Church Costume Night

Wearing our Medieval Garb with Jojo the Lion

We enjoyed seeing a number of fun, creative and ethnic costumes tonight at church. Christine and I wore our Ren Faire outfits and Jojo wore his Lion jacket and pants.

Back from Chicago, IL

I left Chicago early Monday morning and made it to LAX by 9:30AM. By 10:30 I was back home with Christine and Jojo in our bug-free apartment. Praise God things are starting to get back to normal. Except Jojo's sleeping schedule was disrupted during our period of "homelessness." So we've been doing shifts throughout the night again. I'm re-watching my Alias Season 3 DVDs with Josiah again.

Sarah, Valerie, Kate and Kristi at Bethany Baptist Church

Here are some pictures from youth group at Bethany Sunday night. We were in the gym playing a game kind of like Jai-Alai, but with milk jugs and a tennis ball. Check out the photo album under "updates" on our Web site for more pics from my trip!

Fellow musicians: John plays guitar. Dave plays drums.

I lead worship with Dave on drums, Tommy on bass and John playing the guitar left-handed. That was cool since they haven't had music for a number of sessions since their former youth pastor left. They just hired a new Youth Pastor, Justin, who I got to meet that night as well. We're hoping he'll eventually come out and see us in Manila with the kids. That would be cool.

Tommorrow I get to go to worship practice and lead worship at JCF again Sunday night! It's way cool to finally be back at my own church after many weeks away on support-raising trips.

My Weekend in IL

My very first home in Evanston, IL

Yesterday, Jason took me on a tour of Evanston---the city where I was born! We drove through Northwestern University and walked around the campus. I found the graduate housing building where I lived from age 0 to 4! He even took me to Evanston Hospital where I was born!

Last night, I played basketball with some of the men from church. I got to share with them over some pizza after the game. It seems like wherever I turn around here, people are trying to get me to eat! :-)

This morning, I shared a video we made of Christine and Jojo in the service introducing themselves. It seemed to go off well. My message on "The Mystery of the Joyful Sacrifice" from Philippians, and especially my solo of "Offering" went off perfectly and I got a lot of good comments afterwards. More importantly, Bethany Baptist is really trying to pledge a fair monthly amount to our support. Pray for their faith-promise pledges. We should know in December about the proposed 2005 budget.

Tonight, I'll be leading worship with the youth group band and sharing informally with the kids. I'm really looking forward to that. 12 hours from now, I'll be heading to the airport to go back home!!!

Note from Chicago, IL

Today I flew over to Chicago for the last weekend in our 7-week long tour. Stephen and Mariciel picked me up from the airport and we got to hang out over dinner and later at their home. Stephen and I were best friends in the Philippines from 5th grade onwards!

Tonight, I'm staying with a Filipino family from Bethany Baptist who will be my hosts for the weekend. They seem very nice. Mrs. Carmelita said, "This week, you will be one of my sons." I got my own room up here in the attic. And I am *way* stoked about the wireless Web I can access to write this very blog!

Got to get to bed. I have a breakfast meeting in the morning. Good night.

Note from Whittier, CA

So today we are staying with some friends of my family in Whittier. This is good, since we need to be close to home to go back and forth and bag up perishable items for the fumigation tommorrow. I still have to pack for this weekend's trip.

Sunday's presentation at the Filipino-American Church of Irvine went well. They even let me know they voted on the budget and were pleased to become one of our partners! I enjoyed preaching and even performing special music for the service.

I did "Offering" by Third Day using their actual studio tracks on CD, minus Mac's lead vocal track. And since this song didn't have an acoustic guitar audible for most of it, I added my own live acoustic performance as well using my Epiphone Chet Atkins SST just like Mac used on the Come Together tour. So the sound we kept very "Third Day." But anyway, I was really excited to do it and people told me how much they enjoyed the song.

I'll be flying to Illinois Friday morning for my final appearance in this 7-week long tour of churches. We should be hearing decisions back from many of them in late November and early December. Pray God miraculously brings our support-raising process to completion by the end of the year. The family is still sick. Pray for Christine and Jojo to get over their illnesses soon.

The Del Rosario Refugees

After working with refugees for eight years, our pastor joked about us becoming "refugees" ourselves! The good news is that Randy said he would begin fumigation on Thursday. The bad news is we need housing until the fumigation ends on Saturday. And in the midst of it all, one other baby got Christine and Jojo sick at the church nursery.

Where's God in all this? Yesterday afternoon, He miraculously provided us with a place to stay until Monday night: I called Pastor Dwayne and asked him if he knew of a place we could stay beginning that very night. He said he just found out his parents were paying to fly him and his wife out to Chicago for a high school reunion! So we're house-sitting for them until Monday night. Then, one of my parents' supporters offered to let us stay in his house until the fumigation was complete. Isn't God good?

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him" Romans 8:28

Please pray for Christine and Jojo's health. Pray this ordeal could be over soon.

Termite Infestation

Please continue to pray about our problem with the termite infestation in our apartment.

Randy Grisham (Century 21 Grisham-Joseph), our landlord, took two weeks to come down here with an inspector who advised him on the issue. While they were here, Randy himself saw the sick condition of the baby's room with swarmers stuck to some fly paper I put down by the window. That was Monday.

He still hasn't told us what he will do about it or when it will be done. The termites continue to swarm in Jojo's room and this morning, Christine woke up with one on her! I am calling the landloard's office every hour until I get to speak to him. Pray he will do the right thing about this and soon. Pray we can find a place to move if this does not get resolved.

Also, if you know of anyone who can help us legally order the landlord to fix this issue ASAP, please let us know. Of course, we can't pay any lawyers but if someone is willing to help, that might be nice.

Way into Water

Random thought: I've pretty much given up caffine for a number of reasons. Although I'm really not militant about it, I haven't had a Pepsi in about a month! And I am now discovering the joys of all kinds of water.

Besides the free stuff that gets purified in our Brita, I've been getting into these natural sparkling mineral waters. Before Jojo was born, I used to go to the gym a lot and drink flavored water like Propel, which is actually pretty good. But now my favorites are Perrier and San Pelegrino.

Christine often mixes either of these with some fruit juice to make something very similar to the bottled Izzy drinks you can get at Starbucks nowadays. So if you've never tried it, lay off the coffee and soda for a while and take a refreshing dive into the pristine springs of sparking water!

Back from Fresno, CA

I spent most of last night grading papers for my class tomorrow. The meeting at New Covenant went well. We should hear back from them in about three weeks. Please join us in praying they will be one of our bigger supporting churches.

The trip back wasn't bad. I got back in three and a half hours and even made it to church tonight!

Note from Fresno, CA

This morning I drove up to Central Cal to meet with a couple churches this weekend. Unfortunately, something came up and my lunch meeting cancelled on me. The upside is that we got to talk on the phone and the new interim pastor is going to talk to the missions committee about doubling our support! Tommorrow, I'll do a presentation for New Covenant Community Church in Fresno.

So now I'm sitting at a hotel near Fresno State University, where Christine and Jojo and I attended the Filipino Pastors' Conference during the summer. That was a hectic time for the family, and it's a good thing they are resting comfortably at home.

The drive up was great. No traffic. I got a nice rental car with a 6 disc changer so I got most of our Third Day collection in there in chronological order according to release date. I'm also practicing a special number I'll be doing for a church in Irvine next week and another church in Illinois the week after.

Soon my travel schedule will slow down. Please keep praying. We're getting closer to leaving for the Philippines!