August  13, 2008
Palawan, Philippines

Last Monday night as Kent, Dyilin and I were driving back from yet another exhausting trip to Puerto, we talked about our difficulties and became discouraged.  We wondered where was God in all of this? When would God break through and get things off dead center?  Have you ever felt that way, wishing God would just do something, anything!!?

We've had many hardships this last year due to the death of our landlord .  It is a complicated situation, but in short:  Our landlord,  Jack, had a son,  Danny who was working abroad to earn the money to build a nice compound that would produce income for his father in his old age.  This compound consists of a cement house and a smaller duplex of bamboo and cement.  As a gift to his father, Danny put the house in his father's name, so he could realize the income from it, knowing that at the death of his father the property was willed back to him.  As misfortunes go, Jack had a stroke.  Since Danny was still overseas, his sisters Mary Jane and Liza were overseeing the affairs of their father.  Needing intensive, special care after his stroke, the girls called on a relative from a neighboring town to come and help them with their father, as there were no facilities to care for patients with such needs.  This relative, Norma by name, came bringing lots of other people with her.  During Jack's short convalescence and continual decline, Norma had a retired attorney draw up a Deed of Donation, and the son of the attorney (that's right, he was NOT an attorney himself) oversaw the secret signing and notarizing of the document by a semi-comatose Jack. The document stated that the house and property were being given as a gift to Norma.

We come into the picture, because we were renting the cement house and Norma and her cronies were “squatting” in the duplex. After Jack's death, Norma promptly came to us, telling us that the property was now hers and all rent was to be paid only to her. But the document they showed us was dated just one day before the death of Jack and as such, we questioned its validity. They left to ponder this new problem and returned a week later with the problem solved. They had whited out the date and typed in a new date which was more believable. The original owners also questioned the validity of these documents and we realized that it would be best for us to vacate the premises, however, we were not in a position to immediately move, as we were just too busy, and there was no readily available or suitable property to move to.  Well, as time went on the harassment began, but we weathered it and continued to pay the rent to the rightful owner, Danny until the present time.

Danny has taken Norma to court and the court case is expected to last at least five years, though everything is looking very favorable to Danny winning the case. It has been over one year now, and even though the case is in the court and neither of them are to take things into their own hands, Norma is getting desperate. Two weeks ago they sent us a letter endorsed by a former political leader, who is known to be definitely of the criminal element.  This letter stated that we were to start paying Norma double the rent that we'd been paying Danny and that it was payable immediately.  So we knew the time had come to move somewhere else immediately as she was obviously more determined to try and go above the courts and through harassment and intimidation attempt to extort money out of us. But as things go, just as we'd find a lead on an available house, the owners would report that they'd just signed a contract with someone else.  This went on and on.

Then we had to go to Puerto for another adoption hearing.  That was last Friday afternoon and since the hearing went until late Friday afternoon, we couldn't make it home in time for Sabbath. We also had more business to do the following week, so we ended up staying in the area and did not arrive back to Brooke's Point (where the house is) until late Monday night.  We'd had a peaceful and restful Sabbath out in nature and it had been the first truly relaxing time we'd had in months.  The Lord knew we needed it.  For when we arrived home Monday night at 9 pm, we found the outside gate locked and a gang of young people threatening us and laughing at us.  And no way would they open the gate.  After spending until midnight at the police station, trying to figure out a way to get in, we decided to find another room in town for the night and tackle the problem on Tuesday.  Tuesday, we spent all day looking at leads on houses for rent with the same results as before – no openings.  We also spent copious amounts of time at the police station and in the Mayor's office trying to get help.

Come to find out the police won't go into a place locked up like that.  They were afraid of possible consequences to themselves.  They knew that they are liable to be sued and there is no governmental body prepared to back their policemen and they'd be out the lawsuit money and also out of a job – so understandably it is too great a risk.  If there is violence, then they said they would come, but no way would they go over and keep the peace, while we tried to get in.  Well, the landlord, Danny, and Kent decided to go on over and see if they could just jump the fence,and get into the house anyway since, of course, we had our keys.  It was then that they found that the squatters had installed their own hasps and padlocks on our house!  We were locked out of our house.  We tried negotiating with them again, but they would not budge unless we paid them over 65,000 pesos in back rent (remember that our rent is current and paid to Danny, NOT Norma!).  

Amazingly, by a miracle, we were in a new house by that evening. It is much smaller, but what a breath of fresh air to have a place where one feels relatively private and safe.  How did we find the place, after searching in vain all day?  The last visit we paid to the police, we once again explained our homelessness and they suggested we try a pension house in a neighboring area. Thinking that they intended that we would find a room to pay by the night, we went and found a newly built two-bedroom, furnished house for tourists to use. The owners agreed to rent to us by the month and we agreed on a price (much lower than they'd get nightly, but much higher than we had been paying to Danny for a much larger house). So, we finally had a place to unload our truck from the Puerto trip, a place to cook a simple meal on a borrowed charcoal stove, using borrowed charcoal-and-oil-coated pans, serving it onto one dinner plate, one saucer and a pan lid!!  That is all there was! But we were grateful to have anything at that point.  

Boy, oh boy!  Did God ever get things off center!!  We had a place to lay our heads, but we didn't have any of our belongings. We had only a few changes of clothes from our weekend weekend trip and fortunately our computers which contain very important work which we would hate to lose, but everything else was in that locked-up house.  Frustrating?  Yes!  Feeling helpless?  Yes!  Feeling hopeless?  No!  God was in control and He was able to work out the details.

The next day, Danny, the real landlord, finally broke into the house, and then we stood up to the gang, went in and with the help of fellow missionaries and our Palawano friends, we moved most everything out of that house in one day.  Everything except the motorcycle and refrigerator, had to be hauled out over a five-foot high cement wall, into a sea of mud on the other side (because they were doing road work outside the fence, which had diverted the neighbors cesspool, and the contents had formed a stagnant pool outside the wall) and into the truck.  What a mess!!  The house we moved to, is much smaller and inadequate for our team needs, but it will do while we continue to seek God's guidance in acquiring appropriate housing.  

The same week that we were going through these trials, we received word that my father had passed away.  Procuring a ticket for my to return to the states was a miracle of God. The following morning the challenge was to get everything into the new house and off the front porch where it wasn't secure. We worked all day and through the night, finishing the task at 4:30 A.M. We left for Puerto Princesa at 5:00 AM, just in time for me to catch the flight to Manila and on to the USA. Kent remained in Palawan with our daughter, who is still not cleared for travel to the USA.

You can see that there have been many trials and temptations to be discouraged.  Please continue to pray on our behalf as we go through these potentially disheartening experiences that they will build our faith and trust instead.