Dear Pastors, Churches & Praying Friends, 
​Thank you so much for your prayers! We have received so many messages, letters, and texts of encouragement the last couple weeks. Jen has been working on a video monthly update, “1MONTH ▶️ 1MIN.” This is a short 1 minute video which shows a compilation of 2 second clips from every day of the month. The plan was to have the video document our deputation, but since Covid19 had us on lockdown in Michigan, our April update is just of our daily life (ENJOY!). Hopefully, May’s video will show us actually on deputation! Please pray that we will be able to confirm church presentations, as this pandemic is making that very difficult. 

Our 1st Presentation & Deputation
At the end of March, I was able to present to Parkview Baptist Church, via video. We are so thankful to have our first presentation at our sending church. Parkview has been so supportive of us and we are so grateful. ​Preaching at a camera was a new experience me. God has been working on me in the area of faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. If we are going to the Philippines to do God’s work, we will have to go by faith. 
We have not had any churches cancel presentations, but most of them have had to be rescheduled. Some churches have yet to give us a date yet, but we are not worried. If God can get Jonah to Nineveh when he didn’t even want to go, we have faith that He will get us the Philippines! In His timing! 


Sold
WE SOLD OUR HOME! When we first announced that we were going to the missions field, we asked everyone to pray about selling our home. We thought that this was going to be the hardest thing, not because we didn’t want to give it up, but because it sat on the market for almost a year before we bought it in 2017. The way our home sold, it was all God! 
Our community had a Facebook page and someone posted that they had a friend who was looking for a home in our specific community & in the specific price range of our home. Jen commented on the post and within hours, she received 3 direct messages from 3 separate people, all interested in our home. This was a Wednesday night. Thursday, a family came over to look at our home. Friday, the inspection happened & Saturday was the appraisal. On Monday, we signed papers. 5 DAYS! 5 days, without even listing!
Our God did that! It was so fast & such an incredible answer to prayer. Currently, we are living in a rental home. It is the home we will be living in until we leave for the Philippines permanently. We went from 5 bathrooms to 1 & we couldn’t be happier! The girls love it & we are so blessed. If you see them during our deputation, ask them if they want to go back to their “Cedarbank” house. Except Ellie, don’t ask Ellie! 

Philippines Missions Trip June2020 & Survey
We still want to go! We are praying that we will be able to go. Our trip was planned for the last week of June. It seems so close, yet so far away. Unfortunately, right now, it’s still a maybe even though we already purchased our plane tickets months ago.
We have been in contact with many missionaries & local pastors there in the Philippines. The country is on a lock-down as well, stricter than what we have here in Michigan & the USA. A friend of ours who we went to Pensacola Christian College with, is a missionary there & recently reported that two of his church members were arrested for trying to buy groceries without a proper pass to be outside of their homes. They have since been released and are doing well.
Now, more than ever, there is a great need in the Philippines both physcially and spiritually. We are preparing & praying that if air travel bans and restrictions are lifted by June, that we will be able to help as much as we can. 

Support & Budget
Thank you so much for giving to us! We cannot thank you enough. Jen and I have been so touched by your sacrifice. Every month, we will include our budget into our Prayer/Newsletter. Please sign up for our e-mailed Newsletter to receive these. We want to be transparent with where funds given to us have been & will be allocated. Central Missionary Clearinghouse only sends us our support updates monthly, so depending on when those are sent out to us, those giving via their “Click & Give” may not be reflected until the next month. 

​      We believe that God has called us to go to the Philippines. This is something that God has been putting on our hearts for a number of years. In 2016, during a missions trip there, a local Filipino pastor pulled Tommy aside and said, "Tom, would you consider coming here to the Philippines full-time?" From that time, we started praying about this. We told the Lord we are willing to go if that's where He wants us, just please make it clear. 

     What started happening is that our desires started to change. God increased our burden for the Philippines and the people there. We loved seeing all that God was doing in the lives of the young people there. Slowly, over time, without even talking about it to each other, God started changing our hearts and our desires for what we want in this life. 
     It was a couple weeks after we came home from another missions trip (although this one was to Germany 2019), that we looked at each other and we both knew. Our hearts were already in the Philippines. We want to go & we want God to be pleased. 
     We did not go to school to become missionaries, so this has been a very humbling experience for us, as there are times where we feel completely inadequate! But in the Bible, when David became king, God said He was the one who "took [David] out of the sheepfolds." That's something that God did. David was just doing the work that he was supposed to be doing. And that's what happened with us! God did the calling and He did the work in our lives. ​