Happy New Year! (A bit delayed, yes :) )

Howdy! It has been a long time since I last wrote! Life is pretty crazy, which is normal for us. We are busy preparing for furlough and have already bought our tickets! Ah! As exciting as this is it is amazing to think that I am finishing up my first tour as a full-fledged missionary! I've had a lot of fun and am ready for the next round :).

We have ended three sessions since I last wrote! Session 6 ended in September of last year. My student Mickeevinth Singcol decided, on September 8th after our last class meeting, that he wanted to be immersed! I was so excited! At our graduation we had Kiven, as well as many of his friends and neighbors which are also members of our youth group. When Session 7 started these neighbors and relatives; namely Jay Gulleban, Frechly Fernan, Syril Rago, and Gaddiel Puzon, joined our course Jesus: Lord of Our Lives and at the end of Session 7 decided to be immersed as well! It’s amazing to me to see this happen because not too long ago they were visitors at our Youth fellowship who our kids invited and now they are brothers and sisters! We have been so blessed!

Enrollment week for Session 7 brought another seminar. This seminar was taught by Clint and was on the topic of Bible study. We feel that as the Bible was written in a language that all people can read and understand everyone should In Session 7 I was given the opportunity to teach our course Jesus: Man of the Bible with Amy. This was Amy’s first time to teach this course, so I was excited to be a part of it. We had a large group of students, mostly new students who we had never met till our seminar for enrollment week. Vincent Eslawan, Aimee Serrano, Iriza Davide, Neil Sayago, Roynell Lanante, Gemlie Canales, Purisa Mancio and Dominic Vitualla joined Ronnie Feller and Vince Ligutom, a member who was retaking the course. Unfortunately this number dwindled due to the fact that some students left the city for work and other reasons relating to lack of time to study. At the end of Session 7 we had four graduates at graduation on October 30, Ronnie Feller, Vince Ligutom, Neil Sayago and Vincent Eslawan. I enjoyed teaching with Amy, she is an excellent teacher. It is an interesting experience being the senior teacher in a class, though :).

In the middle of December Ronnie’s sister Krystle and father Ron came over to visit with us. Amy and I had the pleasure of keeping Krystle while she was here and we had a blast showing her around this city she has heard so much about. While they were here they helped Ronnie and RJ renovate the new apartment they are renting which is across the road and around the corner from the BSC.

In Session 8 I taught the follow up course to Jesus: Man of the Bible called Jesus: Lord of Our Lives to my four graduates. I ended up having only two graduates at the end of the session, Ronnie and Vincent. We finished classes on December 15 and held our graduation on the 18th. A fitting end for our sessions of 2010. Please keep all our students in your prayers!

Right before break Rachael and Clint gave us some big news: they are expecting another baby! We were all a little bit shocked but super excited! Rachael is due around the beginning of August this year. Please keep her and the baby in your prayers.

With the end of Session 8 came our Christmas vacation! We were all just a little excited about this as you may imagine :) We started out our holiday with a trip to Negros Island where my parents have a little land with a mango plantation on it. We had a lot of fun relaxing and Sean and Andrew enjoyed running around. I don’t think we’ve ever brought them to a place with so much room to roam! We left for Negros on the 21st and returned on the 23rd. After that we did some cleaning and then Amy, Krystle and I went to stay with Mom and Dad and later everyone else followed us. We had quite a full house. We spent most of the first week with them relaxing and making cookies but the second week we got started on some building work Mom and Dad had been planning. We had plenty of hands to help which made everything go quickly. Dad and I worked on some cabinets in the master bathroom made out of cedar which, in my own humble opinion, turned out beautiful! While we were at my parents’ house we were all able to share in the beginning of 2011! It’s funny to think about how many “New Years” I’ve experienced in my 21 years in this world. I pray that all is well with you and your families and that this year will bring many more blessings for us all!

After the work at Mom and Dad’s was done we all went home for a little rest until we started renovations at the BSC. On Monday, January 3 we all showed up at the center at 9 AM ready to get some work done! We repainted all the walls, tiled some floor, built some desks, painted the outside front of the center, replaced some signs and did some MAJOR cleanup afterwards! We estimated that the renovations would take only one week but ended up working right through our seminar January 19-21. We were just a little bit stressed about this, but God brought us all through.

Our seminar for Session 1 of 2011 held January 19-21 was titled Jesus Established One Church and Now There Are 38,000 and Counting. Can this be from God? and was taught by Dad. We had over 50 people attend, which is a record for us! Unfortunately we weren’t able to get all of our attendees to enroll in classes, but we have contact with them now and will, Lord willing, get them in the future.

Our kid's class attendance was starting to dwindle nearing the end of 2010, so we decided we needed to do something in order to get more students. We distributed flyers and have been telling the kids around the neighborhood about our class. We ended our last session in 2010 with about 20 kids! Since we restarted our classes in 2011 we have had plenty of kids join us and we are praying for more. Please keep this in your prayers as well.

Pertaining to our seminars, may I invite you to see what they’re all about! We videotape all of our seminars and videos.biblestudycenter.net and click on a link for any of our seminars from the past few years. Maybe you’ll learn something new!

We are currently 20 days away from furlough and excited! We are also really nervous. We have had a shortage on the support we expected this tour due to the fact that certain supporters have dropped out because of financial difficulties. As of today I am short around $1,500 of my support for the duration of this tour. Yikes! I’m not the only one who is having trouble, Amy and my parents also have had this. This is pretty crazy actually because we’ve never experienced anything like this before. Please keep us in your prayers. We need to raise funds to replace this deficit in addition to funds for our next tour.

On a lighter note we are excited to see everyone! We leave for the US on March 8th and arrive in the morning of the 9th. Lord willing we will be stateside until June 9th. Please keep our safety during our trip and our fundraising in your prayers. Also please continue to pray for the efforts of our team that we leave behind.

Thanks for your continued interest and prayers, as well as your friendship. God bless you! If you would like to visit while we are in the US, please send me a note and let me know, we’d be glad to see you! Until then, please keep our work, our health and safety and our sanity in your prayers! :)

In him,
Sara Murrell