Murrell Family Report
Cebu City, Philippines
Volume 5 - #13 – September 4, 2006
Howdy once again from Cebu City!
Wow! Was that August that just sort of whizzed by us? Everything since our last update has been a blur!
We had a great experience in Cambodia attending the Asian Mission Forum. It was nice to be with other missionary families for a few days and the country of Cambodia is very beautiful. The city we visited, Siem Reap, is the location of the ancient city of Angkor Watt. It is a tourist city with a hotel on almost every street corner! (That is NOT an exaggeration either.) From the moment we arrived it was strange because the people looked very much like Filipinos but their language was so very different. Since most people we met did not speak English, the most LOGICAL thing our minds told us to do was to speak in Cebuano. Of course doing that evoked some very strange looks from the local Cambodians. We had close to 160 participants in the Forum, which had a lot of free time in the schedule so that people could spend time getting to know one another and doing things together. The organizers liked the way our family worked together in 2005 when we hosted the Forum in Cebu so much that they invited us to come help again this year and so we arrived in Cambodia a couple of days early so that we could get to know the city. The night before the official start of the Forum, August 4, it was Shari’s birthday and the main host family, Bill and Marie Claire McDonough, treated us to dinner at a nice restaurant that is famous for its cultural shows. There were probably 200-300 people eating there, when all of a sudden, Bill starts into a chorus of “Happy Birthday” to Shari! Before the end, the whole restaurant was singing to her! If you know Shari… You should have been there!
The daily talks and classes were great. We heard from some of the early American missionaries to Asia, many of whom we had heard about but never met before. The best part of the Forum was being able to do things with different families of the group. There were so many different things to do; different restaurants, tours of the ancient temples, shopping in the markets, going to the silk farm, bird sanctuary, the big lake where an entire village lives in floating houses! It was a great place to relax and recharge the batteries so to speak!
We stopped off in Singapore for an afternoon and evening on our way back to Cebu and had a lovely time with some really great brethren there! By the time we returned home it was almost mid-August and we were just a few weeks away from our scheduled start of classes at the new Bible Study Center. We had so much left to finish on the facility renovation and we STILL did not have our electricity! (It was quite depressing!)
However, we postponed our efforts for just a little longer while we visited with Shari’s Mom, Margie Wilkey, who was with us during the Forum in Cambodia and came back with us to the Philippines for a more than a week. It was great to spend time with her and we even took her for a short trip over to Negros to see our place up in the mountains.
After Mom left, it was time to get back to finishing the Bible Study Center! Since we planned to start our classes on September 11, with the week prior to that for enrollment, we decided to schedule an OPEN HOUSE for Saturday, September 2nd as a way to sort of kick off the efforts! Mom left us on August 21st and so we had less than two weeks to get everything finished and organized! The day after she left we woke up in something of a panic at the realization of all this! On August 25th we had a teachers’ meeting to prepare the final details of the upcoming session of classes and OPEN HOUSE and then everyone just sort of went into “BLUR mode!” I think we got about 10 hours of sleep during that final week of preparation, but by the grace of God we were able to be ready for last Saturday – except for our electricity, which we still did not have connected even though all the permits, inspections, and payments had been completed! It was an asweome experience! With some great help from members of the Uptown church and students from Cebu Bible College, were able to get 9,000 invitation fliers out in to the surrounding neighborhoods. We had a final teachers’ meeting on Friday night, OPEN HOUSE eve, and mapped out the final strategy for the next day. When we left that evening, everything was in place but the electricity, although we heard that the electric company MIGHT be coming on Saturday morning to connect us BEFORE our starting time for the OPEN HOUSE! We all just went home and collapsed into bed and suddenly it was Saturday! We loaded up and left the house. Of course we were running late and so each of us was on a cell phone sending text messages here and calling there to make certain that everything was being taken care of. When we arrived at the office, the electric company truck we hoped for was nowhere to be seen! Our landlord was there with many apologies for failing to get our electricity turned on and we hastily engineered a backup plan; to string a larger-sized wire to the second floor and connect to the landlord's electric meter up there. Jon, Clint, and I immediately set to work on this as time was running away from us. Already, there were people gathering outside our front door waiting to come in! Of course we encountered some difficulty in getting the temporary lines installed and so we had to opened up for visitors without air conditioning. It was hot inside, but people did not seem to mind so much.
With sweat dripping off the end of my nose I was in the back room putting electrical tape on the final splice and preparing to give Jon the "GO signal" to turn on the power upstairs, when Amy rushed in with a BIG smile on her face with the news that the electric company linemen were at the front door and that they were here to connect our electricity! Within 10 minutes all of our struggles and heartaches were a distant memory!
OPEN HOUSE was wonderful! We had a fairly constant flow of visitors all day. Over a hundred people registered in our guest book and twenty-five actually enrolled in classes! We met many people and were encouraged by visits from church members from different congregations here in the city; many of whom were converted in our previous Bible Study Center location. Everything about the day was just amazing! We had prayed for God to give us success in all we had planned and he opened the floodgates for us! When the miracle of the electric connection happened, I felt like things were going to be good, but the actual results were way beyond expectation. As we drove home at the end of the day, I kept thinking of how Paul spoke of God, in Ephesians 3, as being able to do more than we can ask or think! We basically collapsed into bed again and I cannot remember when I slept as hard – as if a great weight had been lifted.
We woke up Sunday to the realization that we were “missionaries” once again instead of construction workers!
At present, we are having enrollment week activities. We are following up on visitors to the OPEN HOUSE and getting ready to distribute more fliers later in the week. We also hope to place some newspaper ads later in the week as well. PLEASE pray for our continued success, and especially that ALL who enroll in classes will attend their classes!
I will try to get an update to you at the end of the first week of classes! In the meantime, we thank all of you for your continued prayers for our success and good health and we appreciate your sacrifices on our behalf so that we can continue working here. Please pray that God will continue to be with us as we begin our teaching efforts in this part of the city!
Grace and Peace to all,
Barry, Shari, Sara & Amy
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