A Module, Conference, Packing, Moving and International Travel all in 2 weeks.

Pastor Rick Holland from Grace Community Church arrived in Manila today and will be our guest speaker for a three day conference starting tomorrow. The theme of the conference is the Master's plan for the church. In addition to the 7 plenary sessions built around the conference theme that pastor Rick will be teaching, we will also have several break out sessions on topics including expository preaching, a biblical philosophy of ministry, team leadership in the church, mentoring, biblical counseling and several sessions for women. The speakers include myself (Sean Ransom), my wife Jessica, Lisa La George from the Master's College, Ruth Ortiz from Action International and fellow Master's Seminary alum pastor Felix Ballon.

Last week we taught a 5 day hermeneutics module with pastor Felix as our guest professor . He also taught my monday night class who are currently taking theology (pictured below). It was evident to all how he connected with the students. In addition to being born and raised in the Philippines till he was about 12 years old, he is a very gifted teacher, blessed with the ability to clearly teach and explain the bible to all levels of students. After we taught basic principles of Bible interpretation, we modeled how to use these principles in various passages. Then, on the last day the students enjoyed asking questions about the interpretation of texts that they had always wondered about. Pastor Felix also taught them how he studies passages and divides them up into a logical order and outlined so that they can be taught.

We were also blessed to receive a container from Grace Community Church containing among others things, books, books and more books. These will help many pastors and churches who lost books during typhoon Ondoy or who do not have good resources or libraries for their pastors, leaders, and teachers to use.

In addition to the module last week and the conference this week, we need to pack up our house as we prepare to head back to the states next week. While there I will spend time for some research, we will also attend a missions conference with Grace Community Church, visit family, friends, supporters and o yah, have a baby in July.

We appreciate your prayers for the conference, our travels, U.S. visit and the baby. We just had an ultra sound today that confirmed again that the baby is a boy, on schedule and already weighs about 5 pounds. I look forward to reporting about the conference and posting pictures soon.

Blessings

Catching Up

Like everyone else, we have been experiencing a busy November and December. I just wanted to catch all our family and friends up on some of the latest.

On November 30, our son Christian had his 14th birthday. He had several of his friends over to celebrate (he wanted to have more over, but unfortunately our budget, van, and house could only handles so many). They started the celebration by going straight from school to an out-door paintball field, where they proceeded to pulverize each other as 5-year old Tyler watched from a distance.

I did my best to take pictures without getting shot up myself. Overall, the damages were little and most came out unscathed.

After the war games we went back to our place and had dinner, cake and ice cream, followed by a night of watching movies and playing playstation. The following day all the boys went to their school (Faith Academy) and hung out at the school bazaar (like a mini carnival).

All of our classes at the Expositor's Academy went on break after December 11 and we had a class party at our home with our students from the Manila area.

It was a joy to share a great time of food, fellowship and worship of God together outside of the classroom. I can say from experience that pastor's really know how to party.

The party ended with the giving of gifts. We gave each student a copy of an MP3 with selected sessions from past Shepherd's Conferences at Grace Community Church, and for our students who just completed the class on Bible study methods and rules of interpretation, we gave a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible (provided by gracious supporters from Grace Church).

Another significant event that we experienced was just a few days before Christmas. We had a nice visit from a small team from Grace Community Church. Pastor Rodney Anderson and his wife Glenna, Pastor Kelly Wright with his wife Vanessa along with Larry and Lauren Brown spent about four days with us.

In addition to great fellowship, we had the joy of sharing about our training ministry with them and our ministry among our friends living under Manalo Bridge. We started off by going to a local grocery store where we bought enough food to feed about 25 families for several days and a small toy for all the kids (about 40 of them).

From the market we proceeded to the bridge where we followed up the weekly teaching of the Word of God with showing them the love of Christ by meeting some of the physical needs.

I was blessed to see the team's eagerness to not only see our ministry, but also how they served with joy and without hesitation.

We thank the Lord for another satisfying month in which we could serve Him by enjoying Him through making Him known to others. We were also reminded again of God's grace of sending His Son into the World to save us by taking our penalty for sin by dying on the cross in our place and the place of everyone who surrenders their lives to Him.

Starbucks and Preaching

I jokingly call it my office, but I have spent hundreds of hours in Starbucks for meetings, studying and reading. You just can't beat the deal they offer - free coffee, air conditioning, and a place to work, you just have to rent a table for about 3 dollars a session. Some locations even have free internet. I have a semi regular meeting there every Thursday from about 9 am to noon. It is open to any pastor who wants to get together for fellowship and to discuss preaching. Last Thursday I had a great time with pastors Richard and Pastor Ogie.

After discussing life and ministry issues we got into their upcoming sermons. We started with Pastor Ogie's text from Romans 11, which went well, but it got really interesting when we started discussing Pastor Richard's text. He was preparing to preach on 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 which says...

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9 Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

We always start out by reading the text and then answering the question, "What is the main point of this text? What is it saying?" We discovered that 2 Cor. 1:1-11 talks about how God allows us to suffer and go through hardships so that we can learn compassion and be a comfort to others as well as our suffering leading some to salvation and teaching us to depend on Jesus. Then we discussed how to outline and preach the passage.

What made this text especially interesting was that Pastor Ogie had just lost two young children in a fire. I said to him, "Pastor you can preach this passage better than both of us. You know what it is to suffer despair at a level that most will never know, and through it God is giving you compassion and the ability to comfort others beyond what most are able." It was hard to discuss the passage because my heart breaks for this dear humble brother. I thank the Lord that even after this tragedy, Pastor Ogie has been able to see God's grace in it all and continues to find joy in serving Him. He is also very eager to learn how to handle and preach God's Word better. Richard and I were able to encourage him, but I'm sure the pain of his loses will always be with him. I told him that there is a family reunion waiting for him in heaven. Please pray for Pastor Ogie and his family as they faithfully serve the Lord and also pray that my regular office hours at Starbucks will be a fruitful blessing to pastors and those they minister to.

Teaching ministers on the Island of Palawan Philippines

We are about half way through teaching a one-week module on hermeneutics (how to interpret the Bible) in the City of Puerto Princessa on the Island of Palawan.  Palawan is about a one-hour flight west of the Island of Luzon where we live.  I arrived with a small team on Sunday evening; Pastor Weymann Lee and his wife Helen,

 along with Henry Ventura – the national director for Partners in Christian

 Leadership Training – joined me to teach the module.  It didn’t take long for us to see the difference between Palawan and Manila.  The city of Puerto Princess on Palawan has a population of roughly 250,000 people and is a lot less crowed than Manila with its population over 10,000,000..  Instead of Jeepneys they use a smaller vehicle called a multi-cab. I think

 that the lack of Jeepneys is a contributing factor for the sky being clearer in Palawan than 

in Manila.  Although shopping for fresh meat is similar to that of Manila, 

I noticed that it is harder to find other things in Palawan because there are fewer options for shopping.  The one mall that they have is about the size of a typical WalMart and is limited compared to Manila with it’s myriad of large malls.

In spite of these differences there are several things that are the same.  First, Filipino people here are very kind and gracious like those in Manila.  The food seems to be pretty much the same expect that there are fewer America restaurants in Palawan.    Perhaps the most significant similarity between Manila and Palawan is the many ministers who are hungry for and need training. 

We are getting positive feedback from many of the students as they share their appreciation for us bringing the training to them.  It’s a blessing to see them sharing and getting more and more involved with the teaching and workshop time as they get more comfortable with us and each other. 

Some of the students have traveled over four hours by bus to take this class.  It’s humbling to be used by God to serve such dedicated servants.  I am always challenged to work harder at what I do and to provide them with high quality training, especially when I hear about the sacrifices and commitment that they make in order to better themselves to serve God.  I am also saddened by the lack of training, resources, and people to help them grow as teachers of God’s Word and Shepherds of God’s people.  I thank God for the favor He has shown me by giving me the privilege of have the training that I do and I am always aware of my responsibility to share it with others.

Pray that God will send these dear ministers in Palawan and throughout the Philippines quality people to help train them and to share their lives with them.  Also pray for their strength, understanding, faithfulness and blessings as they learn, live and teach the Word of God.

Held for Ransom in the Hospital

In the past I wrote about a 3 year old little boy named Chariel who has a heart defect. At the Philippine heart center we learned that he has to has to have two corrective surgeries, but before this can happen we had to get dental work done. This little boys teeth were so rotten that they posed a potential danger to his heart. The doctors were worried that an infection in his mouth could cause problems with his future heart surgeries. Apparently, since Chariel has trouble eating and basically lives off of powdered milk all that was left of his brittle teeth were broken stumps.

This set Jessica on a search for a dentist who do the work pro-bono or at least at a discounted rate. The Lord was gracious in providing a dentist who specialized in children and who was willing to do the work free. However, due to his condition, she said that he needed to have his heart monitored during the procedure and due to his age she recommended that he be anesthetized so that he can sleep the the long and painful procedure.

This started our second search. This time we needed to find a hospital room with heart monitoring equipment and an anesthesiologist so that the dentist could do her work. Jessica arranged a room at the Philippine heart center. They told us that they were comping the room to us and that the anesthesiologist would wave her professional fees and perform her services for free. We thanked the Lord and set a date. After a cancellation or two due Chariel being sick the big day came. At first we were worried that we would not be able to go through with it because Chariel's blood platelets were low. They gave him a blood transfusion and retested his blood. As you can imagine, non of this went well for our little 3 year old who found the whole ordeal quite traumatic. Jessica played with him a bit, which seemed to at least temporarily get his mind off of all the poking and prodding.

Just before Jessica and I left the hospital we decided to get an estimate on our share of the costs so that we would know how much money to bring on the following day when we checked them out of the hospital. We were told that although the doctors services were free, we would need to cover the costs of the medicine and the over night stay for Chariel. Initially, they told us that we would have to pay around 5,000 pesos (about $100 US). We agreed to that since we had the funds in our budget. A nurse called billing for our estimate and told us that it would cost about 10,000 pesos. We were surprised and the cost doubling and were considering stopping the procedure yet again. First, we went to talk to the billing department in person. They told us that since we Chariel was put in a semi private room (at about $16 a day) that put him in a new category with new prices. After we shared his story and ours, they realized that he was a charity case and that we don't have a limitless supply of money. They assured us that except for the room cost, they would bill us the rates for a charity patient and that our cost would only be about 5,000 pesos. After much struggling, we were again joyful and gave the go ahead for Chariel. Latter that evening he passed all the test and was finally ready. The dental work went smoothly and the dentist pulled all 20 of his teeth.

This is where things began to get interesting. We showed up the next day to pay the bill and bring Chariel and his parents Charita and Ariel home. Looking at the last line of the bill we didn't see the word TOTAL followed by the number P5,000 like we expected. Instead we saw
the number P43,000 and change. Really shocked, we began to investigate. We learned several things. First, a complimentary operating room and use of equipment doesn't mean free. It means that they are allowing outsiders or non-staff members the privilege of renting their stuff. We also learned that this was not a bait and switch. It is just different here, they use different terminology and certain things are understood here that are not in the US. No one was trying to deceive us, in fact they were going out of their way to help Chariel and us, but the misunderstanding was a costly one.

We began the process of appeal in the hopes that the hospital would at least give us a substantial discount. However, the doctor in charge was not there so we could not settle the bill that day. Since the bill was not settled they would not let Chariel and his family go home, they had to stay another night and we had to pay for it. The doctor in charge gave a few thousand pesos off, but the price was still almost 8 times what they originally told us. Their advice was to return the next day to see if social services could help us. They said they would help for the heart surgery, but that they could not help with the dental work. The two day dental procedure end up being a almost a week stay in the hospital. Each day we tried to negotiate the bill cost us another 800 pesos. The resolution ended up being that the doctor said he would help us to recuperate some of our cost by discounting the heart surgeries. Lord willing this may end up working in our favor as a percentage discount of the much more expensive heart surgery could be a larger overall saving. We finally paid the ransom and brought Chariel and his family home. The Lord in His kindness has already provided the money for the dental work. We are hoping that we can get the first of his two heart surgeries done before the end of this year. Pray for God's will and timing in this situation.

The Weight of Poverty

Kuya Tony's familiar smile was gone. He would hardly lift his head as I looked at him through the bars of his cell. He was not in jail or under formal arrest, but he was being held in a local city detention center. I believe that the pressures of living under a bridge and caring for a wife and 7 children was taking its toll on him. Tony was working in our neighborhood driving a pedicab (a bicycle with a side car). The $5-$6 a day that he makes is not an uncommon salary here and one in which he and his family are grateful for. However, Tony's bike has been broken for almost a month and the owner of it was not taking care of the repairs. These problems and a fight between Tony and his older children proved to be more than Tony could take.
I got a text message on my phone that Tony had a break down. He was walking naked in the middle of the street before they locked him up. We I got to the lock up he was dressed and in his right mind, but I could tell that he was agitated. I was speaking fast Tagalog to me so I could n't get all that he was saying. He said, "Pastor, maraming kasalanan sa tulay" (there are a lot of sins at the bridge). He continued to tell me that some of his children did not respect him. I sat on the floor outside of the cell and tried to give him some hope. I told him that i would try to help him get his bike fixed so that he could work again. That seemed to cheer him up some. The barangay captain (a city employee) released him to us so that we could take him to the hospital.
As we were taking him to the doctor I learned that he had numerous episodes like this. He was actually on medication, but He said because he was feeling so good (physically and psychologically) and because of the expense of the medicine he decided to stop taking it. The nurse checked his records and scolded him for not coming in for regular check-ups or taking his medicine. She gave him a dose and set an appointment with the doctor for the following day. I bought him a 3 month supply of his medication and we returned him to his family at the bridge. I saw him again a few days later and he looked really good. Pastor Rick is taking him under his wing and I was really nice to see them bond through these events. Pray for Tony and that he will trust in God as he struggles to survive with his family in such hard circumstances. Handling such a hard life under our own strength is more than most of us can bare. I pray that as he trusts God more and becomes more satisfied in his circumstances that he will even be able to get off his medications. Lastly, pray that he will be able to work again as a pedicab driver and that he will have a more responsible employer.

Sharpening our ministry focus

With our ministries of teaching increasing, Jessica and I are forces to make some tough choices for some ministry transitions. Starting the first week of August I'm teaching a group of men who minister to the Philippines military on Mondays. On Tuesdays I teach a group of men who minister to the poor living south of Manila. On Thursdays Jessica and I will teach a group of bible students. I will teach them the basics of how to interpret the bible and Jessica will help them to sharpen their English. We also meet others throughout the week for bible studies, mentoring and discipleship.
In addition to the above ministries I am preparing and improve syllabuses for several classes, (how to interpret the bible, Old Testament Survey and preaching). Jessica continues to work on material for teaching English as a second language. Lastly, I have to continue working on my studies for the doctoral program in taking at Talbot.

With all these ministries and a few others not mentioned we are finding ourselves having to cut out some ministries that are not essential to the vision that God has given us. So after two and a half years we are stopping our home bible study. We had a great time taking our friends through Luke and Acts and were blessed to see them grow in the Lord. We will still see many of them as we encourage and counsel them. A few others we will try to integrate into a cell group we work with.

The other area of transition is my involvement at the bridge. I will still be involved in ministry there, but the way I have been doing it will change. I will be more involved with mentoring pastor Rick and developing leaders there. I will be less involved with the day to day ministries at the Bridge and the surrounding area. Even things like giving medicine to the sick or rides to the doctor will be done through pastor Rick whenever possible.
I met with pastor Rick yesterday to discus future plans for out reach to Manalo Bridge and the surrounding Manggahan area. We are planning to do a monthly outreach where we will show films like the Jesus Film, cartoons for the kids, testimonies, drama, and a gospel message. We hope that this will give us more opportunities to start new bible studies in the area. Pray for God's favor as we ask local businesses and land owners to let us use their property for free or a small price for these events.
Pastor Rick and I also began planning his preaching schedule. Pastor Rick has not taken any formal training for preaching and does that best he can, but I believe that I can help him a lot in this area. I gave him two books for us to study together ( "How to read the bible for all its worth" by Fee and Stuart, and "Biblical Preaching" by Haddon Robinson). In addition to these books we are outlining the Gospel of John together and writing out its main preaching ideas. I am going to help pastor Rick (for the first time) preach through a whole book of the bible. I believe that this will greatly help him and the biblically illiterate people that he is teaching. I will keep you posted on his progress. Please pray for us all.