January 2021 Prayer Needs from Travis and Natasha Phillips

Dear prayer partners,

We hope you had a merry Christmas, and we wish you a cheerful 2021! Thank you for setting aside time to praise the Lord in prayer and bring our petitions before the throne of grace. As many of you know, the borders to the Philippines have remained closed since March of 2020. Thinking of how this delays the work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting among unreached people groups is a frequent source of discouragement. Living in limbo land, not knowing when we will be able to move our family overseas is often frustrating. But we, time and again, are reminded of God’s love and His sovereignty over the nations. We can trust that His timing and leading are purposeful. We know this will all work out for His glory. One praise is that we reached one of our financial goals: the funds needed for moving our family of 4 to the Philippines, acquiring visas, and setting up our home in the city for our time of trade-language and national culture acquisition has been met! A second praise is that our support team continues to grow (thank you for praying) and we are getting close to being fully funded on a monthly/semi-annual/annual basis to live and minister long-term. A third praise is that my trip to Wisconsin went very well, and I absolutely loved my time with our brothers and sisters in Christ at MKE Lakeside church. They were an encouragement to me, and I hope that I was an encouragement to them as well. Prayer requests: Please pray for the re-opening of the borders to the Philippines. Please pray for wisdom for us as parents, trying to prepare Eleanor for the big transition ahead, and what that will mean in terms of not seeing family face-to-face for years at a time. Please pray for our daily walk with the Lord and our time in God’s word. Please pray that our hearts and minds would be ready for the difficulties and special opportunities of long-term, cross-cultural ministry.

Thank you, again.

With love,

Travis and Natasha