Home from Bakersfield, CA

Whew! This concludes a tiring yet productive trip up North. Last night, we had a "mini-vacation" at the Red Lion Hotel in Bakersfield. We drove straight from the Hayward church for about 4 hours. But then we got to have a night to relax. Oh man, what a nice hotel. Christine went swimming in the outdoor pool surrounded by palm trees. I got to play with Josiah and watch her swim and chill in the jacuzzi. Jojo's now holding his head up by himself! And he's beginning to make a lot of sounds and do a bit of baby-talk.

We made excellent time back. It only took a couple of hours to get home. What's amazing is that traffic was really light through LA. That almost never happens. Maybe the fact that we were on driving through LA on Memorial Day makes a difference. Who knows.

Today is our 5-year anniversary! We took some time to celebrate during the trip, but today is the actual day. We were married on Monday, May 31, 1999. My parents remembered and sent us a nice e-card. So we're basically taking the day to rest. But I feel like I need to take tommorrow off, too!

Note from Hayward, CA

This morning, I'll be speaking on "The Secret of the Easy Yoke" at a Filipino church here in Hayward. Then, we'll be off to Bakersfield for the last night of our journey.

Overall, our time in Sacramento was productive. I even got an invitation from Pastor William Tanghap to present our ministry and connect with more churches at the Filipino Pastor's meeting at the end of June. As it turns out, he's actually coordinating the event!

Honestly, we're going to Bakersfield because the Comfort Inn in Hayward smells like smoke even though it's supposedly a non-smoking room. Christine and Josiah are having trouble sleeping because of it. Plus, Bakersfield is about halfway between here and home. So Jojo will only have to deal with about four hours in the car at a time instead of the eight it would take to drive straight.

"The Growth Tour" continues... Talk to your pastor and friends about us and we may be able to make an appearance at a church near you!

Note from Sacramento, CA

Walking by the American River in Folsom, CA

Monday's trip over here was pretty good. We took a day yesterday to visit the American River in Folsom with Christine's mom and her sister. Then some relatives came over to meet Jojo.

This morning, we had breakfast with JD from Discovery Church in Elk Grove. He's interested in having us do some networking at his church sometime this summer. Christine's mom babysat during that early morning meeting.

Then, we took Jojo and met up for lunch with our good friend, Ryan, at Danielle's Village Creperie in Fair Oaks. We really like their escargot. I know, it's snails swimming in garlic, but we absolutely love it! Ryan and his wife, Jenny, went to Biola with us. And Christine actually worked with Jenny at Biola for about a year. They have a little boy named Noah.

Tonight, Christine's former youth group leader, Dennis, and his wife will stop by the house to see us. In the meantime, I need to continue working on my message for this Sunday's church service in Hayward. I'll be speaking on "The Secret of the Easy Yoke" from Matthew 11. It should be an interesting message.

Josiah in Alamdea, CA

Here's Josiah kicking back on a couch at the Studio Plus Alameda Hotel. He's such a good little traveller!

Yesterday, we took our missonary presentation to Bay Farm Community Chuch. I shared our ministry in the first and second service, as well as after church. We met a lot of great people, and even a number of former residents of Garden Grove! A big thank you to Pastor Jim and his wife for the excellent accomodations and generous hospitality.

This morning, we're heading out to Sacramento for more meetings. We'll be staying at Christine's parents' place in Citrus Heights. So now it's time to pack up the SUV once again. Life on the road continues...

Note From Alameda, CA

I'm sitting in a hotel in Alameda, CA right now. Tomorrow, I'll be presenting our ministry at Bay Farm Community Church and possibly going out to lunch with a Filipino couple the Pastor thought might be interested in supporting us personally.

The last two days of travel have not been too bad. I rented a Chevy Trailblazer since we needed a lot of space for all of Josiah's stuff (mobile crib, bathtub, clothes, snap n' go stoller, etc...). We drove for a couple hours up to Ojai (Jojo slept the whole time!) and met the missions committee of Ojai Valley Community Church. My cousin, Richie, is the youth Pastor there and they are very interested in partnering with us. We stayed at the house of one of the elders. Unfortunately, Richie and Nadine were out of town, so we might drop by Ojai again to visit them on the 31st.

This morning, we drove up to Alameda for about 6 and a half hours. Jojo was really good and slept for all but about 45 minutes of the trip. We got lost due to bad directions from Microsoft "Streets and Trips." Don't waste your money on that program. This is the second time it got us totally lost.

So now we're waiting for some food we ordered to be delivered to our room. Raviolli for Christine and pizza for me! Josiah just gets milk. :-)

Thank You, SFSCS!

Principal Richard Brown and the SFSCS Student Council

Today I spoke at Santa Fe Springs Christian School (SFSCS) to give the students an update and thank them for donating the Epi J-160e, Chet, and the Marshall amp to me for use in our ministry. They were excited to know I had already played these at church and am getting ready to "tour" with them around California visiting churches and other groups. In fact, I'll be leading a short worship time with the J-160e this Friday in Ojai.

Before I left, I performed my original song, "As I Worship" using the Chet through the Marshall. The sound guy loved the sound! Then, I had my picture taken with Principal Richard Brown and the student council gathered around my new worship rig. I also got to thank one of our major donors, Charles, who attended the service.

This afternoon I administered the final quiz to my afternoon class at Biola. It's the last session of our lab for COMM100. I'll do the same thing tonight for my night class. We won't be meeting next week (finals week) since I'll be in Sacramento.

What I did on My Day Off

It's a rare thing to take a real day off. Especially since it usually degenerates into working from home! Well, OK, so I made a few business calls, but I intentionally took the time to relax.

I guess it betrays my personality type to say that on my day off I was working on a project---making a DVD of our footage of Josiah! Yesterday, I learned how to make custom DVD menus in Photoshop and then import them into Encore. I even recorded a commentary track for Josiah's Birthday video presentation (the one that's available on our site). I still have to test it out and then burn the master DVD at some point.

We did get out of the house with Jojo, just to go to the bank. We're getting him more used to the car seat in preparation for our big trip on Friday. While I was out, I picked up Third Day's new CD, "Wire." It's pretty good. My favorite song on the album is probably "Rockstar."

Christine and I also saw "The Last Samurai" on DVD, which was nice.

So now it's back to work. Please take a moment and ask God to grant us grace and strength to make it through the hectic weeks ahead.

Weekend Thoughts

Thank God I was able to go to worship practice on Friday. After fiddling with some settings I was able to find a few really nice effects patches on my RP-1 that really make the Chet Atkins guitar shine.

Sunday was hectic. Christine and Jojo stayed home while I presented our ministry at a church in Corona at 9AM. Then, I had lunch with the pastor of that church and a Filipino pastor whose congregation meets in the same building. I was the guest preacher at the Filipino church at 1PM. Praise God many people were really touched by the message. Plus, we got $1,000 in special gifts and offerings that day from a congregation of no more than 50! Pray some of these would turn into monthly commitments.

Then I came back home at 4PM and headed off to our church which starts at 6PM. I was tierd but greatful for our church family. I even did a special number with the Chet at the end of the service.

Check out the most recent BGC World magazine for Jojo's birth annoucement! Unfortunatley, there must have been a mix up at the office since they accidentally published the draft I sent before he was born. The time and vital stats are incorrect. Thank the Lord he was born right on his due date or that information would be inaccurate as well! I'll call Bob Putman about this later in the week.

For now, Josiah is sleeping again and I'll be heading off to bed.

-Mikel.

Thoughts on Tomorrow

Praise God, Jojo is sleeping peacefully. Pray he is able to sleep through the night and that Christine gets lots of rest tonight. If all goes well, Christine should have the strength to watch him while I go to worship practice tomorrow. There's always a fifty-fifty chance of me not making it to practice nowadays because of Jojo.

I'm excited to play my new Epiphone Chet Atkins solidbody acoustic guitar through my Marshall acoustic amp this Sunday! This was a sweet gift from the kids at Santa Fe Springs Christian School in support of the worship aspect of our ministry. God is so awesome to bless me in this way. They also gave me a to-die-for sounding Epiphone EJ-160e guitar which sounded warm and inviting at last week's "unplugged" set at church. Props to Rick, a Christian luthier in Brea, for doing a killer set-up on both of these fine instruments.

Pray for God to pour out his Holy Spirit and spark a revival in our multicultural/international church. Ask the Lord to help us worship him with more passion everyday!

-Mikel.

Welcome to Our Blog!

This is my very first blog! Yea! I hope this will be an easy way to keep our friends and partners up-to-date with our travels and missionary adventures. So far, it seems to be easier than updating Web site text, so that's a good start.

Pray for us as we've got a busy couple of weeks ahead. This Sunday, I'll be speaking at two churches in Cornoa, CA. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, and then of course I'm leading worship at our church that same night. I have a number of local meetings everyday next week, and then we are off to Central and Northen Cal. I'll be speaking at a couple of churches and meeting with two more fellowships.

Ask God to use these activities to bring in more monthly committments. We are still looking for a handful of key churches to commit $300-$500 a month towards our missionary work in the Philippines.

Hey, if you'd like to encourage us, drop me a note and let us know you are praying! God bless.

-Mikel.