Roberto and Marcion, my “bodyguards” in Pantukan. Yes, that is a 9mm Glock on Roberto’s hip. Usually it was out of site.
This is a “brief” summary of my three weeks of ministry and what our Lord provided and accomplished for His glory.
I left Buffalo at 11:35 AM on Thursday October 4 ( arrived back home on October 26) and arrived in Manila at 11:50 PM October 5. Spent the night in Manila and flew to Davao City on Saturday, October 6. On Sunday the 7th, I preached at our church in Davao. Later in the afternoon we travelled 1.5 hours to Pantukan in a borrowed vehicle we were test driving for two weeks, with a view toward making a down payment. It saved us many pesos over the two weeks of travel on the east side of the island.
Monday Oct 8, after teaching at the Pantukan Government office, we began our conference for three days in Pantukan. All of our attendees came from Pentecostal churches, and have been requesting a conference for 2 years.
On Wed, I taught 120 Jr High School children at the public school. Both of these events are part of the Government sanctioned Moral Recovery Program for officials and schools, of which we are a part by invitation.
After our conference, we had a down day in Pantukan, and I was given a wonderful birthday party by my Filipino family.
I was assigned two police bodyguards, because there are some extremist rebels up in the mountains behind the banana plantation behind the property. Usually not a problem, but with the back and forth commuters everyday and knowing an American is present, it was just a safety measure. Those guys were great.
We talked and laughed…alot.
On Friday, we traveled to Carmen, a 4 hour trip, our newest church.
On Saturday I went on visitations in the mountains with our Pastor, Ray and his wife Linda, and Ernie. I preached at our Carmen church on Sunday AM. Later we traveled to Kalinan, 1/2 hour, where I was asked to preach at the evening service.
We started our conference there the next day hosted by Pastor Felix, at a Bible Baptist church, with a mix of three of our pastors, some Baptists, Pentecostals and CMA and 10 more attendees than we planned (20) for, but our budget was still met with no overage. We (Ernie, Dorcas, Ian and me) bunked at the church in the Elementary School room on tables with swimming pool mattresses we brought with us 3 years ago.
On Tuesday, our friend and brother Pastor Bobbi Badillio attended. Yes,this is Bobbi who has had me teach at the Police Academy and do a broadcast that goes to Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines the past two years… and yes, we headed there Tuesday evening to do both, live from the Academy.
I taught at Wed. eve prayer service as well.
We left for Cagayan DeOro on Thursday, a 9 hour trip by bus, stayed in Opol, with Ernie’s brother and sister in law, like last year, where we have our church and was there for Sunday A.M. That afternoon we travelled to the other side of the city where we stayed for our conference for three days with Pastor Jesse, who hosted us, not one of our churches but a Southern Baptist fellowship. Another 30 attendees. There were 50 requests… maybe next year.
Our study was in Hebrews. Obviously, not a verse by verse but we had three goals in mind with the chapters we did use.
1. Beginning with the Chapter1 v.1-2 we laid the foundation for the author using the Historic-Redemptive approach of seeing the Big Picture of Redemptive History.
2. Christ is the priority of Scripture and our hermeneutic. He fulfilling His redeemer role and all that includes as Isaiah’s Servant and so on.
3. The contrast of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant by the authors use of OT passages being applied in the NT scriptures to explain the purpose and nature of the New Covenant. This took us to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, 2 Cor.3 – directly from texts in Hebrews.
For the first time, many saw that the Doctrines of Grace are biblical, and nothing to be afraid of if properly understood and applied. They have mostly been exposed to the cult of Hyper-Calvinism.
5. None had a problem with grasping the Incarnality of Christ as the New Covenant in His person and was a joyous revelation from the Scripture.
We are praying and making plans for our full time conference center and Bible Institute in Pantukan, where Ernie lives on a property that belonged to Dorcas’ family.
This includes digging a deeper well and providing a pump and water lines to an outside comfort room, kitchen and into the house. At present, Ernie must travel 2.3 km one way each day for fresh drinking water. Once the well is updated, we can treat it with chlorine and have potable water on site, pumped into the house and other facilities.
We are planing to add another building to be a bunkhouse/guestroom for up to 20.
Final phase (as long as it takes) is to tear down the older building that is termite infested, and make that our lecture hall with two guest rooms upstairs.
Our current outdoor lecture hall will become an outdoor kitchen
We can function well without the 3rd phase as we grow the Institute.
Plans are moving forward for completing our building in Carmen.
These are our needed vehicles to help with for many projects as we are looking to the Lord in prayer.
Our outdoor classroom
View from the road and outdoor comfort room and shower
Ministry vehicles/ Future Bunkhouse area
Old outdoor kitchen- eventual lecture hall and two guest rooms upstairs
Cost of well project…$750.00 we were able to pay for this since I returned
Bunkhouse… approximately $2000.00
2 story lecture hall/guest rooms approximately $7500.00
Ministry vehicles. Motorbike $75.00/month through September 2013 (one year already paid off)
Passenger-equipment van $313.00 per month until October 2013 ( we already made a downpayment and two payments)
Once we have all our church buildings completed in Carmen and Opol (update on Opol at a later date) and we will also establish a church at our site in Patukan, we will partner with the government and provide public school education, as free as possible. We will start with Kinderschool and then once that class advances, add on 1st grade and so on, building from the bottom up, as an outreach to the communities. We will follow a government curriculum for the basics, including native languages and English and we can also teach ANYTHING else we desire. We do not need any special teaching certifications. The government sees churches willing to participate as a plus ( it saves them money in many communities) and accept the fact that pastors read, study, write, etc. Public education costs $200.00 per student. Many families cannot afford this. We hope to provide this education for as close to $0.00 as possible with the help of others. If we can help children to read and write, they can have more of a future.
Our church family in Carmen
Pantukan Conference
Kalinan Conference
Cagayan De Oro Conference
We already have a number of pastors, at least 25, asking us when we can start the Bible Institute classes. Pastor Jesse has already offered us his building as an extension campus on the other side of the island in Cagayan DeOro. We are putting together a curriculum, I have an academic advisory board on this side of the pond and we are working on a budget. There will be NO tuition. Most of the pastors we would work with are subsistence farmers. There will be no textbooks. Some of our course work will be translated into Cebuano or Visayen. I am looking into a pdf reader that is made in China that only costs about $32.00 ea. Most cell phones have mp3 players. Our lectures will be distributed on dvds and audio, at least that is the plan for now. We will video many lectures here and upload them to Ernie. He can translate, when necessary as the videos are playing, although, most times, English will be sufficient.
There is so much more I could share, so if you like, write me or call, or Skype, or Google Hangout and I’ll share all you want. Of course you can follow our entire four year history on our blog at www.fbceny.org/blog and our website www.fbceny.org . This includes our relationship with Christian Aid as a recognized indigenous ministry and being chosen as a disaster relief arm when needed. The church building in Carmen as you see it, came from funds Christian Aid raised on our behalf. I will have more pictures than posted here on our blog and maybe a few more details. These are just the facts, not the great personal moments of being with our brothers and sisters on Mindanao Island.
Just because you are a small fellowship of believers does not mean you are limited as far as God’s sovereign purposes are concerned. We are only five families at NCBF and we did not go looking for this mission.
The Lord has provided for these things with help from friends like you and from some resources we have by not being a “traditional ” church.
