January 2022 Prayer Needs from Travis and Natasha Phillips
Visas and Plane Tickets!
On Saturday we received our passports in the mail with our visas (with entry exemptions) "stamped" inside! This was such a relief, especially in the midst of the ever-changing border policies. We purchased plane tickets to the Philippines a few weeks ago (this was necessary in order to obtain visas). The Lord provided wonderfully for these tickets that had tripled in cost since February of 2020. Please pray we have 4 negative covid test results two days prior to flying and again a few days after arriving in the Philippines. Our quarantine hotel is booked as well!
Transition and House to Rent
On December 29 we will be moving out of the home we've been renting for the last 18 months. We're thankful that we have missionary housing to stay in our first week of January before flying overseas. We will be staying in hotels and guesthouses until we're able to move in to our own home that we will rent in our future home city. Please pray for the Lord's guidance in choosing a home to rent. We are already in this process! For security reasons, we don't provide specific geographical details in these emails, but feel free to text or call us if you want to know more :)
December 7th was Natasha's final day of teaching at Women's Bible Study. She spoke on "Joy" and "Love" in the context of the birth of Jesus.
December 14th will be our final Bisaya language session of 2021. In this session our language consultant (Kuya Wendel, pictured above) will tell us his life story (in Bisaya) and we'll get to ask questions to clarify what he is telling us. Kuya Wendel has been an amazing teacher for us. He will continue to oversee our language studies when we arrive in the Philippines.
Praise: Happy New Year! We have been very busy moving out of our apartment, giving things away, selling things, and sorting belongings into store/take “piles.” We handed the keys to the landlord on 12/31, and it is good to have all that off our shoulders. We are thankful for the opportunity two Sundays ago to speak at ABC and to say “See you in a while” to many dear believers. Praise the Lord that all this has gone well, and we’ve had many friends and family helping out in a variety of ways these past couple of weeks.
Praise the Lord also for our coworkers who just received their entry exemptions! This was amazing news to hear and encouraged our hearts that we will get to see them soon.
Prayer: We have to get tested for Covid on January 9 prior to flying, so our big prayer requests are for accurate, negative test results and for safety in travel to the Philippines!
Please pray for all of our goodbyes to family and friends here. It’s a very difficult situation to walk through and to process with our young kids. Please pray for the Lord's grace in all the details of moving overseas.
Thank you!