Arenda Medical Relief

I will have more story to come from the floodway in Arenda, Taytay. I wanted to get these pictures off to you. I was out in the crowd talking with the men, working the pharmacy table or running between the exam stations and the pharmacy and the supply truck. We had an incredible day. Great ministry. One of the men I spent time with was an educated man and resident of this neighborhood. He had a degree in Civil Engineering and came to Manila from the Bicol Province 35 years ago. He hoped for a construction job, but became a laborer his whole working life. He raised his family, and proudly introduced his daughter who is a Christian and student at a seminary. He now cooks barbeque chicken and sells it in a street-side stall. We discussed the needs of the community, and he shared the lack of jobs, food and medical care. And obviously the present state of the community with the effects of the typhoon, he is unable to sell bbq chkn. Basically this community has carpentry, masonry, laborers and unemployed living in the community. And many children

Arenda Medical Relief on Friday, Oct 23….There were 150 tickets distributed. All showed up, and then some. Three children, with very bold mothers, were brought to us without tickets, and we accepted them as emergency cases. One had a 104 degree temperature, another had severe ear infection, and another had scratched a skin infection raw and bleeding. A scene that is etched in my memory is of one lady who came in with two children, her eyes were swollen and wet with tears and lack of sleep. As she came down from the examination station to receive her medicines, she was still looking haggard, but her face showed relief and a wide smile. We had to turn no less than 25-50 people away, who had waited 5 hours to see if they would be allowed to get treatment. That was very hard for them, and it was very hard for us. But it was a difficult reality. We could only serve 150 patients in this allotted time.

We treated skin rashes, diarrhea, high temp, and various exposure related conditions. We had a variety of antibiotics, pain and fever relievers, ointments, vitamins, etc.... We had two doctors, a nurse, and a pharmacist. Two doctors who had originally committed to come fell ill that morning. And a bunch of us volunteers were fitting in on a number of tasks. Pastor Bernard spent the first hour sharing from his heart, speaking to this large Catholic community about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Accepting Jesus as their Savior and Lord of their life. Many in the crowd were from families of drug lords (Shabu), gambling (cock fighting), alcoholism and other lords that have separated them from knowing and having a relationship with the living God. Pastor Bernard is gifted and passionate in dealing with the people in his community in the Arenda floodway, Taytay.

This work was a true blessing to the church and volunteers, and to the people in the community. It will strengthen the relationship of Pastor Bernard and the church with their immediate neighborhood and beyond. You will notice water is still in the streets, three weeks after the typhoon. And that water isn't going anywhere soon, with new storms and rains sure to come. This is a critical time. There will be more Typhoons between now and the first week of December. Please pray that this area will be protected from further damage, loss of life, and economic fall-out. Also the health concerns, from malaria, denghue fever, typhoid, and other exposure conditions created by flood waters.

We thank you friends for your prayers and sacrifices. Many have and will come to know the Lord through these calamities and through these relief efforts. This of course is one of the ways God works. His ways are way beyond me, and when he reveals his plans I am stunned by His awesome grace, mercy and provision.

God bless you and take care,

Phil

a note to my gitna

Hey Mags,

I was thinking about you the other day, and could have used you to take some pictures of some great needs.... I was buying supplies at Tikling. I felt a tug on my shirt and heard a voice "P50 for rice". I turned around and a woman was looking up to me with a cup in her hand. Her baby girl was suspended by a sling hanging from her shoulder. I was moved by the reality of this womans situation.

Tikling corners and the vendors, people waiting for public in the shade of phone poles, fruit and veggies, pork and fish, chickens and flies. I couldnt get this picture out of my mind.... the physical need, and her reaching out for help.

I love you gitna, dad

PS..... I had heard about about this video, but had not seen it. This father is very resourceful, cares for the street kids. and provides for his family. With limited resources and options, he is doing the best he can. These are families we are wanting to reach.

How to use Sustainable Livelihood & Agriculture for God's glory

Dear friend,

Thanks for the chance to share what I am doing.

There are a lot of places that missionaries can go with sustainable livelihood and agriculture. Both of these places can do a lot of good things in the development arena. What I like about agriculture and sustainable livelihood is that we can help the pastor, church, and community address common goals and issues over a period of time.

I understand the challenges we face with sustainable livelihood and agriculture. But what I like about these models is they provide an opportunity to work side by side with the pastor, church, and community toward a common good. When that happens, relationship begins to happen and trust forms. If success happens, and I am fully committed to that, then that is a great thing. If it doesn't happen, we commiserate together, go back to the drawing board and try again. Fail and succeed together over time and a real relationship develops. In the course of that, we can share our faith, our pastors and church leaders can share their faith, and in God's timing these people will come to the Lord, And the people will learn how to put food in their stomach, and money in their pockets. This is not a quick fix, or get rich quick scheme. The nice thing about this is that it sets the stage for building relationship, pursuing a common goal, and time for the Holy Spirit to move in the community.

Take care and God bless,

Phil

How can we come alongside the Filipino pastors, churches and communities in light of their everyday realities?

Hey folks..... A couple of weeks ago I sent a communication to my leadership. I shared it with Julie yesterday and she said "this" is what you need to put in your blog! I said to her, "But I am not sharing a solution to the problems." And she responded, "Thats okay..... You are telling the people whats going on here in the Philippines, and the challenges we are facing." I read it again, and I turned to Julie and said, "You are right. The people need to hear this stuff too."

Below are some of the realities of our work, as I shared with my leadership. Please pray with us that we provide God honoring answers and solutions to the poor pastors, churches, and communities we serve..

"I think we are doing a good job of choosing topics if we take a hard look at the needs of the poor pastors, poor churches, and poor communities, in light of what causes the poverty conditions they live in.

For us in the Philippines, and we are not alone, we are working with people who have very little. And if a fire, typhoon, flood, mudslide, or demolition comes through, they have close to nothing. This describes some of the physical challenges. If you add the deprivation of education, medical, food, and earning potential caused by a variety of reasons, we as a mission need to be prepared to respond. And I believe, we as a mission, have done a good job in our response to all kinds of calamity and social injustice.

How can we come alongside the Filipino pastors, churches and communities and respond to their needs? I think it might have been Greenway or Grigg who said, and I am paraphrasing, "we have succeeded in providing bread to the poor, but the bread of life has been reserved for the middle and upper class."

What are we doing to create Kingdom movements in the slums, the squatter areas, amongst the poor?

Yes, we respond when calamities come through. But what are we doing to establish/plant churches on the floodways and under the bridges?

Do we know how to do that?

Do we know how to help our pastors in those situations?

How do we come alongside with physical solutions in one hand, and the bread of life in the other?

And how do we equip and mentor in those situations where the money is never going to be enough, the leadership is also struggling, and western missionaries won't go there?

And how do we describe that scenario to western pastors wanting to come over here with the intent to help develop these pastors?

How do we describe poor and poverty to the West?

It is hard enough to try to explain real poverty to people who have lived here for 10 years.

Brother, all of what I just shared is an indictment on me, because the Holy Spirit has convicted me. As I travel through squatter areas, and villages with dirt roads, I am convicted of my affluence, and I have no right to talk about my lack. I have no idea what these people deal with everyday. Intellectually, I can process it. But the brass-tack nuts and bolts of it all, I dont live the way they do, and suffer the realities of their daily existence, and their years of oppression, and injustices of life in Manila.

All of that to say, " How do we come along side and support our poor pastors and provide leadership development in light of their everyday realities?"

Pastor Rey Ingaran teaches FAITH Gardening to KIM Kids at Grow Ministry Center

I first met "Pastor Rey" Ingaran in 1998 when I went on a Basketball ministry trip to the Philippines. Our Short-term team from West Hills Community Church, headed up by Pastor Daren Beck prepared and then led a young group of guys... some younger than others. Dan Hunter, Greg Mayer, BJ Lopez, Pio Conde, Nathan Wells and myself, then two brothers from Santa Cruz Bible--Brian and Kevin. It was November, shortly before Thanksgiving, and we arrived in Manila. In addition to this group of basketball players, Jodie Beck, Andrea Lopez and Debbie Kenyon came to work in a Birthing Clinic down in Davao, Mindanao.

Our trip was life-changing for many of us, although it presented much physical challenges for others....injuries, motion sickness, dehydration, blisters, and reaction to new kinds of foods. But in the course of this ministry trip, we gained great exposure to ministry work in the Philippines. As well, we had a chance to work with some Philippine Nationals, Tom Randall and Paul Duncan. One of the PI Nationals was our Pastor who organized alot of the trip, and acted as an interpreter for the presentation of the Gospel and all of our testimonies to the half-time crowds. This was Pastor Rey Ingaran.


Last Monday night I was reunited with Pastor Rey. We have spent the last several days talking about his ministry in Northern Luzon, in Santa Maria, Isabela Province. And today I was able to offer up my Grow Ministry Training Center, so Pastor Rey could present some basic gardening techniques to the children of Kids International Ministries.


As Pastor Rey and I have talked this week, we have had the opportunity to make some preliminary plans to present Food Always In The Home and Natural Farming to four churches he is responsible for up in Northern Luzon. In addition to that we have discussed some of the development needs, as well as the christian witness needs (evangelism, discipleship, church growth and health, pastor leadership development). Pastor Rey will be going back to Isabela on Monday to discuss with his leadership how we can work together to strengthen the pastors, the churches, and the communities. We look forward to partnering in the training of his leadership on the development and christian witness fronts.


Please pray that the Lord will have his hand on this work. If you are interested in learning more about this ministry, please write grow.rizal@gmail.com


Take care and God bless, Phil

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