Monthly Newsletter | 2021 March

Greetings from the Philippines! We appreciate your prayer and support and want to update you on the      exciting events that occurred during the month of March at our churches in the Philippines.

In the month of March, we were able to get 587 salvations between our churches in Manila and Pampanga to bring our grand total to 2,080 salvations year to date. March started off very successfully but we did run in to some unexpected obstacles. The number of COVID cases that the Government in the Philippines is counting ending up skyrocketing which resulted in increased Quarantines and Lockdown measures. The last full week of March, we had 95 salvations between our ministries. That broke our streak of getting at least 100         salvations each week. We are pleased with our overall results given that parks were shut down and strict measures were enforced but we are hoping that things will open up again soon so we can not only get many salvations but also that entire families can be in church and out preaching the gospel.

In the month of March, we did have our monthly prayer meeting and we had choir practices preparing for our Easter performance. We also had our Annual Lord’s Supper the weekend before Easter. In addition to that, we did have our 1st annual Sisig competition in Pampanga. Sisig is my personal favorite food and is a traditional Kapampangan dish. I highly recommend trying it if you are ever able to visit here in Pampanga! We were hoping to set records for Attendance, # of Salvations and # of soulwinners during the 1st week of April given that people are on an extended holiday during that time. Unfortunately, due to the unexpected lockdowns, we might not be able to set any records. However, we do plan to have a great time of fellowship with our church families for Easter Weekend as we remember the resurrected Saviour.

We have made a lot of improvements with our Online Ministry recently. We have just started being able to livestream both to YouTube and Facebook. The upload speed though doesn’t seem to be able to always   handle it as we do have a lot of pauses in the videos. We are going to be looking for a faster internet provider which we can use shortly but we do have some other projects that are more important right now and it is also difficult to find reliable internet here. For that reason, we are going to start making backups of our sermons on video which we will re-upload in case the livestream has problems. However, I’m also trying to make around 10 YouTube videos weekly on a wide range of topics. We encourage you to check out our YouTube!

We do have a few items that we would ask for prayer about. Currently our biggest prayer request would be that COVID cases would drop and the Government would become less strict regarding it. Obviously people have strong opinions regarding this whole situation but the Government here has put up very strict measures over their concern about the spread of the virus. Children under the age of 18 have not been allowed in    public for over a year now and it is getting difficult on families and especially moms with young children. However, despite the obstacles, we are still trying to serve God and get people saved while trying to balance being wise as serpents and harmless as doves in regards to the current restrictions.

Our family here in the Philippines is doing very well. We are in the process of moving to Pampanga which will result in some changes to our ministries. This will enable us to add a midweek service for our church in Pampanga and also give some of our men training for the ministries some opportunities to preach during the midweek service in Manila. It is always hard for a Preacher to give up his pulpit but they do a great job and it will be great training for them! My wife and I also celebrated our 6th Wedding Anniversary. We were able to go to a Kapampangan Restaurant which allowed children inside so that was nice. We would also ask you to pray for our family to have a smooth transition to our new place in Pampanga as we are moving in April. 

Thank you for partnering with our ministry and please let us know if you need anything. Below are some pictures from our soulwinning and fellowship events that occurred in March!