April Prayer Requests

Here comes April! Time for some updated prayer requests and praise reports. As you all know our house sold in March with a big Praise the Lord! We also checked off lots of little things from our "to do" list. We bought our plane tickets - and they came in $3,500 less than we had projected - hooray! (In case you are wondering, we'll be flying out from Amarillo, Texas on Tuesday, June 21.) All of our passports came in the mail. We made a big dent in the shots we have to have. The boys only ended up needing one shot - Willow needed four - and mom and dad stopped counting after a lot of pokes! And we were able to get most of the shots at the Amarillo Health Department for $10 per person! Another answered prayer! Now for April. Y'alls prayers obviously made a HUGE difference in March - so let's keep this ball rollin'. Please pray for the continued Visa process. We are sending all our documentation to the Philippine consulate in L.A. this month. This should help speed up the process for obtaining the appropriate visas once we get to the Philippines.

Please pray for the perfect housing in the Philippines. The directors of NewLife are keeping their eyes/ears open for something appropriate. Our "wish list" in order of importance is (1) location - near the clinic; (2) size - to give us room for our family and to host family/friends; (3) cost - keep it in the budget. Of course we know there are lots of things we haven't thought of - so we're trusting God to take care of those details!

Please pray for the packing process. We've made some great headway on this, but it's getting harder and harder to decide what goes and what stays. We will ship our boxes the end of April. Pray that all our stuff arrives at the clinic in mid-late June safe and accounted for without unforeseen expenses/taxes/charges.

Please pray for sweet times with our friends/family before we make this journey.

Please pray for our kids and us - our protection as we continue to prepare for this journey!

Please pray for all the rest of the details on our "to do" list which is still long and at times overwhelming!

And, please continue to pray for the funding of this journey. Thank you to all who are supporting us financially AND through prayer!

Blessings! Salem

House is Sold!

Do you want to hear a "God story"? Boy howdy, do I have one for you today!

In my last post I talked about how God was really helping out with the details. We were so excited because our Sunday School class was coming to help take care of some house projects to get it ready to put on the market. Well we ended up canceling that party - because we had a gentleman offer to buy our house as is....and he offered to let us stay in our home rent free until we move in June! What a HUGE blessing!

Whether he knows it or not, I consider him an answer to prayer. I've been really concerned about where we were going to live if our house sold before we moved. But, I've also been worried about all the details involved with selling the house. I try not to worry to much, so every time I catch myself getting worked up about something I can't control, I just whisper a little prayer asking God to take care of it better than I could! I would say God showed up - and showed off!

So thank you to the kind couple who bought our house! And, thank you to God for putting it all together!

What a relief! Now on to the rest of the "to do" list!

-Salem

Progress

Good Morning! Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you are wearing green!
I just wanted to take a minute this morning and give a little update on our progress toward the Philippines. We have been so blessed by the hand of God working out little details and big details.

We are thrilled with all of you who have "subscribed" to this blog to follow our adventure. We are nervous about the homesickness we will go through, and having all our friends via the world wide web is helping us feel like we're staying in touch. I think that will be very important down the road a bit!

Paperwork is being processed on passports for the kids and preliminary paperwork for our visas is also getting done. The final part will have to be done in the Philippines.

The directors of the organization we will be working with - NewLife - have been super helpful answering all our random questions, which has made our process of preparing / packing much easier. Speaking of preparing and packing, we are getting a lot done! Everything we ship to the Philippines will have to go out at the end of April to arrive in the Phils when we do in late June. We have been going room by room and sorting everything into ship, store, sell piles. We won't be shipping much as its better to start new there. We have also decided to store only a few sentimental things. Everything else will be sold in a quasi-estate sale in a couple months. It's been really freeing going through this process. Who knew how much our "stuff" weighed us down.

We are also getting our house ready to sell. Our super-awesome Sunday School class and friends are meeting here soon for a work day. We will be painting and patching and other asundry projects to get the house in tip-top condition. We are praying (and hope you will too) that God will line up the perfect people to by our house and the perfect timing as well.

Our parents have really been a blessing too. Helping us with our kids so we can get more done, sorting prayer cards, etc.... We are so blessed!

Stay tuned for Nolan's next post. For those of you who are interested, he'll be detailing more of our journey to this point.

Philippines - Part One

You've heard that, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Well, make that 8,500 miles and you've discovered the "next step" for our family. We are officially moving to the Philippines in June 2011 to work on the mission field.

Before we got married, we agreed that if God ever called us to the mission field, we would be okay with that. We celebrated our 10th anniversary in December, and it is clear to us that God is leading and the time is now.

This journey for us is bitter-sweet, because we feel so blessed right now in where we are in life. God has graciously given us eight amazing years in Perryton with a phenomenal church and youth group that have blessed us in more ways than we could have ever imagined. We are so thankful for all of our family and friends who have touched our lives. And, we are thankful for modern technology that will allow us to stay connected even if we do live on the other side of the earth.

Yet, God has confirmed this "next step" and we are excited about the future as well.

You may be wondering how we made this decision and what we will be doing. About a year ago, we discovered NewLife International - a mission group ministering in the southern Philippines.

NewLife's primary outreach is a charity birthing center called Mercy Maternity that provides compassion based maternal healthcare free of charge to women living in severe poverty conditions. 20,000 patients (prenatal exams) are served each year and 1,500 babies are delivered annually. Mercy is operated by a skilled staff of midwives who are trained in high risk maternity care. The center just celebrated their 15th anniversary in February with the delivery of their 17,000th baby! In addition, Mercy was named "the model birthing center for the entire country" by the Philippine Dept. of Health. This center gives opportunity to minister in not just physical and practical needs; but it also gives opportunity to minister spiritually to each patient and their family during one of the most pivotal times in life.

In addition to this ministry, NewLife operates the largest adventure-based youth camp in the Philippines, comprised of a world-class ropes course and the longest zip line in Asia. It has grown to be one of the most successful youth ministries in the entire country hosting students from all 82 high schools in the Davao City metropolitan area. NewLife also has extensive experience training and equipping national pastors and lay-leaders from all over the Philippines. They estimate a minimum of 100 new church plants as a result of this effort after more than 10,000 pastors and lay-leaders have attended the seminars.

For those of you who know Salem and me, this organization is a natural fit for our family. The type of ministry that we will get to participate in not only fits our personalities, but our passions as well. God took us through a lengthy season of "counting the cost" and we came out of that season sure of His leading in this direction. (For more on that season, see part two of these blog posts - coming soon!)

Our first priority in the Philippines will be Salem's serving at Mercy Maternity. She will begin this very intense, her 2 1/2 year commitment in August and should have an opportunity to minister to hundreds of families and personally deliver close to 100 babies in that time.

I will be taking over the day-to-day operations of the Silvey family. I am excited to be able to spend more time with our children. I will also be taking over the teaching responsibilities of our home school. After we get settled in, I hope to be able to participate in outreach opportunities through NewLife or other ministries, including pastor training and youth outreaches.

This is a journey that only God could have orchestrated, and we have faith that He will complete this next step in our lives. Honestly, it is overwhelming at times, and we need your prayers for our family.

Please pray for us that we would allow God to lead us each day as we make this transition. Our "to do" list is long and our time is short. Pray for the transition of Mpact youth group and Community Worship Center. Pray for our four children as we help them understand this move. Pray for us, our families, and our friends - as we aren't looking forward to leaving everyone on this side of the earth (why don't y'all just all load up and come with us!) And, I'm guessing a few of them might miss us too (or at least their grandkids!) Pray for all the details that must happen – from passports and visas to the sale of our home / personal belongings. Pray for all the things that will need to happen on the Philippine side of the globe – like finding appropriate housing and learning a new culture.

Please pray for NewLife and Mercy Maternity and all the people they minister to. Pray that God would work in and through them, and that many people would come develop a dynamic personal relationship with Jesus because of this ministry. Pray that God would provide for the needs of the people, the ministers, and the ministry.

Please pray that God would provide for all our needs. We have been told that for a family of six we will need to raise around $100,000 ($33,000 per year). This amount includes living expenses, supplies which help operate the birth center, airfare, visas and other miscellaneous costs for the three year period that we are committing to. The Philippine government and NewLife strongly desire that we have a significant portion (about half) of these funds in the bank before our departure date in mid-June.

In addition to your prayers, we hope you'll consider partnering with us financially in ministering to the poor in the Philippines. We are committing a significant amount of our personal assets to this endeavor. But, we can't do it alone!

If 56 people committed to $50 per month for the next three years, our entire goal would be met. If 200 people each gave a $250 gift, the "up-front" amount needed for this journey would be provided. Whether $5 or $5,000, please ask God how He desires you to be a part of helping the poor in the Philippines. Both monthly supporters and one time gifts are helpful. There are several ways to partner with us – you can find the options in the right hand column of this blog under "Support Options." Together, we can make a difference in ministering to the poor and needy.

We hope you'll continue to follow us here on the world wide web. We plan on updating this blog frequently. If you'd like to receive an email notification when this blog is updated, be sure to "subscribe" by entering your email address in the subscribe box at the top of the right hand column! (We are using a secure email service called Feed Blitz to manage this and your email address will remain private! You will not be "spammed".)

I'm sure we've only begun to answer all the questions you may have. But this post is getting rather lengthy. Please feel free to email us, or call, or Facebook. We'd love to visit. Thank you all for your love and friendship. We are feeling very aware of how blessed we are because of the precious relationships in our lives!