GO! You Are Sent!

Happy World Missions Sunday! This week we celebrate the Great Commission of Jesus to His Church, to go forth and make disciples of all nations! It’s great to be a missionary, and it’s great to have all of you praying, supporting, and cheering us on in this work we’re doing together. Go, team, go!!

To commemorate this week, here is the LONG overdue blog post about the big, awesome, exciting thing that’s been keeping us busy since August 1. Drumroll, please….

We’ve been training full time FMC missionaries!! Filipinos!! In the Philippines!!

Meet the Mardoquios!

Junar and Dian are in their early 20s and well onto the road of parenthood with three cuties of their own, Justin (3), Drizzle (2), and Abigail (9 months), as well welcoming Dian’s brother, Christian (12), as one of their own. We met them in 2012 when their house in Isla Bonita was damaged by a flood, and Junar quickly became Sammy’s right hand man for work projects, his translator, and best friend. Avid blog readers may remember that Sammy has written about Junar twice before, here in 2012 and here last year. They are bold, generous, and passionate missionaries who will spend their first year serving God and his people on Camiguin Island! Here they are on the FMC website and check out their compelling call to missions video below!

Meet the Leaños!

Or maybe you already have, back in the day in this post or in a million other posts because they’ve been working with us for so long already! In fact many of you already follow their blog and support their ministries…thank you!! Kring and Ramon have been full time missionaries for almost three years and are so excited to have finally received their formal training. Together with their kids, Rham (4), Laress (3), and newborn baby Zephaniah, they are making preparations now to leave the Philippines for mission abroad in the next few months, as soon as they can process baby Z’s passport and apply for visas. The country they’re headed to is hostile to Christianity, so I won’t post it here, but you can shoot me an email (romerosonmission@gmail.com) or sign up for their printed newsletter for all the info! So excited to send these passionate, generous evangelists to the unreached!!

God is so very, very good. Looking back on our four years here, it’s hard to think of much that makes it all worth it more than discipling, training, and sending these two families out into mission. THEY ARE INCREDIBLE! They’ve kept me going so often when it was hard and I wanted to quit. They’ve called me on. They’ve inspired me, challenged me, and taught me what it means to follow the Lord…to sacrifice, to have faith, to give, and to love. And I know as they leave Malaybalay and head out to wherever God calls them, that they will win the world for Jesus!

This week, in celebration of World Missions Sunday, won’t you say a prayer for these new missionaries and for all who toil in the vineyard for souls?