Batch Donation to Hope Christian High School

This morning our batch representatives went to the principal's office to present our support to the Hope Christian High School New Building.  Through a consolidated effort of my batchmates we were able to present an amount of 1,262,777.50 as our total batch donation that includes all the cabling system of the new building and cash.

I believe each batch has a responsibility to give to our alma mater in whatever form that they may agreed upon.  I know many alumni has tons of complains against the school, especially sad experiences when they were still studying, but come to think of it, the school has shaped us in many ways to who have we become today.

In our batch, most of my personal conversation with my batchmates boils down to the appreciation of introducing Jesus Christ to our life.  Well, it may sound funny but this is true.  The spiritual and Scriptural foundations that has been impressed on us was so important that we continue to cling on to Christ in midst of storms we encounter in life.  Some of my batchmates share that they still continue to read their Bible, especially they are in a country were there is no church near their place.  Or in some instances, when they felt alone in their struggles in life, they turn back to Jesus for help and answer, which they always get.

Whether we have had good or bad experiences with our alma mater, I believe it doesn't matter anymore.  What matters is how we lived our life today.  We may not like the people in it, but as I have said again and again... Our loyalty should be to our school and not to the people who are managing it.  The people might have hurt us in many ways, (especially me who were hurt several times in different instances) but still this is my school.  My loyalty remains to the school and not to the people governing it.   One or two people can make our life miserable but looking on the other side of the coin, there were still other stakeholders or factors that has made our life worthwhile when we were still studying in our school.

Developing the Prayer Challenge

This year, the pastoral team has decided to reconsolidate our prayer meetings to Tuesday night - going back to its original design though not fully because the time is still limited compared before.  It seems this is the best way to go since having too many prayer meetings in different places only limits the pastors effectivity since each pastor needs to prepare for its weekly program.  And it seems the pastoral team itself in no longer one in attending a prayer meeting with the church body as compared to the past.  So, we decided that our official prayer meeting would be the Tuesday night prayer meeting where all members of the pastoral team should be present.

We also divided ourselves into four teams to handle a month of prayer meeting program in order not to overburden anyone.  So that we can also focus on the teaching and preaching of the Word of God.  This March, our team is in-charge, with teammates Pastor Wiljo and Pastor Aileen.  Pastor Aileen was still in China so we opted to go ahead of our planning.

We came up with the Prayer Challenge!  The prayer challenge is to challenge our church members to just come for a month to the prayer meeting.  If this proves beneficial for them, then, they should continue coming, and if not, they should stop after the month long experience.

We also decided to bring back hymns since it requires bilingual and reviving the Hammon organ that has not been used since our church split.  The prayer will be experiential where we made a lot of symbolic activities in each week's prayer meeting program.

3-Mar Prayer of Repentance: The Stone.
10-Mar Prayer for Healing: The Olive oil and flask.
17-Mar Prayer for Your Family: The Candle.
24-Mar Prayer for Personal Spiritual Growth: The Card.
31-Mar Prayer of Celebration and Thanksgiving: The Rose.

We are very much excited about this prayer meeting.  And in our excitement we even created a commercial, leaflets, posters and public announcements hoping for our church members to respond positively.

We a full hope that UECP family would be very blessed through this journey.

Spring Concert 2009 - A Blast

I praise God for the Spring Concert of Makati Hope Christian School done yesterday at Center Stage in Mall of Asia.  I was so impressed with the whole program.  I think this was really a good play and match with a superb performance by the students of the school.  The students' voice was really incredible, I was very much impressed.  Spring Concert is the way Makati Hope Christian School celebrates its founding anniversary, and they just celebrated their 24th year.

The play was about Noah's Ark.  It is all about trusting in God.  I think that is our issue even today in our generation.  Many Christians would always claim to put trust in God completely, but when trials and challenges enters the picture, it seems it is very difficult to trust in God.  Though we know God is Almighty and everything in possible with God, but still we are stubborn to complete trust that He knows what's best for us.  How can we really put our trust in God completely especially in times of problems and distress?  So difficult to answer this question isn't it?   There are also times that I am afraid to trust God but we are called to trust in Him. The Bible taught that when we doubt according to the book of James, we are like becoming non-believers again because the basic element is trust in our faith in Jesus.

Growing old like now, really puts my faith in many different challenges since I am now exposed to more deaths, sickness and ailments of older generation friends and relatives.  Just like for the last three years 8 of my relatives passed away.

Still, in the end, we just need to put our trust in God.  Of course not blindly but trusting He knows what's best for us - because this is the Truth.

Hindi Patatalo - PUF? POT? PUFF? POOH?

I have this counseling group of fourth year students.  I was not able to be their counselor during their retreat because I was Camp Director and the group is too big to contain in a group.  After several synthesis with our young people.  It was their turn to have synthesis with me.  Mena, She, Aliza, King Wai, Shariz, John, Chesca, Tintin, and Robin.  Christine was absent and of course Masuda who is always late or absent.  Mary joined us in our synthesis who is the old third year in our group.  The group is composed of twelve students.

I have to grab this opportunity to further enhance the things they have learned during the retreat.  I was amazed and bless because the really got vivid memories about the camp and many of them were articulated enough to shared what areas of their life has been moved to change and become more closer to Christ.  I was not expecting so much because I was assuming that they were still very young and has a lot of things to learn in the process with regards to their walk with God.  Incredibly, I was wrong.  Listening to each of them gave me new insights of the work God can do even to young minds like them.

I praise God for allowing me to mentor such a wonderful group.  They were like angels to me, the last group I discipled for Christ in UECP before I move to another ministry.

They still can't decide but determined to create their group name like the one with BOBInC (Band of Brothers in Christ).  It seems they are still in discussion about PUF, PUFF, POOT, POF, PUT naku ano nga ba yun... still confuse with their name...  hehehe

But still a blessing to mentor this group.  Hope we can make the most out of things in the remaining months I would be in UECP.

Hey guys, you can post here your insights during our discussion and give God all the praise and honor.

Blessed with BOB Insights

There are many things to praise God about in the recent concluded Seniors' Retreat.  One of them was being able to work with almost half of my BOB members.  Three of them, Jon, Jay and Michaelson served as staff and two, David and Wyndale served as counselors.  It was the first time that I experienced working with so many of them in a camp.  Though it should have been more than half if Jayson did not backed out because of work and Ralphie was not busy taking care of his parents.

In this retreat, I believe each one of them has a new level of experience with God.  We had a synthesis last night at Seattle's Best and I posted several questions for them to reflect and share their insights.

1. What was the most important lesson you learned in camp?
2. How was your leadership honed in relations to your increase knowledge about God during camp?
3. In the final analysis, who are you in Christ?

I was very much satisfied with their answer, knowing that they all have matured in a new level and is now better prepared for future challenge of life and ministry.  I believe our synthesis has further strengthened each one with our concept of God, ministry and the future.  There is now a clear direction on what needs to be done.  Though they say, it is always tiring talking with me because I would always force them to think things seriously, but it seems to help us become better person.  I myself learned a lot in our discussion last night, praise the Lord!

I pray the others would catch up soon so that there will come a time when I could see all of us serving in various position under one ministry.  Guys, maybe you can post your insights in our discussion.

For me, it was just an affirmation that my labor is not in vain.  I also saw that we cannot fast track growth of a person especially on their maturity and spirituality.  It was a long wait but worth it.  Praise the Lord.

Wonderful Godchildren

Wow!  I have three godchildren who served with my in the recent retreat.  Of course, they are more mature spiritually I supposed hehehe.  Bryan served as staff, he led wonderful praise and worship night, it was super cool.  Marisa and Sally both served as counselors, and this is first for both and it seems their counselees enjoyed their mentoring very much.

Seeing young people grow in love with the Lord is a blessing especially if they are very close to you.  It gives you a lot of fulfillment.  Now the Lord, has used more of my love ones to serve Him in the ministry.  Isn't that great!

I am so blessed with each one of them as they shared with me, how God has been blessing them in their profession and ministry.  I saw their faith grew even stronger.  Bryan is going to seminary soon, that is not a problem.  Sally marrying Bryan, so soon she will also be a pastor's wife hehehe.

The best is Marisa, especially our discussion sometime ago in Old Spaghetti House.  She was sharing how she has been growing in the Lord, be it in her family, business and ministry.  I really never saw that coming, but God works miraculously in each person's life.  Maybe we have not talked much, but after our discussion, I was assured she was ready.  So, I invited her to be counselor and all the more proved that God was using her mightily.  Marisa, magpapastora ka kaya?  hehehe Nothing is impossible... but of course better businesswoman ka na lang, para support mo kami ni Byan and Sally... hehehe

Praise God for such wonderful blessing…

Shifting Devotions

The Seniors' Retreat Camp was indeed a blessing to all who participated.  I just got a report that the Seniors' still has hangover were they kept singing their theme song this morning during their first period.  So funny, I have never heard of such a real hangover of a camp that goes like that, even disrupting class hours because the joy cannot be contained.

Going back to my blog topic on Shifting Devotions.  The camp actually has a devotional material that we need to use.  But it seems God said to me early morning on our second day not to use it.  Instead, I started to think and ask, what do You want me to use for my staff then?  And suddenly, it just popped out use the evaluation technique of devotion to heighten the leadership skills of your staff.

I have never had such a sudden shift of feeling especially on camp devotion.  Usually, I would still use the material and shift a little bit to fit my group needs.  But this time, I felt God was telling me to set it aside.

Since the previous day the emphasis of our activity was on the washing of the disciples' feet.  We revisited this old familiar passage and try to learn new things from it.  We focused on servanthood and discipleship.  The topic was good, we had good insights and God spoke to each one of us during our devotion on discipleship as a ministry.  Convictions and commitments were made on the spot.

Comes the third day, again I do not know what to use but I recalled our activities on the second day on clinging on to Jesus with firm faith.  So, as I flip my Bible,  it went to John 15 on the topic of the vine and the branches.  Again, we had a wonderful discussion of insights were God really spoke to each one of us.  So much refreshing and new learning again on clinging on to Jesus as we go through the journey of life, which is the topic of the camp: Ready For Life.

The last day, seems odd.  So, I waited and retrace our activities again.  We are really going for the conclusion already and main conclusion was all about faith.  We used Hebrews 11, we talked about strengthening of our faith in different circumstances in life.  The final analysis of our ministry is to have faith - firm faith that will maintain our connectedness with Christ, who will guide us through the rest of our life.

One thing I learned from this devotion was being actively listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit in my life.  The book I read entitled, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell says the first 3 seconds of our thoughts are important.  High accuracy of being able to determine the right thing to do.  I felt that in our initial decisions in life, our initial thoughts in our life has a thumb print of the Holy Spirit.  He immediately tells us and guide us.  The only thing we do, is to be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit was saying.

Yes, our devotion topic was shifting but it has refreshed us according to what the Holy Spirit wanted us to learn as a team.  Praise be to God.

God Spoke to Me in Camp

For the past two years, I have been complaining to God that it seems I am already tired and stressed out in nurturing and discipling young people.  Most of the time, when I train our young people, others gets all the benefit.  I was having these thoughts because every time I would need these people's help, they are always unavailable because they already have other commitment.  Maybe some will say I would be selfish but I just wanted to have some or little benefit with fruits of my labor... hehehe.

I have stopped discipling new young people since then.  Though I still have a group of young people in Student Fellowship for the last two years, I really did not gave my best to teach or nurture them.  Though these young people have been drawn very close with me, it seems I was hesitating to discipline them to the fullest form on how I disciple young people before.

Two weeks ago, as I prepare have been reflecting on the last things I wanted to do in UECP before I move to my new ministry, I have decided to really disciple them to love God more through prayer.  We have started doing this for the last two week, and I saw them learning a lot for this training.  It was indeed a blessing for me.

These young people were part of the graduating batch this year. I wanted to make a difference for them before I leave. Originally they were around 30 youth in my group, this year I have to cut down with those who really wanted serious commitment because many comes on and off my meeting last year.

I have 12 remaining from the original group, Menalyn, Sheryl, King Wai, Aliza, Krisitne, John, Kevin, and Mary Sunday, with additional this year of Robbin, Franchesca, Shariz and Christine.

In this retreat, during the first message of Manong Don, he asked, "Where are the elders and deacons?  Can I ask them to rise up?"  No one rose, because there was actually none.  And I realize, I was the only UECP pastor present in this retreat.  Manong Don was saying, where are they?  They should be here in this retreat.  Manong Don threw was the question in his first message was actually to highlight to the students how the church values tthem but there was none.  Actually, for the past Seniors' Retreat, it is always studded with many pastors, elders, and deacons.

At the end of the day, I tried to reflect on my own by strolling around and praying to God.  I was enjoying this wonderful view and quietness with God with the cool breeze going around me.

As I was praying, suddenly, God spoke to me.  I think it was intentional of Him not to allow any pastors, elders or deacons to join this retreat.  I also discovered, that my staff and counselors more than half of them were actually my former Scouts and disciples for the past few years, who have really been attached with me in their spiritual journey.

And God was telling me, "See Leo, your work is not in vain."  "I have remove all the church leaders out of this camp, to let you see that you have actually help and nurture many in order to carry out the task and legacy of the gospel to the next generation."  "They are now actively serving and you can count on them to carry out the discipleship ministry you have started."  "The church and school is in good hands with these people you have disciples for Me."  "You can now go in peace to your next assignment."

After that long prayer, I was so filled with peace within me, which I have not felt for a long time.  I praise God for such peace, I am now very much ready to move on to my next assignment in the academe.  I am now again more excited to continue discipling others to prepare more people to serve the Lord.

My spiritual gift, which is almost the same with my personal slogan: Equipping God's People for Every Good Work, has been refreshed by God in my heart.  Allowing me to recommit myself to equip more people for His ministry.

I believe God has indeed spoken and He is truly faithful!  Praise the Lord!