We hope that your Thanksgiving holiday was a happy and safe one. We had a house full of people with us and a very large bird!
We have continued to be very busy with classes. As I write, we are entering the final week of the session and things are racing along at a fast pace! That second course in the series I mentioned in the last report, Jesus: Lord of Our Lives, is becoming very interesting. Of the twelve students who started, only eight remain. However, it seems that the ones who dropped out had schedule changes in their daily activities that prevented them from attending classes in the evenings and so we are hoping that their schedules will shift again after the New Year allowing them to return to class.
The ones who remain are struggling greatly in their hearts. Jesus: Lord of Our Lives is a course that presents the Gospel to people who are not yet Christians. After a brief review of “Jesus: Man” we go directly into a study about SIN and its consequences. Then we proceed through a study of the ‘Scheme of Redemption’ and of how God used TWO AGREEMENTS to bring about his PLAN for saving people from sin. Then we do a research project through about seventy passages looking for details of instructions from God about HOW a person can receive Jesus’ BLOOD into their life. Then we do individual topical studies on each of the five major instructions that come from that research project. These studies provide a basic overview of the New Agreement. The course closes with a look at the ‘LORDSHIP’ of Jesus and at what the concept of ‘LORD’ meant to people living during the time of the New Testament. We close the course out with a study of the ‘Great Commission’ showing that God wants everyone to become his children so he can put us all to work helping others to learn what we have learned. We end with a review of everything and a challenge to do whatever is necessary to make their lives right with God! It is quite a journey but so far everyone is doing great! Lord willing, we will have a Graduation Party for the students this coming Saturday. Please pray that they will be honest and open as they make the final few hills of this journey!
We have continued to develop the textbook for the course as we go and the students have consistently done their homework and made good scores on the test questions. We are planning to take the textbook for the second course and put it into correspondence course format, just as we did the first course. This will give us the potential to study with people all over the country! We are especially excited about the possibility of printing these course and using them to help train Christians to share their faith with the lost!
We recently began is a Saturday class for local children of our neighborhood. It is our first time to do something like this and we decided to do it because there are so many young kids living close by the Bible Study Center. The first segment of our program will be completed this week and we are planning a small gathering this Saturday to attempt to get the parents of the children who have attended to come visit our Center. Our long range goal is to study with the parents. The kids are so sweet and most are eager to learn. Please pray for the success of our efforts
Just after Thanksgiving, we had a real treat! Shari’s Dad, Ken Wilkey, joined us in a work project at the Bible Study Center. It was a treat because usually he is so booked with work in other parts of the country that when he comes to see us he needs to rest. This visit was different because we had requested him to work a seminar for our students into his schedule. It was the first time we had THREE generations of our family working together in a project! It was so neat too be part of that! Dad held a three session seminar on the books of 1 & 2 Thessalonians! The attendance averaged more than twenty per session and the things he discussed fit very well into what the students were getting in their classes. We plan to make this a regular item on Dad’s work agenda!
We are facing our first major dilemma at our new Bible Study Center! A dear co-worker for the past six years is about to die! I am speaking about our copying machine, the workhorse of our team! We got it from the Xerox company, and they gave us a monthly maintenance program that kept it in good condition and repaired anything that went wrong. However, in October of 2005, we were informed that the maintenance would stop due to the phasing out of our model and unavailability of spare parts! We were left with no choice but to use it until it could not be fixed! About two months ago, we started losing various small systems and one by one, the main features we have relied upon to support our printing needs, like the document feeder and duplex copying, stopped working. Now we find that several motors that move paper around inside the belly of the machine are gone and one of the main motors that ejects the paper has stopped working, forcing us to manually catch and pull each copy out of the machine one at a time! We need a new machine!
Xerox will take our machine as a trade-in and give us a discount on a new one. The cost of a new machine that will do what we need is just under $4,700.00. It will handle all our projected needs in terms of number of copies per month and features. It has a document feeder, does duplex printing, and it does automatic collating. This means that we can load the master copies of a 30-page course booklet, set it for twenty copies, press the START button, and come back in twenty minutes to find twenty copies in the paper tray collated and ready to be bound!
WE REALLY NEED THIS MACHINE! However, we do not have the money. Many of you often think about possible ways that you might help us but are uncertain about what we need. Here is a good project and a good opportunity for your help! This machine will equip us to print many copies of our lesson material and correspondence course booklets quickly, and yet do so in quantities that will not cause storage (and pest control) problems! If you can help fund this purchase, please contact us! In the meantime, please pray that we will find the money we need as soon as possible.
As a family, we are doing pretty well. There are no major illnesses to speak of! We are about to take our annual 2-week ‘vacation’. It will not be too relaxing though because we plan to do a lot of work on our house. Believe it or not, we have not completely finished the house we built seven years ago! We thank all of you who labor to keep us here in the Philippines. We could not be here without your support and for that we are grateful to the Lord. May HE give us good health and courage to face the coming year with more determination to serve him!
Love and Peace!
Barry, Shari, Sara & Amy
PS - We had a very interesting experience a week and a half ago. As you may recall, we are located across the highway from a mosque. Well, a representative from the mosque visited us at the Center one afternoon and said that they wanted us to know that they really appreciate our work, that they are glad we are here in the neighborhood, and that they have nothing against Christians. That was a nice gesture!
We have continued to be very busy with classes. As I write, we are entering the final week of the session and things are racing along at a fast pace! That second course in the series I mentioned in the last report, Jesus: Lord of Our Lives, is becoming very interesting. Of the twelve students who started, only eight remain. However, it seems that the ones who dropped out had schedule changes in their daily activities that prevented them from attending classes in the evenings and so we are hoping that their schedules will shift again after the New Year allowing them to return to class. 
The ones who remain are struggling greatly in their hearts. Jesus: Lord of Our Lives is a course that presents the Gospel to people who are not yet Christians. After a brief review of “Jesus: Man” we go directly into a study about SIN and its consequences. Then we proceed through a study of the ‘Scheme of Redemption’ and of how God used TWO AGREEMENTS to bring about his PLAN for saving people from sin. Then we do a research project through about seventy passages looking for details of instructions from God about HOW a person can receive Jesus’ BLOOD into their life. Then we do individual topical studies on each of the five major instructions that come from that research project. These studies provide a basic overview of the New Agreement. The course closes with a look at the ‘LORDSHIP’ of Jesus and at what the concept of ‘LORD’ meant to people living during the time of the New Testament. We close the course out with a study of the ‘Great Commission’ showing that God wants everyone to become his children so he can put us all to work helping others to learn what we have learned. We end with a review of everything and a challenge to do whatever is necessary to make their lives right with God! It is quite a journey but so far everyone is doing great! Lord willing, we will have a Graduation Party for the students this coming Saturday. Please pray that they will be honest and open as they make the final few hills of this journey! 
We have continued to develop the textbook for the course as we go and the students have consistently done their homework and made good scores on the test questions. We are planning to take the textbook for the second course and put it into correspondence course format, just as we did the first course. This will give us the potential to study with people all over the country! We are especially excited about the possibility of printing these course and using them to help train Christians to share their faith with the lost! 
We recently began is a Saturday class for local children of our neighborhood. It is our first time to do something like this and we decided to do it because there are so many young kids living close by the Bible Study Center. The first segment of our program will be completed this week and we are planning a small gathering this Saturday to attempt to get the parents of the children who have attended to come visit our Center. Our long range goal is to study with the parents. The kids are so sweet and most are eager to learn. Please pray for the success of our efforts 
Just after Thanksgiving, we had a real treat! Shari’s Dad, Ken Wilkey, joined us in a work project at the Bible Study Center. It was a treat because usually he is so booked with work in other parts of the country that when he comes to see us he needs to rest. This visit was different because we had requested him to work a seminar for our students into his schedule. It was the first time we had THREE generations of our family working together in a project! It was so neat too be part of that! Dad held a three session seminar on the books of 1 & 2 Thessalonians! The attendance averaged more than twenty per session and the things he discussed fit very well into what the students were getting in their classes. We plan to make this a regular item on Dad’s work agenda! 
We are facing our first major dilemma at our new Bible Study Center! A dear co-worker for the past six years is about to die! I am speaking about our copying machine, the workhorse of our team! We got it from the Xerox company, and they gave us a monthly maintenance program that kept it in good condition and repaired anything that went wrong. However, in October of 2005, we were informed that the maintenance would stop due to the phasing out of our model and unavailability of spare parts! We were left with no choice but to use it until it could not be fixed! About two months ago, we started losing various small systems and one by one, the main features we have relied upon to support our printing needs, like the document feeder and duplex copying, stopped working. Now we find that several motors that move paper around inside the belly of the machine are gone and one of the main motors that ejects the paper has stopped working, forcing us to manually catch and pull each copy out of the machine one at a time! We need a new machine! 
Xerox will take our machine as a trade-in and give us a discount on a new one. The cost of a new machine that will do what we need is just under $4,700.00. It will handle all our projected needs in terms of number of copies per month and features. It has a document feeder, does duplex printing, and it does automatic collating. This means that we can load the master copies of a 30-page course booklet, set it for twenty copies, press the START button, and come back in twenty minutes to find twenty copies in the paper tray collated and ready to be bound! 
