Teacups in the Jungle

Home Sweet Home.

Hello from a very hot Saturday here in the jungle. I can’t believe it has been 2 months since my last post. Life has been very fluid with us lately. By that I mean in the past 6 weeks I think I counted that we have slept in 12 different places, been on three different islands, celebrated Christmas with friends, attended a missionary conference, shopped in Manila and finally arrived home last week. We have had a wonderful time and I am so thankful Izzy didn’t seem to skip a beat. However, there is nothing like coming home. Except of course when your house got broken into while you were gone and it takes you four days to clean up the mess that was made, not by the human intruders but by the “animal-kind”. 🙂 However now a week later, all is back to normal and it really is good to be home.

Rather than making this a lengthy post of all our experiences in the past month, I will just pick up where life has us at right now. We are feeling very thankful for many things these days. God has blessed us so much and we are so grateful and encouraged to see how He has provided for us in ways we could never have imagined.

Last week Danny drove us home in our own vehicle!! Something we didn’t think we would ever be able to do and we LOVED it. I can’t write too much on this public site about a situation we had with the airstrip, but we were concerned in December about how we would be able to get in and out of the village, especially in the case of an emergency. The roads had been very bad last year and the local drivers in town no longer wanted to use their vehicles on the bad road. So we felt a little “stuck”.  However, the Lord never leaves us “stuck” and within two weeks of this happening, we heard from my home church, some individuals and other churches in N.Ireland that they were sending us enough money to be able to buy a very nice vehicle that could take us in and out of the village!! We were so thankful to the Lord and to the folks at home for their kindness and generosity towards us. It was perfect timing too as we were going to Manila around Christmas and Danny was able to find a jeep/SUV that was perfect for all our needs, and it is in great condition. All the paperwork and everything went smoothly and quickly and we were able to ship it down to Palawan mid January. Last week, for the first time, we loaded it with supplies and drove home. We are so grateful to God for meeting this need and for blessing us with this car. It is so nice to be here and not feel “stuck” in the village. Actually, on a hot day like this I have thought about going out and sitting in it just for the air-conditioning!! 🙂

This is the vehicle we were able to buy in Manila. A HUGE blessing from God.

Visitors from Guam who carried Irish cheese and lots of goodies in their carry-on!

Danny and Izzy out and about this week in the village.

Oh and one more, just to show that we really never know what will arrive at our door each day….today Myra, a sweet teenage girl brought a bag of birds for Zoe and Izzy! Her mother thought they would love them as pets! She was right they would…….

This was a first! A bag of live birds. 🙂