The Mayhugh Newsletter

It’s been a while since our last newsletter and we have lots to share. One reason for the delay is we’ve been contemplating what the new year will hold for us. We’ve now made plans to go back to Hong Kong in late January for a few months. We’re hoping our time in Hong Kong will allow us to take a bit of a break and reconnect with our supporting church. Daniel will be able continue to maintain his role as director of livelihood while away.

FamilyYou may be wondering if our family has had a recent addition. In our last newsletter we were hoping to be matched with a baby for adoption around August. Although we thought we were ready it turned out not to be. We’ve recently found out that some changes are being made to the Philippine law in order to make adoptions more simple. Until those changes are made our case has been put on hold. Although waiting is never easy we appreciate that having a new baby would not have been easy during the busyness of the last 6 months. Although information is a little difficult to find, we don’t expect that there will be a matching within the next few months. If we hear matching’s have resumed, we’re prepared to return early from Hong Kong.

New ICM & Logo (above)It was just over 6 months ago that ICM began refocusing its vision. It’s been intense, exciting, painful, exhausting, joyful and almost any other adjective you can think of. Even if you were well acquainted with ICM’s work in the past, you could be confused with what we’re now up to. Even some of our partnering pastors are having a

challenge catching up with our new programs. The easiest way to understand is by visiting http://caremin.com then click on ‘Programs’. But if you need a quick summary, it’s VHL: Values, Health and Livelihood. All of our community-based programs now include our new VHL curriculum. Every week each recipient receives 1 and a half hours of practical teaching in these areas. Even though we are just 4 months into our new

programs, I can honestly say that the vast majority of our recipients love our new VHL curriculum. It’s simple yet practical teaching which helps them to improve their day to day lives.

VHL: Values

We’ve adopted and slightly modified a local course called Discover. It has similarities with the Alpha course, and is a basic introduction to what Christianity is all about. We think this will be a better fit with our community development approach and look forward to hearing feedback on it in the future. Pastor Dan Mijaris, from Bacolod, is the new Director of Values.VHL: HealthICM is now teaching a UN standard primary health curriculum. Again, we’ve modified it slightly to better serve our clients. Helen Turner, from Australia, is the new Director of Medical.

Daniel’s many roles…As we mentioned in our last newsletter, Daniel had just been asked to be the national director of livelihood. In these 6 month, he co-wrote (with a lot of help from Malcolm Wood) 3 versions of our livelihood

curriculum. The shorter version, for Uplift, has had around 6 or 7 rewrites, because we are learning so much. Daniel’s been able to travel to each of the 5 bases at least twice in the last 6 months and he learned a lot: both the good and the bad. Fortunately, those who received

our 1st edition still have many success stories. One of Daniel’s other roles is managing the Uplift and Leader Care programs in Bohol. As great as it’s been to gain firsthand experience of our programs, he’s realized he can’t do all of his roles adequately. So this past month he’s been training 1 of his staff to oversee the Uplift program.

Photo shootLast month we had the opportunity to meet a new ICM

volunteer photographer. Brian visited Bohol for a weekend to take some pictures of the people who ICM works with. He took some really great shots which can be seen at: www.flickr.com/photos/briyen/collections/ If you want to get an idea of who we work with then take a look.

Christmas TimeAlthough in the Philippines Christmas preparations begin in September (it’s the first ‘ber’ month) it’s just been the last few weeks that everything at ICM has been feeling festive. You can see our photos from the various preschool Christmas parties and of course our Bohol staff party. This year Anna decided to cash in on the festive mood and has been baking cookies to order for the staff. What started as a fun idea quickly turned into a business and we now have 200+ cookies to bake in the last week before Christmas. With an unreliable oven that can only bake 18 at a time, we’re not yet decided if ‘Anna’s Cookies’ will return after the holidays. Another opportunity Anna has had this year is to help our friends

from Unbroken International (www.unbrokeninternational.org) to buy Christmas gifts for disadvantaged kids. Using money raised in the US we were able to buy presents for 37 children and teenagers at a local orphanage. We look forward to delivering them next week.

Hong Kong helpWe are looking forward to catching up with many friends and family while in HK. We are still looking for accommodation for our time there, so if you know anywhere we can housesit / rent for a low price or even for free please contact us. As of now we’re not sure how long we’ll be there but we expect between 1-3 months.

Website?Some of you may have noticed that our website has been down. And that’s because it no longer exists. With

Facebook and our personal blogs, we realized our website wasn’t getting much of our attention so we decided not to renew it and save ourselves $100. For those not yet on Facebook, sorry. We hope these newsletters will keep you updated.

ContactEmail: danielmayhugh@gmail.com annamayhugh@gmail.comPhone: +(63)918-47-65-305Mail: 181E St. Joseph Village, Dampas, Tagbilaran City, Bohol 6300,

Philippines