Magandang Gabi from Batangas

(That means "good evening" in Tagalog) We’re in the Philippines! We flew into Manila on January 14th and are staying on a newly pioneered YWAM base outside Batangas City. Right away, we were thrown into the Filipino culture, hopping Jeepney’s and eating the Filipino delicacy, Balut, which is a hard boiled duck egg containing an 18-day old fetus (check out the pictures).

Since it was once colonized by Spain, the Philippines are rich in Spanish and Oriental culture and traditions. The primary language in Batangas is Tagalog, which sounds like other Asian languages, but uses several Spanish words. The people here are warm, hospitable and affectionate (they thew me an amazing birthday party). Everyone here wants to know where you are going and where you are from - and strangers are always stopping us on the street to ask us. Anytime they come across an American, they call him “Joe.”

The base is lead by Erik Gumarang and his wife Josie. Erik is a former graphic designer for a big advertising agency in Manila that does work for Honda Civic and also for YWAM – his wife worked for the base that was one of his clients, and years after they were married, he felt God telling him to leave his job for missions. He pioneered the base in Batangas in 2007 and they have been working ever since to build ministry in the area and bring in students and staff.

We’ve really developed a heart for the people - despite only being here a little over the week - and we love the ministry so far. We’ve been doing sport ministry, open-air evangelism and youth and college ministry. We also took one morning to climb a mountain in Alitagtag and prayed over the city from the top. We will give more info about the ministry another time as it will be mostly the same type of work throughout the month.

We love and miss you all - Feel free to drop us a line on any of our emails as we are much better connected here in the Philippines and will have regular access to e-mail!

We also finally put up some pictures of Jo'Burg - pictures from the AIDS village and the other ministry we did can be found here.