Thank you for your faithful prayers for our family and church here in Dapitan. I am writing today to ask prayer for two unrelated requests; both are important, but one is a matter of life and death. I’ll start with the more serious of the two.
1. Most of you are familiar with Gary Junker’s situation. He is an American who was falsely accused of taking part in a murder, which took place over nine years ago. Since 2015, he has been unjustly imprisoned here in Dapitan as his case has dragged on and on. Over the last few months, Gary, whom I believe is now 58 years old, has been struggling with a lot of different health issues, but in the last couple of weeks, he has taken a serious turn for the worse. He has begun have breathing attacks, where he simply cannot get enough oxygen. These attacks culminated in a severe attack last night in which he honestly believed that he was going to die. Fortunately, the prison guards recognized the seriousness of the situation and took him to the hospital, and his life was spared. This morning, he had yet another attack around 5:00, and the hospital personnel weren’t sure that he was going to make it through. Gary overheard the nurses asking who would be considered his “next of kin.” They then went on to say that they may not be able to help him in the case of another attack. I saw him at the hospital a few minutes ago, and his spirit was good. I was pleased to see his kind spirit towards the nurses. Even though he and they have a hard time communicating, and he obviously isn’t feeling well at all, his entire attitude was very patient and kind—a wonderful Christian testimony to those at the hospital.
So, please pray for Gary; he’s been through so much in the last nearly nine years since his arrest. For those of you who are less familiar with his story, he went to jail as an unsaved man, but in his time of distress, he began seeking for God. Someone gave him a Bible, and he started reading it and eventually learned the Truth of the Gospel just by reading and studying the Bible. Inside the jail, God saved his soul and changed his life! Please pray that God would work in and through this current situation, and please pray that God would soon bring a right and proper decision from the judge regarding his case!
2. After writing the previous two paragraphs, my second request feels very small, but it is so clearly a Satanic attack that I feel I should go ahead and request prayer cover from our friends. Probably everyone reading this is aware of the tremendous blessing God gave us last year in allowing us to purchase a large piece of property directly across the street from our church. The way God provided the funds for the property was nothing short of miraculous! Since purchasing the property, God has continued to bless us financially, and on April 3, we were able to begin the process of filling in the large pond that takes up nearly one-third of the property. At the beginning, I didn’t think we would have enough money to finish the entire pond, but as I watched the progress and ran the numbers, it became increasingly evident that God had given us exactly what we would need to finish the pond and maybe even a little extra to fill in some other low spots on the property. THEN . . . EVERYTHING CAME TO A SCREECHING HALT LAST WEEK WHEN THE GOVERNOR OF OUR PROVINCE, WITHOUT WARNING, SIMPLY SHUT DOWN ALL THE QUARRIES IN OUR AREA!
I still don’t know what “official reason” is being given for this decision, but everyone in our province who has two eyes and half a brain knows that it is a political move. There is still one quarry open, and it JUST HAPPENS to have affiliations with a particular family whose name I will not mention. Unfortunately for us, that particular quarry doesn’t have the kind of fill dirt that we need, though I wouldn’t really want to give them my business anyway.
As of right now, we’ve finished about one-third of the pond, and all of a sudden, we are in limbo, just waiting to see if the quarries will reopen so that the company filling in our pond can finish the job. We have been in Dapitan for over 6½ years, and this is the first time that the political intrigue of our area has affected us directly. Please pray that God would intervene on our behalf. There is a chance we
could find another quarry somewhere farther away, but that, of course, would drive up the price per truckload due to the additional fuel costs—a very frustrating prospect indeed!
So, please pray. Pray for Gary. Pray that God would show Himself strong on his behalf and for our property. Pray that God would intervene and allow us to go forward with the project so that we can make full use of our new property.
Thank you in advance for praying.
Yours for souls,
Mike Morrissey
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- The portion of the pond that has already been filled
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- The dirt ramp that had to be built in order for the trucks and other heavy equipment to reach the pond
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- The remaining area of the pond still needing to be filled
