DeHarts Summer News 2009

"Living the dream"......De Hart family and ministry- Summer Report--

A good friend and I often talk about "living the dream" here in the Philippines. When we served at Faith Academy, knowing God had put us right were he wanted and needed us. And now, my friend is running an orphanage and school, and I found Grow Community Transformation ministry 20 months ago. Grow's aim is to share Gods' love in practical ways (development) to pastors, churches and communities, and coming alongside the pastors and their leadership to assist in their churches (christian witness) strategies to reach their membership and community with the love of Christ.

Last week, we trained 10 men in FAITH Gardening and Natural Farming. The whole week I felt like I was "living the dream"or more accurately "living the answered prayers". I have been praying for this ministry, sharing about it with friends and churches, promoting this work with pastors and communities here in the Philippines. Three weeks ago I shared this work with over 300 pastors at a pastors conference. Below is a slide show which show the various activities of our three day seminar. There was much lecture and note taking, sweating an blisters, eating and fellowship, questions and oral quizzes, making effective micro-organism concoctions-- alot of chopping, cooking, charcoaling, baking, smashing, measuring, mixing, bottling.........and now waiting for the concoctions to ferment before we can spray these powerful natural concoctions on to our soil and young seedlings. Food production and Sustainable Livelihood are two major physical needs our Filipino churches and communities need, and we are coming along side to address those concerns.


Grow Community Transformation.......helping pastors, churches and communities

Daniel and I are bachelors for 5 weeks -- Julie, Emily and Maggie left for the states July 27th. It's so quiet here without them and it evokes strong emotion in now having more children stateside than when we left for the field 10 years ago.

Julie & the girls will be together with Jon & Katie for 2 weeks, then on to MN to be with Julie's mom, and get Maggie situated for her freshman year at Bethel. While in Delaware with Katie & Jon, they get to visit some family living on the east coast and the Lindstedt’s (Phil's sisters family). They will also try to take in some historical sites which abound in this area -- the Smithsonian, Holocaust Museum, Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Museum to name a few

Katie took her Nursing’ board exams and passed and she is now a licensed RN in the state of Delaware. We are so proud of her! She is interviewing at a hospital very close to their home on the Air Force Base in Delaware.

Anna begins her junior year at Bethel in Sept. This will be her first year in the nursing program, and she has been selected to be a mentor to gals who are leading dorm Bible studies. She is very excited about this opportunity, but it will add to her already busy schedule. Maggie will be at Bethel too, which will be a great support for both of them. That has been a huge blessing for us, as parents, for the kids to have each other at school.

Maggie will be studying art and photography. Surprisingly, Maggie's senior year in high school was the first year she had time to really develop her art & she grew in leaps and bounds this year. She received an Art scholarship to study at Bethel which was awarded to only 4 freshman -- we are excited for her and so proud of her. Photography is her first love though, and she is always snapping pictures. She contacted photographers in the MN area, and will be interviewing in a few weeks for an internship to work with them. Very exciting!!

Daniel is starting his junior year in high school. He has a full load of courses, volleyball and basketball after school, and good friends returning from furlough. A friend handed me a new Fellowship of Christian Athletes Bible the other day "Gods Game Plan". It is packed with a good Holman's Study Bible, also good bible study lessons. Daniel and I are looking forward to getting into it.

Emily is the "Drama Queen" of our family, and she received that as an "official" title from her drama teacher this last year. Emily loves school, friends and fashion stuff. She is an eighth grader who enjoys life and sleep overs; hates sports; is crazy about boys and not afraid of them at all -- nothing seems to intimidate her. She is a motivated student and definitely has her own ideas about life and "stuff." We are trying to work with that without squealching her God-given spirit :)

Julie holds it all together, keeping our family together on both sides of the ocean. She continues to be involved in different volunteer responsibilities in the Faith Community. This year, Julie will begin a mom's ministry to the women in our Barracks Bible Church community -- crisis feeding and teaching hygiene and parenting skills to the mothers. This is much needed in the community and a great platform to build trust and relationship, and sharing her life in Christ. This kind of relationship building will give us evangelistic and discipleship opportunity with the mothers and young children.

Working with the Children's Garden boys, the Barracks Bible Church, and our GROW Community Transformation ministry keeps me busy. Our 2010 Ministry Budget Proposal is due to our field leadership in a couple months. I shared a glimpse of our work with the leadership recently and received good counsel. The challenge in the Philippines, like everywhere else in the world, is not only the abundance of spiritual and physical needs, but the challenge to stay focused, and carry out God's work in our community. We are confronted with extremely critical needs everyday.

A few years ago, a friend of mine quoted Henry Blackaby and reminded me to, "Find out where God is working, and join in." This is where prayer becomes so important. How can we know for sure what we should be doing, if we don't pray? I ask you to pray for Julie and I in the coming months that we can be intent on God's work to our community.

Please remember and pray as I prepare to share Faith Gardening (Food Always in the Home) with 150-200 pastors in a couple of weeks. Our pastors are very poor, and food is often scarce and not nutritious. We are sharing, teaching and training pastors, church leaders, and members of their congregation to grow vegetables and fruits, raise chickens and pigs, and begin a fish operation. All of the methods are organic, adapted to their region. And also pray for an agricultural training site that I am setting up at our home. We have been blessed to rent a large plot of land; it could almost be called a "compound." My hope is to develop demonstration gardens, so we can share this knowledge and teach these skills to our community -- another platform to build trust and share Christ to the lost.

God bless you folks; we appreciate you so much -- your prayers and financial support are what keeps us strong.


Phil and Julie De Hart

Faith Gardening Natural Farming--Batch One

At long last, we finally got our first FGNF Training under way. Our first batch consists of Dennis Tunghol, trainer from Tribes and Nation Outreach. And then 9 participants. Pastor Pong has five of his church members in the training. I have two joining me from our Grow Training Center. It has been a lively group, with lots of questions, and much muscle digging the planting beds and preparing materials to go into the soil. We will continue with the process tomorrow. During tonight, as I write, are charcoaling rice hulls, which will become part of the soil mix, along with chicken manure and leaves. There is much excitement and anticipation for the future when the men from Pastor Pongs church will be able to begin their own garden in the community. But for now they are learning the principles of Faith Gardening and Natural Farming.

I will have more to add, as there is still much to be accomplished in the next couple of days. And in the next few months we will add a few animal, fish, greenhouse, mushrooms, and other features which will help make this operation sustainable. Will add more later. I have added pictures in a slide show. I will edit and explain as time goes on. We had a good half day of lecture, then plot preparation, and burning of rice hulls in the first day. Looking forward to hard day of work tomorrow. Take care and God bless, Phil

Grow Community Transformation Resource and Training Ministry Center-- August 26, 2009 Update

This morning I wrote my Christian brother and partner in ministry , Mike Bucher. Mike and his wife Natalie founded Grow International Ministries. www.growourworld.com

I just have to write this morning…

First, we are getting ready for our first dry run through a Food Always in the Home Training, which will run Wednesday through Friday. This will mostly be for the benefit of Noel, Lito and me, but I have also invited Pastor Pong and some of the men from his church, and possibly some BBSI seminarians. We want to keep it very small, because we want to take time to talk about the logistics of operating this training session.

As I am writing, I can hear the buzz of machinery coming from the yard. Noel is using our new Craftsman—Briggs and Stratton Lawn mower. It is very sweet. I am not catching. I am mulching, so we can get those seeds back into the soil. The smell of fresh cut grass and exhaust is exhilarating. I picked this mower up at HRM Surplus on Pioneer, near Shaw Blvd. Chris told me about this place. I went to by a gas weed whacker, but they were out of stock, and then I saw this Briggs and Stratton and my jaw dropped. It was just sitting on the floor room all assembled. There were no sales people around. So I checked the gas level and it was full. I quickly looked left and right again, and then reached down and fired that pup up. It started on the first pull, and it was a sweet sound. I quickly turned it off as I had attracted about 10 sales people who were running toward me. And I said, “I will buy it”. It’s one of those mowers with the large back wheels. On the way home I stopped by the Home Depot near Ortigas and Meralco. I wanted to check out their Weed Whackers. They had three different models of the German made Stihl grass cutter. It had a six month warranty, and some kind of lifetime service agreement. A service center in Quezon City, and supplies I could get at that Home Depot. Maybe you can guess where I am going with this. I bought it! Here is my rational…. I just sold my blue Honda civic and had the funds available. But secondly, It was taking the guys considerable hours every week to mow and pick weeds with their hands, bolo and clippers. I thought that this equipment would pay for itself by getting our grass and weed cutting done in just a couple of hours, so they could focus on the house and Ag projects the rest of the week. So there you have it.

I have been working on ministry strategy stuff this morning. And I had this vision that whenever a team comes over to do work projects, or anything, I would like a pastor to come over to minister to our Filipino pastors. The pastor can come over with the intent to go through some material…….preaching, administration, quiet time and study, discipleship, marriage and family stuff. My hope and goal is to have pastors coming through here, so we have year around coverage. It is a great way to connect pastors and churches stateside with the work that we are doing here. Teams can come over for a variety of projects, but we should make it our goal to have at least one pastor available to minister to our pastors and churches.

Basketball….. Last night I had our first basketball practice with our Barangay select team from Penny Lane. It was basically a scrimmage so I could familiarize myself with names and faces, positions and skill level. The guys had a great time playing with each other. They were genuinely friendly toward each other, no machismo. Of course they wanted to win, but not at the expense of their brother or cousin on the other team. I was told that all of the guys are related in some way or another to each other.

While Pastor Pong and I were sitting, talking about the scrimmage and future ministry opportunities, he asked me if I would take on the youth team 19 Under from the area. These young guys are really fun, and we have connected well through the basketball, giving them rides, and a youth function we had at my house. I am looking forward to working with them, and getting to know them on a deeper level.

Excerpt from letter to Julie this last weekend……. “I drove my young guys from the Barracks Bible Church down to Angono this morning. I am coaching the youth basketball team from Penny Lane, /Faith Community. The young guys did pretty well. We won 61-44 over a team from the Angono Floodway. I think I had 12-14 on my bench, and I got about 10 guys in the game, so that went well. It was competitive through the mid-way part of the third quarter, and we began to push the ball up court (fast-break), and we stopped their offense they were generating around the baseline (short-corner). I have several guys that can rebound well and play physical, so that is something very nice to have. I had almost the whole team in the car. There were 12 guys, including me. The guys like having a coach and learning new stuff. I will coach them one practice and one game a week. This will be a good bridge to connect some of them with the church activities, and can have some bible study and fellowship at our house. We may want to get that basketball hoop over on the concrete slab, and then a foosball and ping pong table.”

Well buddy, gotta run. I need to go gather egg shells for making some EM Concoctions, and get some seeds and other stuff. I am going to go to the Palengke with the guys and we will pick some of this stuff up. Fish guts, Animal bones, Chicken manure, Bamboo, and some beverages containing yeast……… I have a list.

“Through our God we shall do valiantly” Ps 60:12… “I do not understand how God has made me. Joy, sheer joy and thanksgiving encompass me. Brother, this is great. We have never had it so good. God has done and is doing all I ever desired, much more than I ever asked. Praise God. He said, ‘I will never leave thee or forsake thee’. May I boldly say, ‘I will not fear…” I gain strength from the life and words of Jim Elliot. “He is no fool who gives up what cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose’. But I am human. I live on “this-side”. I experience daily the tension caused by the flesh. This is why our focus needs to be towards Heaven.

1 John 2: 3-6 (James B. Phillips translation) The life of a man who professes to be living in God must bear the stamp of Christ “It is only when we obey God’s laws that we can be quite sure that we really know Him. The man who claims to know God but does not obey His laws is not only a liar, but he lives in self-delusion. In practice, the more a man learns to obey God’s laws, the more truly and fully does he express his love for Him. Obedience is the test of whether we really live “in God” or not. The life of a man who professes to be living in God must bear the stamp of Christ.”

Pray for us this week and our training……….and working with our trainers. Pray that Christ will be our focus, as we work with our Pastors, Churches and Communities.

God bless and take care, Phil

Good Soil--Agribusinessweek article

This article can be found in our E-Articles and books

This is a very good article about the beginnings of a very effective community development work down in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. I will write more about this work that continues today by the Filipino Nationals.

Barracks/LWF Youth Fellowship

Fish, Rice, Santol, Music, Games, Eating with fingers

outside the box--- fire in the philippines

philsthoughts………I picked this book up two years ago as I was wanting to learn about the history of church planting and growth in the Philippines. I couldn’t put the book down! I learned about the various denominations and the role they played in Gods’ work throughout the Philippines. This book is not about a debate or a contest of who was the best or who won, who had the most converts. It is simply a story of how Gods Kingdom spread through the Philippines, told by a man who just wanted to find out how and why the church was growing in the Philippines.

FOREWORD to Fire in the Philippines….

Eight years is a long time. It is time enough for things to become stale. It
is time enough for the excitement of past events to fade away.
Yet the reflective first and last chapters of the first U.S. edition of this
book do not indicate a dampened enthusiasm. Between these two chapters is
the account of the author’s original research and analysis of the Foursquare
Church’s burgeoning mission outreach in the Philippines.

This part of the Church relied neither on foreign missionary personnel
nor on foreign funds for its success; it relied conspicuously on the Holy
Spirit. Therefore the lessons which Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals alike
can learn from the Foursquare Church are still viable.

This is why the present edition of this book should be no less exciting
than was the first edition published in the Philippines nearly… (35 years ago).

–The Publishers…………”

Go to link in Outside the Box to read about some lessons learned by DAWN founder, Jim Montgomery, in his book, “Fire in the Philippines…

Garrisoned by grace

Contending for our all......John Owen
[More important than all is] a diligent endeavor to have the power of the truths professed and contended for abiding upon our hearts, that we may not contend for notions, but that we have a practical acquaintance within our own souls. When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth, when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us, when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts, when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for. Then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

LWF Mens Fellowship