Saturday-Sunday, June 2-3, 2018—Subic Bay Children’s Home, Saturday Morning Bible Clubs, Youth Conference, Subic Bay Baptist Church, Iram Baptist Church
2 Timothy 4:5, “But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.”
First of all, we’d like to thank all of our Filipino ministry partners–Subic Bay Children’s Home, Subic Baptist Baptist Church, and Iram Baptist Church–for allowing us the opportunity to minister along side of them. Sometimes when you go on a missions trip, one may get the idea that many ministries are created just for the mission team to experience. We’ve come to find out that everyone around here are already fully involved in ministry and we’ve been blessed to be a part of those ministries. On the other hand, many hands make light work and having twelve additional ministry participants can add some great encouragement and momentum to an already establish ministry.
Saturday Morning Bible Club – Around 8:30 am, we packed up our vehicles with teaching material and food and headed out into the surrounding community to conduct Bible Clubs in 4 different locations. As each team of 3-4 people were dropped off, each of us began to trek down into the woods via well-traveled paths through somewhat squalid living conditions that eventually opened up into areas where children were gathered eagerly waiting with their bowl and spoon for a Bible lesson. As each group sang songs, taught their Bible lesson, and played games, it was reassuring to have at least one of our Subic Bay Children’s Home staff to help translate into Tagalog. At the conclusion of each of the Bible Clubs, the children anticipated the food that would be given out which this morning was some sort of a chocolate rice mixture–they seemed very grateful for our presence and for the food.
Saturday Afternoon Youth Conference – When a ministry does have a visiting missions team present, sometimes they are able to offer some extra ministries. On Saturday afternoon, the Subic Bay Baptist Church hosted a Youth Conference for not only the Children’s Home children and teens but also for a few of the local churches. Once everyone had arrived (around 60 kids/teens), we began with a warm-up game of Simon Says and after introducing our team, Cave took over and conducted the games which included the Oreo game, Charades, and Copycat where they had to mimic a picture which turned out to be really humorous. The girls had 
prepared some special music, Sam concluded by preaching, and Pastor Ronnie wrapped everything up in Tagalog and closed us in prayer. Even though we had lots of fun, we wanted everyone to know that our main desire was to present the Gospel and to make sure that all knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had trusted Christ as their Savior.
Saturday Evening Dinner at the Valbuena’s – Our day concluded with the team heading over to Pastor Odek’s home where Miss Anna had prepared a wonderful dinner for everyone which included traditional Filipino dishes such as barbecue pork shish kabob, noodles, and lumpia all topped off with an Ube Roll Cake. What a dinner and so much food too–thank you to the Valbuenas for their kind hospitality of food and fellowship and as we say in the South, we were quite “fed up!” After dinner, we sat and talked and were shown the video of their outreach to the people who were devastated by the super typhoon back in 2013—very moving to see their ministry of mercy and love (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdMr4WMYwaU)
Sunday Morning Service at Subic Bay Baptist Church – Church began at 9:00 this morning and we had multiple ministry opportunities with Coty teaching the Adult Sunday School, Tim teaching the boys, and Sylvia teaching the girls. In relation with Coty, he had about an hour to teach and decided to do a complete study on the book of Philippians with the theme of having joy in the midst of circumstances. For the morning service, along with a choir special and a duet with Abby and Miss Rachel, Josh preached out of I Timothy 2:1-4 on the importance of prayer while Katie along with a few of the team led Junior Church. 
After Josh preached well and for quite a while–Pastor Ted mentioned that American preaching is kind of short compared to Filipino preaching :0)–and he closed out the service with a strong appeal for salvation. It was a great morning as we are so thankful for the opportunities that Subic Bay Baptist Church provided for our team to minister.
Sunday Evening Evangelistic Meeting at Iram Baptist Church – For our Sunday Evening service, we would head up into the mountains via motorbikes with side carts (aka local taxis) to Pastor Ronnie’s church. It was quite comical when “calling” for the local taxis that within about 5 minutes 4 motorbikes with side carts came roaring into the Children’s Home compound. Since it was 40 pesos per way and not per person (about $0.80), we piled as many people as possible into the taxis with usually two team members sitting in the side cart and one riding side saddle on the back of the motor bike–what a sight to behold and probably NOT Department of Motor Vehicle approved! 
Upon arriving to Iram Baptist Church, we split up into several groups to hand out tracts and invite the people to the evangelistic services. Like at other times throughout the trip, animal balloons can be a great magnet to attract children, but unfortunately this time Dr. Cirone got into a fight with one of the children–a balloon sword fight, that is! Around 5:00 pm, we began the service by giving our introductions, singing hymns about the blood of Christ, and singing some special songs. Just before the sermon, Katie shared her testimony and together Brennan and Cortnie sang a beautiful song entitled Satisfied. Because Pastor Ronnie wanted the sermon to be evangelistic, Brennan preached a very powerful and clear scripture-filled sermon laying out the plan of salvation while Miss Rachel and her crew taught about 60 children. Although no one accepted Christ, the seeds of the Gospel were definitely planted. After the service, we were all treated to a traditional Filipino dinner and were even able to purchase some local souvenirs.
During this weekend, we definitely made full proof of our ministry. Miss Rachel has been doing a great job leading the team and coordinating all of us with all of the ministry opportunities. Everyone has been excellent in adjusting to the schedule and giving their all in whatever capacity they are needed. Even though the week has gone quickly, because of all the variety of ministries that we’ve been able to serve in, it seems like we’ve been here for a month.
Tomorrow, we will spend some “down” time together and then on Tuesday we are off to the 2nd and last leg of our journey. We thank you in advance for your continued prayers as we finish up our ministry at the Subic Bay Children’s Home and head up to Tarlac and then down to Quezon City to minister to the Tulabots. God continues to bless us with good health, good unity, and good safety in travel. Most importantly, souls have trust Christ as their Savior and lives have been touched as we also have been touch.
Serving Our Savior (and thinking of and missing y’all),
Team Philippines
