What a treat for my birthday?!!

I am praising God for giving me a great treat. For 3 days, my wife and I went to Palawan for my birthday. We experienced many good times while we are there. We have quality time with each other and that for us is super. We forget our worries, problems, and works, we just enjoy our time together. That is fantastic.





I enjoyed watching my wife’s face while we are entering the terminal for our flight. She had mixed emotion. She is so excited because that was her first time to ride an airplane and in the same time, she is scared because she knew she would experience motion discomfort and might throw up. And she did! I was I was making some joke and deep inside I am happy not because she threw up but I am happy to see that God gave me opportunity to treat my wife. That meant a lot to her.





In Palawan, we tried to get cheapest package for the Underground River. This is the famous spot for tourist. Your Palawan experience is not complete if you didn’t went to Underground river. So, we tried to make some negotiation and we had a great deal. We went to the Underground River and we were amazed!!! Yup! We did. We were amazed on how nature brought something fantastic. Who would have water from waterfalls can make cave under a mountain and drops of water brought great images. That is truly amazing! Inside the cave, there were zero visibility, we just have a spotlight to see images inside. And there are all AWESOME! The Underground River experienced was fantastic!





While we were in Palawan, since we have many free time, we just went around the town to see more of Palawan. We ate some native food and bought few souvenirs.



Our 3 day away was good times. We would like to come back sometime. We are so blessed for a great treat! We praise God for this wonderful opportunity to see the beauty of nature. God truly made many wonders in our nature and we would be surprise if we have a chance to see of them.

Pray and never give up

(taken from Biblos.com)

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.
— Luke 18:1 NLT

Insight
To persist in prayer and not give up does not mean endless repetition or painfully long prayer sessions. Always praying means keeping our requests constantly before God as we live for him day by day, believing he will answer.

Challenge
When we live by faith, we are not to give up. God may delay answering, but his delays always have good reasons. As we persist in prayer we grow in character, faith, and hope.

on a personal note:
the message last sunday in our church is also something to do with praying, having faith, and keep on believing. I learned so much and my heard was truly moved by that message. I heard Pastor Joshua taught this lesson many times in our mentoring time, Youth Mob team meeting and JKKCC meetings but, I dont know, last Sunday, his message about faith truly moved my heart.

Honestly, there are so many prayers in my heart that still waiting to be answered. My faith, even I am old in my relationship with God and I know the Lord for many years, my faith, once in awhile needs to be rekindled. And last Sunday, my faith was rekindled. I have a great opportunity again to lift my prayers to God as I was reminded by the message. I should keep on believing that no matter how small or big our needs, when we pray, we are asking God to display His power, for and with our faith, it will be possible. We should just keep on believing!!

Palawan Trip

I am looking forward to our trip in Palawan!!!

We booked our flight to Palawan and we are going there next month. I planned this trip as a great time be away and to have a relaxing day for my birthday. I am excited to spend it with my wife. This is a dream come true. I know I might sound crazy but flying to Palawan is one of my dreams. I have been dreaming, since I was kid when I saw in the television how great place is Palawan. So that’s why I am so excited to go there.

Also, what I am excited about is, this will be the first time for my wife to ride an airplane. She was very vocal to let me know how she was praying and dreaming, sometime, she could ride an airplane. And when I told her that I booked us a flight to Palawan, she was so happy. If only I took a picture of her face when she heard that she will be riding an airplane to Palawan and show them to you, you will be overwhelmed, as well as I was.

Please pray with us that we will have a safe trip and we enjoy it to the max!

Training and Mobilization Department

Youth Mobilization is having huge re-organizations, in terms of what we are doing and how are we doing our ministries. Huge changes such like, we now have new office location, new volunteered-people added in the team and new possible ministries. Which brought us both negative and positive results. But we have been reminded by our team leader, Joshua, to focus on the positive side and to look for what God is doing through these changes. Through his words of encouragement, we taught to dream new dreams, new horizon and new great possibilities.

One of the changes, in terms of how we do ministry is we decided to join the effort of the Training Department and Touch Trip Ministry. Which we think is a great idea. So we called this new department, Training and Mobilization Department.

And as a response to what our team leader encouraged us to do, we set new dreams, we will build new relationship or partnership with churches. We had a meeting today to discuss what we can do in order to achieve our goals. And to be honest, we dream huge dreams and we set many great plans. We know this is impossible to achieve if we will rely in our capabilities but we are keeping our faith in our big God. We lay our huge plans in the feet of our God. For we know with Him all this are possible!

Daycare Today...

I taught the daycare today. I am their teacher in Phonics. It’s so great to hear them learning the sound letter “A”. They also learned to how to write down the letter and they had fun writing and teaching each other to write the letter. I just noticed one of our crazy students took initiative to help his younger brother to write. His’ name Adriane and his younger brother is Jetjet. They were funny to see having initiatives to help each other. Knowing these brothers are the most crazies students we have. But today, I was so blessed to see them helping each other.

I will be teaching them every Thursday and I am looking forward to see them learning a lot. Little by little, we (DayCare Teachers) can create huge impact in the lives of these children. And we will not get tired reaching out to the community where these children live. We are thankful for this wonderful opportunity to be part of what God is doing in the lives of the people in the community.

Sovereignty!

God is revealing many things to me lately about sovereignty. The word sovereignty itself so profound, it would be hard for anyone to describe it one word. I think when you encounter this word, you will need a lot of dictionaries, thesaurus and many vocabulary books – but still you will end up taking a deep breath, an inhale and exhale, and saying, “Woo! This word is such a hard one to explain.”

I’ve heard many teachings about God as the ultimate subject for sovereignty. That is very true! Yet there are a lot of times in the bible where you may feel or think that God is not that sovereign. There were many circumstances in which God planned and chose Israel to rule over all nations, but there were also times when the Israelites had been slaves of many nations, for so many years. Prophets who were called to speak forth what would happen to nations were put to death by the nation itself. Christ-followers in the New Testament whom Jesus sent to the nations to bring the good news were burned, bitten by lions and persecuted. Where was God when all of these things happened? Where was He sleeping when Israel was held captive by different nations? Was He numb when all of his prophets in the Old testament were put to death? Was He blind to see when Jesus’ followers were persecuted ? Is He really a sovereign God?

As I study the bible, I find many sides of the stories in which I didn’t really attribute God as being sovereign. Sometimes I tend to focus on the negative sides of the stories. But later, as I meditate on the Word sovereignty, I realized God uses all people, all times, all events, all situations and all venues to place or to show His power over all His creation. That is sovereignty, Himself! God is never late, never tired, never lost and never failing to show how powerful He is and that He is in control of everything.

When sin entered the world in the time of Adam and Eve. He used Eve, letting the evil one think he would win over God’s creation. And when Eve accepted and tempted Adam, the evil one was happy and enjoying his time ruling over mankind. Most especially, when God sent Adam and Eve away from paradise. But God is sovereign to overpower the evil one’s plan. The woman he used to enter into the world is used to defeat him. How awesome and powerful God is. He is so wise to plan it all ahead of time.

God, as being the sovereign God, knows everything, can do anything, and is present in any place at any time. He sees us, works though us, and uses us to disperse His ultimate purpose for everyone of us. And the most of important thing to know is He never fails!!!

There were a lot times when we feel that God has left us in our difficult times, we’ve been betrayed and trampled by many trials of circumstances, and didn’t you wonder how you were able to overcome it all? For sure there will be more of it in the near future, but I am sure you can find a way to overcome it again and again. Of one thing I am sure, if we will let God rule over our lives, let Him direct our paths, and consult Him in every decision, He is sovereign to empower us to overcome every challenge that gets in our way. He is powerful, knows all things, and is present everywhere at every time. God is sovereign!

The Story of Three Youth

This year’s Windows YP (youth missions conference) theme is, “Walk On Water”. With just a title we want to give you a great challenge to dare yourself to live the impossible. This challenge may seem hard to digest at first. And you may think that nobody will surely do it. Who would have thought with a right mind to walk on water? This challenge is very huge and overwhelming to take on.

But three youth from Family Christian Fellowship (FCF) in Bataan, took the challenge. These are Keshie, Queenie and Shervin. These youth accepted the challenge to walk on water. They applied the principle of faith and dared to live the impossible. Their act of faith brought fire to our hearts and truly impacted and encouraged us because we are seeing results of the training in the lives of youth. These youth are a good example of that.

We saw that they are really living the impossible. They’ve come from a province part of the Philippines to minister to youth here in the city. Though they have not a lot of resources like money, they live in faith, accept the big challenge, and they have ministered to the youth from IT Tender Ministry and helped in a church’s Vacation Bible School. Their faith moved them to respond to the call to touch the lives of the youth here in the city even without very much in their pockets.

As we concluded their mission trip here in Makati, we interviewed and debriefed them. From this interview, we heard great testimonies of their experiences ministering to youth. They have learned many lessons, their relationship with God has deepened, and their hearts have burned with passion for the lost. They said that they will take what they have learned and pass it on to their church and keep doing missions now with their own church. And if God will lead them to mobilize youth to respond to the call of missions, then, they will do it!

These youth are precious to us and we hope there will be more of them. More youth to respond to the call of missions and many youth to experience how to walk on water.




Keshie at IT Tender Ministry




Queenie with kids at VBS





Shervin with kid at VBS




Keshie, Queenie and Shervin at IT Tender Ministry