Going to Lake Arrowhead, CA

Today, I'm picking up a rental car for my trip to Lake Arrowhead. I've been telling my Biola students where I will be and asking them to pray for me each weekend as I speak. I'm sure they know how it feels to do an important presentation in front of a group. If not, they will soon---their first speeches will be given beginning Monday! :-)

On Tuesday, there was a gathering at Pastor Dwayne's house. It was nice to see eveyone again since I've miss our church every weekend I have to present at another church. But this Sunday, I will try to make it. It shouldn't be difficult to leave Lake Arrowhead after lunch and make it back before 4PM. Good thing our church meets at night.

I've been buying these Filipino phone cards recently, and it's been nice to talk to my parents. I haven't done this is a long while. I still have another card to use and hopefully then I can talk to my brothers.

Pray our landlord does the right thing about a termite infestation at our apartment. They swarm in the afternoon in Josiah's room! I've put some fly paper down and I've captured three of these guys as evidence, but that's about all I can do. I'm still trying to get a hold of our landlord at his office but difficult to get a hold of.

Heading over to Torrance, CA

This weekend, I'm staying much closer to home and just driving over to Torrance for a presentation at Pacific View Baptist Church. Pastor John asked me to kick-off this new "Options" series, where they offer elective classes to their people. The series I'm speaking at will basically be about different aspects of missions. Appropriately, he asked me to teach a session on the importance of disicipleship & leadership training. Pray the seminar goes well and as usual, please pray this church and their people are led to partner with us in missions.

God continues to smile upon me as I went to rent their cheapest, smallest car just so Christine could still have the Saturn to go to church with Jojo tonight. Enterprise gave me a free upgrade to a nice GMC Envoy SUV! The BGC actually encourages car rental as it is often cheaper than getting reimbursed for business milage.

Pray for some services & outreach events I'm hoping to put together with our chuch around Halloween, Thanksgiving & Christmas. Ask the Lord to give me some good ideas & that I get a lot of help from others in the church. Thanks.

Back from Gilbert, AZ

Mikel & Pastor Scott Ridout in Gilbert, AZ

On Saturday, I went to the evening service and then three morning services the next day. Pastor Scott and the leadership team were very encouraging in terms of our possible partnership to reach and equip Filipinos for ministry. I should be hearing back from them in about a month or so. Pray this works out as well. Gilbert is a nice place.


Hanging Out with Matt & the Sun Valley Youth

Yesterday, I enjoyed meeting church members and especially hanging out with the youth at Sun Valley Community Church. When I learned Robert will be taking Jr. Highers to Anaheim in November, I invited them to come visit the international brothers and sisters at our church. We'll be in touch and see if they might come by to see cross-cultural ministry going on right here in the States.

I really loved hanging out with the students. Unfortuntely, I know this isn't where I'm going to get a lot of funding, but I just enjoyed them a lot. I guess that's why I've been in youth ministry for 8 years and wh God's called me to work with college students in the Philippines. Many Filipino college students are the same age as American juniors and seniors anyway. I'd love to stay in touch with Sun Valley youth and see them out on a short-trem mission in the Philippines.

Note from Gilbert, AZ

I'm staying with Bub & Winnie Hayes, who are members of Pastor Scott's church. Winnie's been enjoying our site and right now we are sitting in the living room together on our laptops using the wireless web! :-)

For lunch, I met with Pastor Steve from Desert View Baptist over some Chinese food. Cirilo from the BGC Headquarters is here, too. We'll be presenting together tomorrow morning in front of the missions committee at Sun Valley. Pray both our ministries to Filipinos get monthly support.

This morning, I was expecting a Super Shuttle Van to pick me up. But God sent me a surprise---a driver in a white suit pulled up in a white Lincoln town car and said they had run out of vans so they sent her! Then, I got to the airport and went through security with a blind lady who needed a ride to her gate. It was the same gate as my flight so they told me I should just ride with them! So I even got a lift through the terminal.

The flight went well. I read a book Christine got me on Open Theism and watched a little bit of Alias Season 3 on DVD. Arizona is dry and hot. Pretty much what you'd expect from the desert. It was 105 degrees today.

Winnie kept looking through pictures of Jojo and Christine on our site. It's making me miss my wife and little boy already! Can't wait to get back home to the family.

Third Day on The Tonight Show!

If you haven't seen this, you need to check it out! Last week, Third Day teamed up with Steven Curtis Chapman and Mercy Me to do "I See Love" on the Tonight Show. More than just a good performance of a single from "The Passion of the Christ: Songs" CD, I'd like to think it was a musical witness to Jay Leno, Ellen Degeneres, and others who were there and watching on TV. It was so cool to see a good band singing about our Lord in a mainstream setting like that.

Christine and I have been big Third Day fans since 1997. We've seen them live twice, and we have all their albums and DVDs. I even play an Epiphone Chet Atkins SST acoustic just like Mac Powell used on the Come Together tour. OK, I'm more obsessed about this than my wife, but hey, I'm also a musician!

Right-click and choose Save Target As to download the video here: http://www.thirdday.com/video/leno.avi.

If you don't see the video, you might need to download the Divix codec here http://www.download.com/3000-2139-10062728.html?tag=real. But it's worth it! :-)

Back from Santa Maria, CA

Explaining the Case for Our Mission at Crosspoint Community Church

Praise God! Our trip went very well. The church was very encouraging and even allowed us to sit in on a missions committee meeting where they discussed the budget! It seems they may be one of our big supporters! Please pray for this. We may find out their decision, including the pledge amount, by next month. On top of this, we got a few special gifts and an individual even pledged to support us at a $100 a month and gave their first gift today!

The Lord answered our prayers and helped us get home in just 3 and a half hours! That's the "correct" amount of time it should take (Not like yesterday's 7 hour trip). We were amazed as we zipped though most of LA like it was out on the open road.

But it was tiering for the family. No more trips for Christine and Jojo until Thanksgiving. Next weekend, I'll be flying to Arizona alone.

Note from Santa Maria, CA

Whew, today's trip was a really long one! I guess it's the Labor Day holiday that added an extra 3 hours of traffic to our trip! On the bright side, we got to stop off at Santa Barbara and have dinner with Jojo at the place where we had our first dinner as a married couple back in 1999: Aldo's on State Street! We saw a cool band playing outside of Borders. And whhile we ate, a guy was sitting on a bench just playing old Beatles and Cat Stevens tunes on his acoustic. I love the atmosphere of State street!

Plus, Enterprise gave me a free upgrade to take a new Chevy Trailblazer LS (It only had 600 miles on it!) on our trip. Yeah, we still need to take a lot of baby stuff that doesn't fit in our little Saturn back home.

So now, we're settling in at the Holiday Inn in Santa Maria. We're greatful for the excellent accomodations set up by the Crosspoint Community Church. I'll be speaking at two services tomorrow morning and sharing with the missions committee as well. Do pray the Lord uses this time to raise our support level and touch people to get more involved in spreading God's kingdom to all peoples.