Coming home

 Our wonderful friends in the Philippines took us to the airport in Dipolog City and stayed until our plane took off.




This day arrived too quickly. In about three hours we will board a plane and fly back to "Sweet Home" Alabama.

We look forward to seeing our family and friends, but part of our hearts will remain here in the Philippines, specially on the island of Mindanoa.

This trip turned out better than we ever could have imagined. We saw at least 127 people accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and pastors, missionaries and other Christians encouraged and given hope to keep spreading the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To say we received a great blessing would be an understatement. As we poured ourselves out, God filled us back up with so much love through our wonderful Filipino friends.

The excitement of how open people are to the Gospel of Jesus Christ strengthened us and drew us even closer to our brothers and sisters who are reaching this nation for Jesus.

The hospitality and love we received was beyond measure. Until you experience it, it's really hard to describe. In Alabama, we have good old southern hospitality, and we do a good job of making people feel welcome. These precious people go way beyond.

We thank all of our awesome volunteers back in Dothan, Ala., for keeping all of the ministries running smoothly while we have been on the other side of the world. We have the best volunteers ever, and once again all of you proved it.

There has been a lot of prayers for us on this trip, and we cannot thank all of you enough. We felt the prayers as God gave us strength and kept energizing us.

It's pretty cool seeing God use Love In Action at the same time in different parts of the world. That was a prayer of ours 12 years ago when this ministry began, and to see it come to fruition is outstanding, and to God be all the glory.

We will arrive back home Saturday evening (Sunday morning for the Philippines). It will take a couple of days to recover, so we will be back up and going on Tuesday. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at Celebrate Recovery Inside.

We have a lot of work for the Lord to do in Dothan and the Philippines, and we thank God for blessing us with all of these opportunities. There are many people to reach with the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both the U.S. and the Philippines, and with all of us working together as the Body of Christ, through the power of God, we can do it.

Salamat (thank you) to all of our Filipino family. We love you all and look forward to seeing you again in 2013. To all of our American family, we love you and  will see you soon.