Wednesday, February 20, 2008

February News Updates

TEAMS, TEAMS AND MORE TEAMS...

Since month of January we had been receiving visitors from all over. We had Koreans, English and of course Filipinos. On January we had one team, a Korean Pastors' DTS team. This February we have three teams, the England DTS team and another Korean DTS from Kona, Hawaii. The teams with an average number of 10 per team came one after the other and stayed for two weeks each sometimes overlapping each other. Their ministries varied from prayer walks/rides to the villages, open air and church ministries both in Bontoc and in the villages, young people ministry, hospital and jail. They had blessed us through their prayers, encouragement, testimonies and for practical help in the present ministries.

Since last week, we are taking care of a team from YWAM Davao, Philippines right now who are staying at the DTS house. They are 9 passionate and dedicated Filipino young people. Next week they will go home and yes!!! we can at last rest from taking care of teams. Don't get us wrong, taking care of teams is an opportunity to serve and bless but if you do ite every week, it take its toll on a small team like us. Pray for more staff to join us (big smile)...

New!!! STUDENT DISCIPLESHIP TRAINING COURSE
At present we are conducting a Discipleship Training Course here in Bontoc for more or less 50 young people mostly students from the local college and high school with ages from 16 to 24. The DTC began on February 11 this year. We meet twice weekly for 2 hours each day, on Monday and Tuesday evenings after the students classes. Their backgrounds vary and they come from the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Pentecostal churches. The DTC is like a shortened DTS for those who cannot attend the regular school. Our speakers are mostly from YWAM who were our speakers also during regular Tribal DTS. The students expect to graduate from the DTC this April after 10 weeks of lectures and hopefully a short outreach. Pray that their lives will be transformed by God's Words and love.

Update: CONFERENCE ON FRONTIER MISSIONS
From the 25 young people who prayed and diligently raise some funds for the Conference on Frontier Missions in Changrai, Thailand come April 7-11, there are more or less 9 survivors who are now ready to apply for their passports. Some of the SSM students who wanted to go discovered that they have defective birth certificates or was not registered correctly. Some failed to obtain the necessary documents and some do not have any money to process their supporting documents. Among the 12 survivors, 3 already have their passports, 3 have completed their papers ready to lodge passport applications and 3 are still completing their papers. The plan is for these young people to attend the COFM and then go for a short missions exposure trip in Laos.

Please pray for this missions exposure trip team: For God to provide for the tickets at an earlier date so we can avail of budget fares. The students had been selling balut for weeks now and went caroling last Christmas so they can raise finances for their passports processing. But they need to raise more support for their air tickets and conference fees and the exposure trip to Laos.

As usual we want to venture out in a faith journey to let this young people experience trusting God all the way through. We planned last year to bring out some young people but it did not work. This is a part of our mobilization efforts for young people to catch the vision to become missionaries as stated in the vision of YWAM Mountain Province.

Thank you so much for your partnership and prayers. We would appreciate any Word from God for us. And we welcome prayer requests and news from you, too. Sorry we cannot post photos for now but will do it next posting, hopefully this weekend, promise!!!

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