Dear All: Sorry we have not put out many updates lately. Not too many exciting things are happening here in Colorado. The announcement that Courtney (Our oldest daughter) will have a baby around the middle of May is the most exciting thing that has happened recently. He will be our first grandchild.
Besides that, Robby and I have been helping out at our Home Church here in Westminster, Colorado. We help out with the 50+ Seniors Group, we teach Sunday School, lead a Small Group Bible Study and work with the Security Team. We are also working on our Biblical Counseling certification.
Recently in our Small Group a Godly woman told us this story. Connie is out of work at the present time and has been unable to find a job. She decided that she would volunteer for Hospice. This is an organization that offers care to those who are terminally ill and have only a short time to live. Connie was undecided if she should volunteer when they told her she could not share her faith. After praying about it and receiving further clarification that if someone asked her, she could share with them, she volunteered.
Her first encounter with a terminally ill patient is the following story.
Judith was praying for her children’s salvation. She prayed, “Lord, why are you not doing anything? Every time I share with my children about Christ, they are not listening.” The Lord told her, “Just wait”. She continued to pray for her children. A while later, her prayer was still the same. “Lord, what are you doing? My children still are not listening to me”. The Lord answered, “Trust me”. Judith continued praying for her children. She asked the Lord again, “Please move my children’s hearts to you Lord”. The Lord answered Judith. “You need a new language”. Judith was puzzled by this response. A few days later her doctor told her she had terminal cancer. Judith realized that this was her new language. Her children are now listening to her. She is grateful for her new language.
Judith is failing fast. Please pray for Judith’s children, that their hearts would be opened and they will trust in Christ as their Savior.
May each of you have a joyous Christmas. Remember, Christ is the reason for the season. We are grateful for your prayers and support. May the Lord bless you and keep you in this coming New Year.
Together in Him, Leon, Robby, Courtney, Mike and Greg Junk
Dear All: Some of you may remember that it was about a year ago that we shared a story of Fredo giving fruit to the missionaries in his tribe because he read in the bible that it is more blessed to give than receive. We would like to share another story of this mans' faith.
It's squid fishing time in a small Tagbanwa village in the Philippines. At night, the ocean looks
like a small city as the many fishermen try to attract the squid with their bright lights. The
fishermen labor all night to catch the squid. If the catch is good, they take it to the next village
and sell it. Many nights they catch so little that the squid doesn't even pay for the gas in their
boat engine.
One night, Freddo and his son were heading out for a night of fishing. Freddo is a new believer
and the father of 11 children. He is a hard worker and seeks to provide for his family. His eldest
daughter has been chosen by the family to get an education in the city. They hope she will be
able to get a better job and a better life, and also help support their family.
This particular night Freddo was praying as he walked to the beach. His daughter needed a lot of money to take her
graduation exam. Freddo didn't have the money. The amount was almost a full month's wage, a lot of money for a
simple rice farmer and fisherman. Freddo knew that God controlled the squid and the sea. As he prepared to fish he
asked God to provide the catch he needed to help his daughter.
Freddo and his son pushed their small boat into the surf, but the motor refused to start. He tried, and tried again, but it
was broken. Freddo wondered if he should go home. Then he realized that God doesn't need a motor. He found a
paddle and slowly made his way out to the fishing area.
Some of the other fishermen laughed as Freddo slowly paddled along. But soon, the laughter stopped. The motorless
boat had the biggest catch of the night. Freddo and his son struggled to paddle all the way to the next village to sell
their catch. But Freddo didn't care. As they slowly paddled home, the father thanked God that he would receive almost
the exact amount his daughter needed for school. God had provided the squid. And for the next three nights Freddo had
the best catches of anyone.
Freddo is an awesome reminder to us all that God honors and answers faithful prayer.
We had the privilege of returning to Palawan one last time before coming back to the states. We have gotten very close to these wonderful families during on ministry on Palawan. They have had many struggles as they have tried to build relationships and learn the language and culture of the Agutaynen people. This work was started in 2002. Through many sicknesses including cancer, loss of partners, struggles with tribal people and economic hardship, they have survived with God's help. They are now ready to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to these needy people.
In the background you can see the new meeting hall being built. It is just a simple structure to keep off the sun and rain. They hope to have 150 people come to hear the good news. At this time, we ask for your earnest prayers. That the Lord would open the hearts and minds of these people to His Word. That they would understand and believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for their sins and He rose again, so they could be with Him in heaven.
Robby and I are especially joyful to see this finally happen. There were times when it seemed impossible, but we know nothing is impossible with God. We feel we had a small part in serving and encouraging these missionaries along the way. Thank you for your part in praying and supporting us and those who supported these missionary families. In God's economy we all had a part and will receive our reward here or in heaven.
Please remember to pray. Please print this email out and stick it on your refrigerator. They will start teaching the first week of June. We will keep you updated. God Bless, Leon, Robby and Greg Junk
This edited letter below gives a picture of one of the current works that some fellow missionaries are working in. The account describes very early teaching to a new tribe. When the letter was written the people didn’t yet know that Adam did go ahead and eat of the tree. Since then they have heard, and the knowledge of their separation from God is now making them feel very worried and hopeless. You can imagine the joy they will have when they hear in a few weeks that God sent a Deliverer who has paid for their sins.
We want to thank you for your faithful support during these hard times. We continue to need and appreciate your prayers for us as we go about our lives here in the Philippines. It is great to have a part in what God is doing.
Together in Christ,
Leon, Robby and Greg Junk
“When we die will we go to heaven or not? We don’t know. We still have our tribal customs and we also (do other religious things). Is it right that this is the way to God? We don’t know. Please, all of us have heard about the literacy school and Bible teaching. Many have died and many are still waiting and crying for this teaching. Please reply quickly and tell us, when will we hear in our village? We had heard stories about the literacy school and went to see for ourselves. We saw people who had not been to school could now write stories and it shook our thinking (blew us away). We didn’t eat and we couldn’t sleep. We heard that this school goes ahead of hearing God’s talk. Please write and tell us when this teaching will come to us.”
There are about 3,000 souls in this tribe, and this letter came a month ago from another village. It will not be us but, Lord willing, tribal believers who will go there later. Praise the Lord for how He is preparing future villages for His word!
The fields are white unto harvest. Our mission leaders have files full of letters from tribal groups asking for missionaries.
After just three weeks of foundational teaching on God’s character and His creation, it has been AMAZING to see how much information the villagers have absorbed and accepted.
Gardening for food is part of daily life here and so the creation of Eden was very meaningful. They heard how everything God made was good and talked a lot about how beautiful it must have been. On Tuesday after hearing about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, an old man exclaimed, “Adam must not eat from that tree!” After hearing that we are ALL descendents of Adam, the missionary asked the question. “Is it true that I am a dead ancestor come back and that is why my skin is a different color?” This was the answer. “That is what we thought before, but now we know you are just like us. We have one ancestor, Adam”.
Both men and women were thanking God for making Eve. However, heads started to go down (a sign of feeling guilty) as some men thought about how they had gone against God’s plan for one man to marry and live with one woman. A man raised his hand in the middle of the meeting and said, “I have really gone against God’s way. I am in trouble. What can I do about my sin problem?” “That is what we have come to tell you about,” was the answer he was given. Just last week we asked you to pray for a conviction of sin to fall. It is starting to happen. God is answering your prayers!!
People are commenting, “Our ancestors did not know this story, and we have been following ways that were wrong. Thank you for coming. Thank you for bringing this talk. For so long we have lived without hearing it.”
HELLO TO ALL: FAITH ACADEMY DOES A UNIQUE THING WITH THEIR SIXTH, SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADE CLASSES EACH YEAR. IT IS CALLED OUTDOOR ED. THE MIDDLE SCHOOL TAKES A WEEK TO CAMP OUT. IT IS SOMEWHAT SIMILIAR TO OUR CHRISTIAN SUMMER CAMPS IN THE STATES. THERE WERE OVER 200 KIDS AT OUTDOOR ED THIS YEAR. OUR SON GREG WAS A COUNSELOR. THERE WERE THREE DIFFERENT AREAS THE KIDS ROTATE TO, BASE CAMP, BEACH CAMP AND JUNGLE CAMP. GREG WAS A COUNSELOR AT THE JUNGLE CAMP CALLED JEST, JUNGLE EDUCATION SURVIVAL TRAINING. PLEASE NOTICE THE FOLLOWING PICTURES TO SEE A LITTLE OF WHAT THEY DID. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT. LEON FOR THE JUNKS
We had a early Christmas this year. We received four Boxes of presents and goodies from our wonderful family at LIFE. We were debating whether to open the boxes before Christmas. We rationalized that the mice or rats might get into them and spoil them so we opened each one on a different day. It truly was a joyful surprise. Thank you to each one of you for the effort,expense and love that went into these boxes. It is really too much. I hope everyone will understand if we share this bounty with our fellow missionaries and filipino families. A lot of these things are not available here. It will be a great treat for everyone.
Gregory wanted to especially say thank you for the Sobi drinks. They are not available here and are his favorites. He is also overjoyed with the large volume of candy and beef jerky. Gregory might say,"Candy is my life".
Robby would like to say thank you for all the nuts, you can get nuts here, but they are very expensive. She is also thankful for the pudding, soup and dressing mixes, chiles, refried beans and dried pears. We will be eating some good Mexican food in the coming months thanks to you.
I (Leon) would like to thank you for socks, tennis shoes, pants and the huge amount of hot pace picante sauce. I will never be able to eat all the picante sauce, so I will be sharing that.
We cannot forget about the vitamins. We promise to take them faithfully everyday. Hopefully they will help save us from the affects of eating all this other stuff.
As we sat around in warm fellowship after opening the boxes, we could not help but think about the goodness of our God, His care, His generosity, His love. God has given us the wonderful gift of a church like Life Fellowship, who in spite of difficult times back in the states continues to be liberally unselfish in their care for us. We pray on a daily basis that God would bless Life Fellowship abundantly for their faithful support of the Great Commission.
Your servants in Christ, Leon, Robby and Greg Junk
Dear Friends and Family: Merry Christmas from the Junk Family. The Lord blessed us this Christmas with a visit from our son, Michael. Some of you may not recognize him. Mike gave us a Christmas present of letting me cut his hair. Courtney and Mark could not make the trip to the Philippines. We are missing them, but we are grateful to have most of our family together this Christmas.
We wanted to send this note and thank everyone for their faithful prayers and support this past year. The Lord has been very gracious to us. He has met all our needs and a little extra. Thanks to each one of you for your sacrifice of time and resources to pray and provide for our needs. We pray for you on a daily basis, that the Lord will continue to bless and keep you.
We are looking forward to the coming year and whatever the Lord has in store for us. We have a few prayers requests:
Recently we have been helping a local Filipino pastor. We are asking for prayers for Pastor Pong and his congregation. The Lord is doing something with this small church and we would like to help in whatever way we can.
Also can you pray for the Bible study we are having with our crew of workers. That each man will have an understanding and belief in the Gospel.
We pray each one of you will have a blessed Christmas. We give thanks for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who died to pay for our sins. That we may have joy in this life and an eternity with Him in heaven.
Together in Christ, Leon, Robby, Mike and Greg Junk
Thank you for sharing your ministry and life story with us.
It is an awsome that God lead your family to our church. I love your family so much
and all of you are a huge encouragement for the whole church. You know that
I had Courtney in my AWANA group. WOW she was amazing and now, WOW, it is amazing how God has used her. It still "floors" on how he has used your whole family in such a short amount of time.
May God continue to bless you where all of you are. It seems like you guys are
(Leon) I was born and grew up in Colorado, the middle child with 2 brothers and 2 sisters. I grew up as a Catholic going to Catholic Church. I attended Parochial schools from 1st through 12th grades. I went to church begrudgingly, especially as I got older. I will let my wife interject her early years here. (Robby) I grew up in New York State into a Catholic family. I was the 3rd of 7 kids and we all went to Catholic schools from the 1st through 12th grades. I loved God and even thought for a brief time that I should be a nun. That was very brief, as I knew I could never be good enough. I went to church every Sunday while living at home. I moved to Colorado in 1977. I met Leon and we were married in the in the fall of 1982.
In the fall of 1992, Leon began searching. He knew something was missing in our lives. (Leon) I grabbed the 1st thing that came along. Unfortunately it was the Mormon church. They seemed to have all the answers. During those couple of years of attending the Mormon church, I had many doubts, but I kept returning to the logic that anything that works this well must be of God. I thought all I needed was more knowledge and all my doubts would disappear. I started listening to Christian radio to gain that knowledge. One night I was driving home from work listening to Christian radio. The program was called, "Return to the Word." It was hosted by Pastor Ed Bulkley. They were talking about Mormonism. All their discussion clashed with my beliefs that I had been taught from the Mormon Church. Could I have been fooled? There was a battle in my mind. I started doing research on the Mormon church using their own books. I finally realized I had been deceived. We (the kids and I) stopped going to the Morman church.
Our marriage was in total turmoil at this time. Robby would not go the Mormon church with us. I wouldn't go to the Catholic church. She started taking the kids to the Catholic church. She had a Christian family, the Andersons, that she babysat for. She asked them to show her in the Bible why Mormonism was wrong. They started doing a Bible study with her. They shared the gospel with Robby and she received Christ as her Savior. This was 9 months before I quit the Mormon church.
As I listened to more Christian radio the Word of God was softening my heart. I knew what I was hearing was true. We are all sinners. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"~ Romans 3:23. There is only One Way: Jesus said, " I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.~" John 4:16. I had always thought that if my good deeds outweighed my bad deeds I'd make it to Heaven. The sin debt we owe can never be paid by our works, no matter how good we are. "For Christ died for (your) sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."~ 1 Peter 3:18 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes (that Christ paid for each one of us) in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (with God in heaven)."~ John 3:16. Our belief in Christ's payment for our sins brings Salvation. I received Christ driving down the road one day listening to the Gospel on Christian radio. "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."~ John 1:12.
After we left the Mormon church we found an excellent Bible believing church, LIFE Fellowship in Westminster, Colorado. We began to grow and be taught the Word of God. We are thankful to the ministers and the congregation at LIFE that took us under their wing and taught us and loved us and helped us to see the love of Christ in their lives. We started going to Sunday school classes. Our 2nd class was a Bible read through. We started in Genesis and went through to Revelation. It took us one year. We decided to do another read through as we had learned so much the 1st time. Our teacher challenged us to do it in 3 months instead of a year. I remember thinking how unreasonable that was to expect someone to spend 2 hours a day reading the Bible. I was too busy. The Lord started convicting me of the priorities in my life.
A short time later, a missionary family from New Tribes Mission visited our church. I picked up a Bible school brochure from them. The brochure was about their Bible Institute. It talked about studying the word of God. It hit me like a ton of bricks. "That's what God wants me to do."
Well, here we are 9 years later, missionaries in the Philippines (currenly home in Colorado on furlogh). There are many stories, too numerous to tell, of God's love, his patience, his grace, his provision, his miracles performed on our behalf. We look back with gratitude to all the Lord has done, and we look to the future with anticipation of what He will do next. We give God all the credit and all the glory. It's Him, not us.
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! "
