Montana On a Mission

Our India Flights Are Booked!

jpravecek — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:36:58 +0000

Four years ago a group of men from the Big Timber Evangelical Church went to Bridge City, Texas with the purpose of helping another church recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Rita. In the process they met Pastor Samuel Karunanithi, a native of India and the Pastor of Living Word Church. In 2006 and 2007, we helped rebuild the church building and since then our two churches have maintained a close relationship.

Following a visit from Pastor Samuel in August 2009, we decided that a small group from Big Timber would go to Madurai, India to help sponsor work at an orphanage which is in Pastor Samuel’s care. Many children in India are forsaken orphans and start working at the age of six or seven because of poverty. In 1982, Pastor Samuel gave his only piece of land to build a home for the needy children. With the help of other Christians he built a home for 20 children in Chennai, India. Now there are two orphanages in Madurai caring for 35 children.

Our goal will be to come alongside work at each orphanage, to disperse health care packets, to meet with and encourage local pastors and their congregations, and to research the idea of adding a 2^nd floor to the newer orphanage so the two orphanages can be combined into one less costly orphanage in a single location.

These are lofty goals and certainly more aggressive than what we in our own power can achieve. We need as much prayer support as we can get! Would you keep us in prayer as we prepare for this mission trip?

We are also asking for financial partners to help cover some trip related costs, health care packets, orphanage projects and other projects we will be participating in. Each person needs to raise $2500 to $3000 for this purpose.

Now the question why? Why would we want to travel all the way to the other side of the world to be a part of such work?

Jesus tells us that “to whom much is given, much is required.” Luke wrote it down, but Jesus said it and since God inspired it, we are to live it. The truth is none of us have to do it all because all of us can do some. Some are called to go and others can pray and support the work.

Either way, our prayer is that everything that we do is done because of what God has already done for each one of us. Please prayerfully consider joining us as a partner in this mission trip.

Thank you!

Packed and Ready to Go (sort of)

cburkholder — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:55:55 +0000

Two hours left. Everyone is packed and the rooms cleaned, and lunch is almost ready. At 2:00 the jeepnee will be here to take us to Tagbalaren and probably half the bario will show up to say goodbye, even though it is raining. We will pick up Sandi and Brooke in Tagbalarn, Fly to Manilla, and after a 6 hour layover head to Korea. After visiting with Han Sol, we will fly back to Seattle, then on to Billings after all the fun of going through customs. Pray for safe travels.

Carson

Final hours

cburkholder — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:48:41 +0000

Well, Our time here is almost over. Tomorrow at 2:00 we leave here for Tagbalarn to catch a flight to Manilla at 5:00. The painting is done and over 150 backpacks are fille d with school supplies for the elementary school here in Calunasan Sur. So all our projects are finished but most of the kids don’t seem to want to leave yet. Today we went to the beach after I preached this morning in church, and had a fun time there. About half of us went snorkeling out off the shelf. That was a lot of fun and there was a lot of amazing things to see out there. At low tide, you can walk out to with in a few yards of where it drops off to where you can’t even see the bottom. It is all coral out there and thousands of fish and starfish and sea urchins and other cool coral stuff to see. Brooke is still at the hospital, however it is more as a precaution than nessecity. She has been off oxygen for over 24 hours now and has not had a relaspe, so she will be flying home with us on our regular flights. She did go out to McDonalds with us this evening for supper, so we got to see her for a little while. We will be having a 13 hour layover in Seol Korea during which we will be meeting Michael and Liz’s former foreign exchange student, Han Sol. We will be spending the time with her touring Seol before we continue back to the states. Our flight is scheduled to arrive in Billings, MT at 8:00 pm on Tuesday evening. Pray for safe travels and thank God that Brooke is doing so well.

Carson

Long Week

cburkholder — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:36:29 +0000

Well, all our painting projects are now done. We finished the last classroom today before lunch while Michael and Liz went to pick up Brooke from the hospital. This afternoon, we filled 72 backpacks with school supplies for the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students. These backpacks will be passed out this weekend or Monday to the students. Brooke came home late this afternoon, and unfortunately, by evening she was having the same symptoms as last night and they had to take her back to the hospital to put her on oxygen. Once she is on oxygen, she is fine, so they are going to see if they can bring an oxygen bottle home so she doesn’t have to stay at the hospital. Please continue to pray that the doctors can figure out what is wrong and know how to treat it. Thanks.

Carson

Update on Brooke

cburkholder — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:33:47 +0000

As Jay said in the comment on the last blog, Brooke is doing fine. It appears to simply be an allergic reaction possibly to the paint we have been using in our projects. They just put her on oxygen and are keeping her over night as a precaution to watch her. She gets to stay in the presidential suite and one of the leaders is staying with her through the night. Other than that, everything here is going well. We are continuing to finish our projects on or ahead of schedule despite all the delays, changes, and last minute instructions, and the team is doing amazingly well working together and getting along. Everyone here is saying that this is the best, cleanest, and fastest team they’ve seen yet. Thanks again for all your prayers.

Carson

Brooke

cburkholder — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:11:30 +0000

Michael, Liz, Sandi, John and Along just took Brooke to the hospital. We don’t know exactly what is wrong, possibly an alergic reaction of some kind. Please pray for her. We will update as soon as we know how things are.

Carson

June 9

cburkholder — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:52:51 +0000

When we say I’ll be there around 7 ish….here that is extended to ish, ish, ish….This is such a laid back culture, time literally means nothing. So we are all learning lessons on patience & flexibility. I’m not all that great at remembering names, but the stories I’ve heard are unforgettable. One in particular, I met a 15 year old girl named Guadalope. Her dad died three years ago and her mom is alone now raising 6 girls. She has quit high school in order to go to work so she can help her mom with finances. She told me she has sacrificed her education so her sisters don’t have to. She earns $1 per day. Her english was great so we really shared a lot. She said she wants my white skin & blond curly hair. I told her I want her tan and beautiful long hair! Another little boy by the name of John Wayne, who is about three, shows up when we’re painting, he keeps is somber, sad face at a distance usually. I don’t know his story, but he likes breath mints and we got him to smile yesterday! I have been humbly appreciative of the women of this culture. They seem to have this quiet, gentle spirit of serving others. They are so appreciative of our work here, yet I am praying their actions will forever change my heart and mind. Our day started at 4:00 am in order to catch a boat to travel out in the ocean early enough to watch the dolphins jumping. They were small, but active. It rained while we were on the island. We took a trip into the Tagbilaran Mall. Our families and friends will be thrilled I’m sure, to sort through and pick out something fun from our spending spree. Our time here is getting short, pray God’s work will continue even after we leave. These families need prayer. Thanks for all you’ve done to be just as much a part of this team as we are. Alleluia, for all He’s done!

His team in the Philippines

Sandi LaVoy

Pictures

mstambaugh — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:50:57 +0000

After many requests, here are some pictures from our trip. I will be posting pictures that summarize our trip so far, but there will be time when we return in a week to see a lot more picture. These are just a few.

Our first project while in Calunasan Sur was to paint the exterior of the Learning Center. Although we finished the project in about one day, there were details that took another day to finish. There were words painted on the outside of the building that we had to paint around and it proved to be very tedious and detailed work. Sandi, Cienna and Liz did a great job finishing all the details on all the words.

Over the past two days, we painted the inside and outside of the Day Care (of which there is no picture).

This picture shows the blue letters that we painted around. The letters give credit to the person who helped build the building, which was finished earlier this year. The teachers, Marli and Agnus, were very happy to have us paint the outside of their building. Each day they provided snacks and Coke for all of us as a gesture of thanks. However, in reality, they sacrificed a lot financially and with their time to provide us with snacks and Coke. We will be painting the interior of Marli and Angus’ rooms on Thursday and Friday.

This picture also tells another story. As Americans we kind of stick out in the barrio and we also seem to attract a lot of attention, specifically from the kids in the barrio. As we work everyday we are greeted by children. We are beginning to develop relationships with many of them as we see them everyday. They remember our names and it is very warming to hear them yell and chant our names. I think they have all of our names down, but we are still trying to remember all of their names.

Last Saturday and Sunday our team was fortunate to be part of a youth retreat that took place in the barrio. There were approximately 50 youth at the retreat and the students had a great time getting to know Filipinos their own age. I was asked to lead a devotional at the retreat, so recruited the help of the team to act out the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abendego. The picture above is us acting out that story.

One of the highlights of the trip was an invitation to play an exhibition basketball game against the basketball team of the barrio. We had the privilege to watch two games of the tournament that took place over the weekend. This is a picture of the basketball court. As you read in another post, we tied our exhibition game, which was very fun and I am sure the Filipino people got quite the laugh watching us play.

It’s almost dinner time. Contrary to everything else in the Philippines, dinner is always on time. Marita cooks our dinner every night and it is always great with lots of rice!

Hello from Bohol!

cburkholder — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:22:35 +0000

Hey everyone, this is Brooke. I was the one who forgot to blog last night, so here I am this afternoon. Today, like most other days, we painted. We were finishing up our work on the daycare facilities. Most of the work was inside and only a highly skilled few could do the work. It seems that when I paint I get more on myself and the ground than anywhere else, so I wasn’t selected. I was instead given the daunting task of playing with the local children, how terrible. (I use sarcasm a lot, if you haven’t caught that already.) But, our entire team has gotten to know and become close to the kids. They know all of our names by heart and we are becoming that way with them.

On another note, I have seen God at work so many times on this trip, it is amazing. We’ve all prayed that we could see Him in some way or another and let me tell you, He has surely shown Himself here. I’ve seen Him in the caring and thankful people of the barrio who give everything that they can to those of us who are helping. I’ve also seen Him in our own group. We have all grown together so much and I know that without God we wouldn’t have been able to do it. Honestly, I’m sure someone would have tried to kill someone else by now. But that hasn’t happened, praise the Lord.

It’s time for me to go rest up, we have a hard day coming up tomorrow. We are leaving at 5:00 a.m. to go see dolphins, then we are shopping. So I really must prepare myself. I just want to thank you all for your prayers and can’t wait to tell you everything when we get home.

God Bless!

-Brooke

A New Week

cburkholder — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:30:24 +0000

Well, one of the students was supposed to do a blog tonight, but apparently they forgot, so here I am again. It is now Monday evening, the beginning of a new and final week here in the Philippines, and another filippino storm has just come roaring in. Looks like we got out of the pool just in time. The weekend was fun and very eventful. Yesterday, Sunday, Michael preached the sermon while the rest of us did sunday school for the kids. The power went out early morning so we had no air conditioning or fans for the sunday service until right at the end. We have been having continued trouble with power outages with is rather unusual for this area. The afternoon was taken up by the last of the youth retreat, followed by another basketball tournament after which we played an exhibition game of filippinos vs americans. Amazingly we held our own and ended the 20 minute game at a tied score of 24 to 24. Two of the boys on our team, Zane and Jacob, just learned how to play basketball this last week while here. They did amazingly well for their second ever game (they played one game saturday with the kids as well). Today we started painting the daycare building and would have finished today if we didn’t have to wait for more paint. But it gave us the afternoon off and some much needed down time. Shay had a close encounter with a metal pole which resulted in a small cut and bruise on his face, but thankfully it was only minor, and he is completely fine. Tomorrow we plan to finish the outside and then paint the inside before moving on to the inside of two school rooms.

On a side note, a funny things happened this evening. We were all having fun in the pool, jumping off the waterfall and having underwater races when Zane decided to see how big of a splash he could make by jumping off the waterfall. No sooner did he hit the water, creating a HUGE splash and wave, when the power and all the lights went out. The timing could not have been better. We all have a good laugh then dug out the flashlights and continued on until the power came back on.

Right now the rain is pouring down, the wind is blowing, the thunder is rolling, and the lightening is getting a little close for comfort, but everyone is safe inside, doing well, and preparing for bed, so we consider ourselves blessed. Thank you all for your prayers.

Carson