Teenagers hungry for the Word of God

Yesterday afternoon a group of us joined the teenagers' Bible study at the house of the local YWAM leader. We started off with some enthusiastic worship and then presented a drama about how the things that we or others may view as rubbish - our height, hair colour etc- God fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to ask God for His revelation of how well He made us.

Next we looked up a number of scriptures which told of our value to God. One of the team demonstrated that despite scrunching, chewing and trampling a 20 peso note, it retained the same value. The same with us - no matter what we do and what happens to us in life, we remain valuable to God.


We then split into groups to pray. I got a group of older teenage boys to pray Psalm 23 over each other. It was so encouraging to see as many as forty young people with their Bibles, worshipping with great fervour and responding so keenly to questions.



I must admit that I was not really looking forward to going to the Bible study. I have found it difficult to relate to teenagers in the past but I now see I was meant to go. I was able to contribute to the drama and make contact with a young man who was a very keen Christian and to encourage him in His faith.

This morning I preached for the second time. It was being Sons and Daughters of the Father, focussing on Jesus' constant reference to the Father in the gospel of John. It was a very small church, meeting only for the second time and they just had a small garage to worship in. Afterward there was a powerful time of ministry when the pastor was slain in the spirit.

A quick update !

Well, apologies if you have visited here expecting to see an update - we are staying some way away from an internet cafe and so can only get to it from time to time. This past weekend many of us travelled to city called Iligan, about two hours away by coach. There we were greeted by the Mayor, the councillors, city hall employees and a jazz band. Maged, the leader of the outreach, had negotiated with the leaders of the churches and the municipal authorities for us to come for three days to support the churches in reaching out to their communities.

We went out sharing the Good News in the poor areas, preaching on the Sunday and doing a prayer walk downtown. I got to do my first preach in a church which was up in the hills, just outside the city! It went well - it was on Psalm 139 - how we are fearfully and wonderfully made, how God is pleased with us and we obey because we love Him, not out of duty. Yesterday they took us to a hydrolectric power plant and to waterfall where most of us went for a swim.

Today we were back here in Cagayan de Oro - some of us went to Smokey Mountain which is a rubbish tip where people actually live. I stayed back to do some intercessory prayer - our leader felt God was asking us to pray for unity in the team. This meant some time repenting of attitudes and selfishness, praying against the spiritual strongholds, such as division and miscommunication, on the island of Mindanao, and then praying positively for the team to be blessed. In all, two and a half hours !

This evening there were more reports of healings and people giving their lives to the Lord.

We are finally off !

Today was our last full day here at the Kings Lodge for the lecture phase of the school. On Wednesday we clean and pack up and leave mid-afternoon for Heathrow and onto the Philippines. For those who would like to know the schedule for the next few days take a look at our class blog http://tklcdts2007.blogspot.com/. We plan to update this regularly so do check it out.

It is a very exciting time with much praying as we enter a different phase, that of active ministry where unity will be crucial. Several people here had words about unity this morning at our weekly intercession where we often pray for different countries and Youth With A Mission missionaries.

One thing that really touched my heart was when I and a friend, Lucena, who is from the Philippines and is teaching on the Health Care course, went to the Filipino International Christian Fellowship in Birmingham. I went in order to tell them about the work we are going to do in their home country and to establish a link between them and Youth With A Mission. They surprised me so much when they took a second offering for us and raised £73 which a considerable amount when you see how few adults there were (see photo above).

Lord bless them abundantly !

God really DOES provide

We have 18 days before we leave for the Philippines - most of us will fly out on 27th June, the rest on the 28th June. We have been prayer and fasting as a group for three weeks now and the last two days we have been praying continuously through the day and night. And God has answered our prayers:

• we received a single gift of £2,000 yesterday for airfares, medicines etc
• the hotel which was overbooked now can accommodate us for the first three weeks and it works out cheaper and more producitve than other accommodation options
• we all got our visas in one day
• the school of the leader's son will allow him to be taken out of school for the trip to the Philippines

Everyone is starting to get excited about the trip. Please do add your comments by clicking on the comments link below. Tell me what you would like to know about things for me and the trip.

No trailer - this IS the main feature

As many people are apt to say, there is no dress rehearsal for life - this is it. So using a film anology instead, there is no trailer for life, this is the main feature. Hence me and my crossed arms ! I am getting excited as we start to look towards going to the Philippines and get to do the real stuff that Jesus did and is commanding us to do : to heal the sick, to comfort those who mourn, to baptise and make disciples and make God known.

The latest update

Well, sorry it has been so long since the last update. After our long weekend, we started the week on Tuesday with Connie Taylor, a very enthusiastic speaker on Evangelism. Some good stuff even it was delivered at high speed ! I am reading Making Jesus Lord: Laying down your rights by Loren Cunningham, the founder of Youth With A Mission. We are used to having own things and the individual rights to many things but while they are all from God, we need to learn to lay them down to focus on Him and trust Him and then He rewards us. Tonight we are having ministry time - this may be time for God to deal with my British reserve. This weekend I am on work duty which means washing up and doing the toilets - all part of servanthood. It also marks the half way point of our lecture phase - six weeks to go before we are off to the Philippine for two months. Goodbye for now.

Into the fourth week

This week sees Jose and Rosanna Liste originally from Argentina speaking on blessings, curses and deliverance. Tonight we played some games with the children which included a celidh and pass-the-parcel to help everyone to focus on praying for other nations.