Regional Conference

This June we went to the regional conference in Mindanao. Holly’s parents were visiting and as they had worked for in Mindanao for 16 years they came with us. It was encouraging to hear about the different things God been doing in the tribal works there.

In our training, the process of planting a church is laid out quite neatly, but we found in the real world “neat” is rarely how things happen. Various additions to the work of church-planting in the locations we heard about were a tapping a spring for clean water to help with the almost fatal illness many kids are getting, teaching the people to raise pigs as a source of protein and income, setting up and running a school for the local kids, and even beginning a pastoral training center to train the pastors already working locally. Some of the missionaries are almost done with the translation of the entire Bible! To translate the New Testament alone can take upwards of 25 years.

In almost every situation the missionaries did not start out with these projects as part of their church-planting goals. Rather they saw needs and have worked to assist the community. The best part of all these projects is that it has not just helped the people socially and economically, but these projects have served to advance the church planting work. It was the practical outworking of loving people with Christ’s love by meeting their physical needs.

Many of these missionaries have been working in these areas for 20-30 years and have thriving churches whose members are reaching out to other areas. Hearing the other missionaries talk about what is going on reinforced the power of the Gospel and the power of showing people that you genuinely care.

While we don’t yet know if we will end up working in Mindanao or Northern Luzon in the future, it was a blessing to get to know some of our coworkers. Wherever we end up, hopefully we can learn from their example and see the Gospel take root in the lives of more Filipinos…even if we don’t necessarily do things in the “right order.”