It's been a busy month and it's not over yet. Last week we held our first family module where we not only taught pastors, but a few ladies joined us to teach the wives of those pastors. These ladies included my wife, Jessica, and two Action Missionaries, Ruth Ortiz and Pami Ellis. First, four fellow graduates from the Master's Seminary (Felix Ballon, Vincent Greene, Chad Dexter and Mike Berry) joined us in the Philippines to teach with our training ministry, The Expositor's Academy. They started with a one day seminar on The End Times at a local church in the city of Cainta. Then together, we all travelled to Boracay to teach at the family module the week of May 16th-21st. We taught a survey of The Old Testament to the men, while the ladies with us taught on various issues on marriage and family to the wives. We had a few joint sessions in the evening for family messages as well.
On Sunday, some of us preached at Grace Baptist Church of Boracay and a couple of it's outreach churches. In the evenings we taught on more OT survey and preached on family issues. I taught a two hour survey on the book of Judges and preached a message from Genesis 2 on "God's Intention for Marriage." The students and church members were very appreciative as they fellowshipped with us and interacted during the Sunday morning and evening worship services as well as during the module from Monday-Friday.
Chad Dexter, who is finishing up his second graduate degree at The Master's Seminary, is exploring where God wants to use him and his wife Kara after he graduates and is considering joining The Expositor's Academy in the Philippines.
Chad did a great job preaching twice, once from the books of Romans and the other time from the book to The
Ephesians and teaching several session for the OT Survey including Judges, 2 Samuel and 2 Kings.
Vincent Greene is joining us for the third time and is already in the process of raising support so that he and his family can move to the Philippines where he will join the TEA staff to help us focus on and train men to be expositors of God's Word.
Vincent taught on Ezra, Nehemiah, Ruth, Esther, 1 Samuel and 1 Kings as well as preaching. He also joined us in Mindanao in the city of Davao where he preached twice and helped teach a module on how to interpret the Bible.
Pastor Felix Ballon came out a week earlier to teach a one week module module for us on biblical interpretation at Christ Commission Fellowship in the city of Alabang, followed by the one day End Times seminar, and then spent three days with us to help teach the module in Boracay. This was pastor Felix's third time teaching for The Expositor's Academy and he is fast becoming a favorite guest professor.
Pastor Mike Berry (Left) from Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church in Riverside, CA, also
joined us as he taught the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. My wife Jessica (Right) taught the pastor's wives on the marks of a godly wife and mother. She was blessed to be able to encourage these godly ladies (below), some of whom enjoyed her teaching at our Purpose and Passion Conference at Greenhills Christian Fellowship in Manila last year.
Jessica taught the ladies the first half of the week, and Pam Ellis and Ruth Ortiz arrived on Wednesday to teach the second half of the week. Ruth taught the women on biblical counseling while Pami, a nurse, taught about family health issues. (By the way, both ladies spent some of their childhood growing up as missionary kids in The Philippines. It's great to see them back here again serving as adults).
The Boracay module was followed by the Davao module on biblical interpretation at Heritage Baptist Church. Pastors Felix, Mike and Chad
returned to the States, but Allan Luciano (Left)
and a team from the Church at South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, (Brent Milner, Linda Strickland, Andy Lack, Jameika Manradge, and Abram Davis- Below) joined Vincent and I to teach, serve and observe some of what God is doing in the Philippines.
Allan, his wife Sandi and their two children are also raising support to join us as part of the TEA staff in Philippines. During our Davao module he helped teach several sessions on interpreting the bible.
