use the Christmas season to really get out into the community and get our church more well known and make sure the truth of Christmas was being taught.  For new years we had a barbeque on the rooftop after around 10pm everyone seemed to take off to their families houses and so Grace my brother and I watched the madness from the 5th floor of the building.  Madness may actually be an understatement in what New Years Eve is like here, but I am happy it's done so things can go back to normal.  As wonderful as the break has been and I am looking forward to getting back to my normal routine.

Yesterday I brought the church leadership together and we did our goal setting and planning for 2010.  It was a great time, and I was able to share where I felt God was leading our church, and I also got some great input from the team.  I am very excited about all of our plans and specifically our goal to send someone abroad on a missions trip in Asia from our church.  We are also going to begin sending missionaries to serve along side Grace's father church.  He is 72 years old and still pastoring!  I am excited because he has mentored many pastors and it will be a great opportunity for my youth and other church members to be under his leadership.  I knew I was not going to be able handle all the growth because of my double focus, but this year we are going to get out of rebuild mode and starting pushing deeper into our community.  We have set up a great discipleship program so we are going to try and get 10 new people through it within 6 months.  We have not made any huge number goals because the reality is that we could not handle it, and its far beyond my leadership capabilities. We want to avoid being stagnate and want to have consistent growth as well as great discipleship, so we have chosen reasonable numbers, and reevaluate in a few months to see how it's going.

Some great news is that Grace and I have already got the house where we will live after we are married!  We got a nice apartment just down the street from the church, and Grace has moved in there.  It was sure a process to be able to get the requirements!  Very rarely would you ever get bad service in the Philippines, but it seems that when ever I go into a bank here they treat me like I was about to rob the place  and want nothing to do with me!  It has been really frustrating, but finally I connected with a bank and was able to get a checking account to be able to issue personal post dated cheques instead of having to borrow from a friend.  It's really given me a lot peace knowing Grace is settled and comfortable in her own place, and we also hosted a lot of her family over Christmas which was very special for me since holidays used to be pretty lonely times.

Please pray for me as I have probably 3 of the craziest months of my life ahead of me!  I have many papers coming up in school, a wedding to arrange, and lead a church, so I need all the prayers I can get!  As busy as it is going to be, it's far more exciting!  I am looking forward to all the new challenges and blessings coming!  I am also going to need a make a budget increase, since it will soon be for two instead of just me, so please pray for God's provisions with all the many upcoming expenses.

Brett