Manila Monthly: Looking for the Person of Peace

Manila Monthly: Looking for the Person of Peace  June 2018 "If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you."  - Luke 10:6 Hello again from Manila. I’d like to share a story this month about one of the people of peace in the community that I am serving named Alex.

Soon after meeting Alex (see picture above), we discovered that he is not able to leave his house because he is partially paralyzed from the waist down and has lost most of his ability to walk (he can scoot his legs a bit by using crutches or holding onto railing in his house). He had an accident when he was 13 years old (he is now 23) where he fractured his back, and because he couldn’t get proper medical attention, he has developed a curved back and lost most of the use of his legs. Every day, Alex stays at his house while his mom and wife work. Since I met him, I have only seen him go out of his house one time, to receive groceries that were being given by one of our partner churches during an evangelistic outreach. Since meeting him, Alex has become one of our ALS students (Alternative Learning System...like GED program in the US), since he had to drop out of school after his accident. Beyond this, he also agreed for us to teach the ALS to the other students at his house (so he doesn’t have to go out of the house), and even host a youth Bible study every week at his house too! (See picture above.) Please pray with us for Alex, and all the youth in the community that the Lord is ministering to through him!

Visitors I was also able to host a few visitors this past month here in the Philippines! The first was a couple (Luke and Mara) from Cherry Hills Church in Springfield, Illinois who came to shoot three promo videos for CWTP. They were with us for just over a week and followed us around to capture some of the things we do here on video to show our friends and ministry partners in the Philippines and back in the United States. The second group was a group of American Baptist Women from West Virginia and Kansas. These four women visited our team’s Vacation Bible School in Manila, then were my traveling mates to Iloilo where I spoke at a Pastors Conference and reconnected with friends in the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches. Vacation Bible School in our Outreach Area. Speaking at a Pastors Conference in Iloilo on Urban Mission. With our US visitors from the ABW and Iloilo Friends.

Prayers Please pray for our community and church planting work, as well as our other nine CWTP teams working around Metro-Manila and Cebu. Please pray for a trip to the USA that we are preparing for in July. Some of our Filipino missionaries will be going to the US to visit with churches and individuals, and work on forming a North American board that can help us expand our ministry partner network in the United States and Canada. I will also be joining this trip, and will have time to see my family and do some check-up appointments on my back and my foot.