The school year here starts in June. Thanks to our generous donors, we took these families out to buy badly-needed uniforms, shoes, and school supplies.
We’ll take some more boys out this Saturday. 🙂
We took over a hundred Bibles plus school supplies and toothbrushes to a public high school in Marilog, about two hours’ drive from Davao. And we gave them the gospel.
I so appreciate Jaybon of the Buhangin congregation. He has had very serious health issues as well as some other heart-breaking problems in his life recently, yet he keeps faithfully and joyfully serving.
Here he leads the worship team during Compass Christian Church’s ministry at the local public hospital.
Our old policy: When you have a birthday coming up, if you promise to try to bring five visitors to church on the Sunday nearest your birthday, we’ll buy a nice cake for everyone (even if the visitors don’t show up).
New policy: If you allow us to share the gospel for several minutes to everyone at your home birthday party, we’ll buy the cake.
We reach more new people this way.
Here, Prescy translates for me at her son’s birthday party.
These eight ladies plus Bee (who took the photo) traveled about two hours from here to minister to moms and children in an indigenous people group. Bee has been doing an excellent job discipling these girls. The teens did the ministry while Bee observed. It was kinda like an “exam” for her “course.”
All of this was Bee’s idea! I had nothing to do with it. I love that!
We have the new, larger Hilux now, but that doesn’t mean we don’t stuff bodies into the old Revo any more. We have 16–all teens or older–inside this time. Plus equipment!
As you can see, no one minds. Filipinos are used to it. 🙂
Evangelistic VBS: For four days, at two locations (outdoor covered basketball courts in Buhangin and Pequeño), we had games, skits, songs, crafts, mini-sermons, and we fed 300+ folks per day. Super-sized thanks to the team from Compass Christian Church in Chandler, AZ, and to CCC AZ also for providing most of the supplies and food. Here are most of the VBS volunteers:
One of the many games:
Oning sharing the gospel:
We thank God for the new people in church as a result of these efforts.
My mom (Barbara Allcott) fell and injured her arm and her hip six weeks ago, which can be devastating to someone of Mom’s age (79). I’m phoning her almost every day, but I wish I could visit her. Please help me pray for Mom’s healing as well as for my guidance and provision.
If you want to send her a get-well card, she’s staying at
Middlefield Oaks Memory Care, 1500 Village Dr., Cottage Grove, OR 97424 Room 115Â
Several weeks ago, the Buhangin congregation had five baptisms in one day. Here, they take turns testifying what Jesus has done for them. On the previous weekend, the Pequeño congregation had five baptisms. God is helping us.
Finally, this: Because we have had constant struggles with money for the past five months–since we launched the work here in Pequeño–we have prayerfully decided to do some restructuring.
We are far too often completely out of money.
We can’t properly fix the old Toyota SUV that I passed on to Oning, let alone buy a reliable vehicle for his Buhangin ministry.
We can’t buy him a decent sound system to replace his deteriorating one.
I can’t send Gina to visit her widowed mom in the north, because we’re giving most of our personal income to the mission. (In almost five years since we moved here, Gina has only seen her mom twice.)
Etc.*
So we believe our Lord is leading us to merge the Pequeño congregation into the Buhangin congregation.
We will simply lower our costs by reducing the number of places we are renting.
This will immediately solve Oning’s sound system problem, of course, since we’ll bring the newer sound system from Pequeño to Buhangin.
Oning and I will visit Pequeño every week to lead prayer meetings and/or Bible studies. This hopefully will help them not to feel abandoned. And of course we will bring them to Buhangin every Sunday.
Please pray that these new converts will continue to make good decisions.
We don’t believe it was a mistake to move to Pequeño. Much good has been accomplished here, while Oning has strengthened some of his ministry skills in Buhangin. But the move is turning out to be a short-term mission rather than a church plant.
We earnestly desire to make a permanent church plant in Pequeño in the future, when our Lord provides the money to do it well.
“Silver lining”: There have been times when we didn’t know how we were going to pay bills, when we received unexpected large one-time gifts. Our monthly donations are down, but generous one-time gifts have kept us afloat.
I think it’s important for you all to know that we are a non-profit in the truest sense of that term. Gina and I do not take one penny (or peso) from donated funds. We get by on my USPS early-retirement pension.
To those who give, thank you so much!
Here are the ways you can donate:
We could never repay you for your generosity to Davao City Outreach, but certainly “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:14)
Please forward this website to others who might be interested.
Please pray that God will send more laborers into his harvest field.
Please do not write to me here. Your message would get buried in the 1000s of spam messages. Please contact me at jgapinoy@gmail.com. Thank you.
*While Gina and I are fine without most home luxuries like A/C or dishwasher, we really would like to one day have one of those little water heaters that mounts next to the shower head. 🙂