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Philippine Missions Jeremy and Kristine Ferguson – May/June
2008 Newsletter www.jeremyferguson.org - |
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Dear Family and Friends,
Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Lord has been
good to us here and through your faithful prayer and financial support we
continue to see His blessings come!
I first want to share with you news from our new outreaches in some of the
local Schools. By God's grace we have been given permission to teach Bible
studies in two nearby High Schools, praise God!!! We recently emailed you all
requesting that you would pray for us as we asked permission from Principals
and God has truly blessed! There were several Principals who did not give us
permission, but the fact that we are able to enter two of the Schools is an
incredible victory! At one of the schools we are given permission to teach
Bible Studies twice a month on Tuesday afternoon when the students leave to go
home. We have been given use of the School's covered court area and we are
bringing our overhead projector and visual aids to use. Of the School's 500+
students we are seeing more than 200 currently staying after School to listen
before they go home.
At the second School we have been given permission to teach weekly during
classroom time, which is really incredible! At this School we were only given
permission to teach to the 3rd year students, but they are more than 300 in
number. This is also a larger task because we are teaching them from room to
room. They are divided into five sections and four of them we are teaching on
Wednesday while the fifth is taught on Thursday. Even though we have only just
started, having taught only two times now, we can see God moving! Many of the
students are asking questions concerning the truth about God, Heaven, Hell,
etc. A few of the students have even come to visit Church. We are already
rejoicing, but also remembering to pray seriously because the enemy is not
excited. Therefore we ask you to continue praying hard that this outreach to
the youth in the Schools would continue because it will be attacked. In fact,
attacks have already begun as one principal has expressed disinterest in our
coming to the School, but the School's Values Teacher has expressed interest
and, even though he is not a Christian, he is convincing the Principal to allow
us to continue come and teach. Please pray hard that this would continue!
We also ask prayers concerning an effort to teach children in a nearby
Elementary School, which has thousands of students. As I mentioned in our
January/Februay newsletter we have been working with a CEF worker in trying to
get into the School. CEF has a plan whereby we will ask permission of the
School Principal to come into the School to give away free magazines to all of
the students. These magazines are written in the Filipino language and contain
Bible teachings explained in a comic form which the children enjoy reading. If
the Principal will give us permission we will then come in to distribute the
magazines and show a Gospel video to the students. Then, if the Principal likes
our teachings, we will ask permission to continue teaching in the School on a
weekly basis. Please pray that God will touch this Principal's heart and allow
this to happen! We will be going to talk to the Principal about this sometime
this coming week.
Church attendance continues to average at about 150, where it has been for some
time now. We frequently see visitors come and go, but we give more praise to
God also as eight more will be baptized early this July! We were planning on
baptizing five this past June, but when three more were saved we started
teaching them about baptism so they will all be baptized together. We thank God
for this, especially as there are some new young people in this group!
And to give even more praise to God there is a new family of three that has
just been won to the Lord by one of the members in the Church! The father of
one family in the Church remembered an old friend of his and went to share the
Gospel to him. At first they weren't too interested, but through prayer their
eyes started to open and began to seek the Lord! The Lord also gave them a
wake-up call as the wife was nearly killed in an accident. She was riding in a
tricycle which went head-on with another vehicle. The driver of the tricycle
was immediately killed. In fact, the accident was so bad that the driver's head
was nearly torn off! I know what you're saying, "Spare the details!"
But the amazing thing is that the woman left the accident with only a cut on
her foot! She immediately remembered what she had been told, that if she died
without being saved she would go straight to Hell. This thought woke her up and
now the entire family has become interested and faithfully attending Church.
They are also being taught about baptism and will be baptized in August! Praise
God for all this and please ask Him to continue using us to win more and more!
Please pray also that more of the Church members would be so fervent in going
out to get the fish in the depths of the sea!
Pray also that God would send more wake-up calls to the people here. The
attitude of the Filipinos towards life is that we're just here to live and die
and that's it. They have no fear of death or eternity. Therefore they have
little interest in knowing about God. We often joke with them and tell them
that they need Jesus Christ, not Jesus Rice! But we know that God can use
things such as disasters and catastrophes to wake the people up and this is
what we often pray for here. In fact, we told the woman who was recently saved
that God was using that crash to get her to open up her eyes. Another example
comes from the life of a woman named Elizabeth whom I asked prayers for back in
our September / October 2007 prayer newsletter. She recently came back to
Church and she was broken-hearted because her husband has left her for another
woman. Though this is a very hard thing to deal with God is certainly using the
situation to help
We ask prayers also for one of our workers in the Church, Bro Jason. Though Bro
Jason is only 18 years old he is battling a blood pressure problem. He is
currently in Manilla (where his mother lives) so that he can check-up with a
good doctor. Please pray that God will give victory over this illness. We
really need Bro Jason's help as he is a gifted Bible teacher. Especially now that we have begun a second mission point. We
asked your prayers about this before and now we've felt God's leading into a
certain area (Arayat, Pampanga) that is about 45 minutes away from where the
Church is located here in
We also asked your prayers recently regarding a potentially dangerous situation
concerning the owner of a nearby bar. Up to now things have continued to be
quiet and we pray that it will continue that way! As always, thanks and God bless
each of you for all that you do for the ministry here. Please keep on keeping
on with us!
Yours in Christ,
Ferguson Family
Mark 16:15, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature...Magsiyaon kayo sa buong sanglibutan, at inyong ipangaral ang
evangelio sa lahat ng kinapal"
Josh playing with Peter the puppet! Pray that he will use Peter as a
soul-winning instrument!