WELLOFLIFE 1 Year Anniversary - July 23, 2009
Greetings Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Family,
We are thankful to God for the 1 Year Anniversary of WELLOFLIFE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INC. coming up this July 23, 2009.
We praise God for strength, connections, our board, members, volunteers and staff, supporters, church in Canada (Park Road Pentecostal Church - CAOG) and our church here in the Philippines (New Life - Assemblies of God)!
Special thank you to all those who are praying for this ministry!
There has been many learning's for us and for me Jeffrey especially as I had to learn how to incorporate and run an NGO (Non-Government Organization) and follow all the paper works and offices and legal matters to be done. We were blessed by a Christian Lawyer who notarizes all our paperwork free of cost! To be honest it hasn't been easy though as we still haven't been able to secure funding for our organization yet so we are limited in what we can do.
As you know our main program is CHE (Community Health Evangelism). The first phase is the entering the community phase where we build relationships with the community leaders, pastors and churches, school principal, teaches and students, community members and train our training team. This phase is the ground work and is much like tiling the soil in preparation for planting the seeds. It's such a joy to see the planning a preparation working together for good and to be involved in making a difference in peoples lives here. Patience is a virtue in community development because it's long term and your dealing with peoples world views and mindsets which are often hard to change.
Building Relationships: Lubogan, Toril, Davao City:
Community Leaders:
The leaders of this community (Barangay Captain & Officers) have given us a board resolution stating we can conduct our programs in the our pilot area and use the community facilities to conduct our trainings, seminars, workshops etc. Although we have the verbal and written support of the community leaders we haven't seen much action on their part yet, we are praying that we will work on projects hand and in the future! We usually attend the flag raising ceremony and general assembly meeting once a month to be informed and inform them what the developments or projects are going on in the community.
Pastors and Churches:
Pastor Nanca from New Life AG has fully embraced our ministry here. Pastor Nanca is one of the pioneering pastors for the Assemblies of God here in Davao City and he started his work here in 1975. He is a graduate of our TOT1 (Training of Trainers) and has encouraged every church member to be part of the WELLOFLIFE ministry and has been actively promoting our work to other pastors and organizations in Davao City. We have been attending and training the church members since October 2008. We have over 30 graduates of our TOT1 from New Life AG.
We have been making an honest effort to build relationships with the other 6 evangelical churches in our pilot community but until this time the pastors have not shown any interest in attending our meetings or programs. Please continue to pray for unity amongst the body of Christ here because I believe the Spirit of God cannot fully be poured out here until the whole body is willing to come together for corporate fellowship, worship and strategic planning.
School Principal, Teaches and Students - San Miguel Elementary School Lubogan Toril, Davao City:
This is the only elementary school in our area and over 500 children are attending. The Principal here has been very supportive of our ministry and allows us to do our programs with the children. He has allotted just under 1 hectare of land which is on school property to be used for our educational demo organic garden and livestock sustainable agriculture project. We have been approved by the Department of Education to adopt the school for 5 years and carry out this project. The Department of Agriculture Philippines has approved 2 3 1/2meter x 18 meter greenhouse units and drip irrigation system for our project which will be installed next month praise God!
We had a successful 5 day program for the children this summer called Children's CHE with the Theme "Clean Me, Clean Community", we have continued this program and it is held every Saturday morning from 8-11am. The last 2 weeks we had around 80 children attend! We start with a health story drama to teach disease prevention, then the children break into groups according to grade and learn another physical health topic, followed by games, and then a Bible story drama in chronological order (from Genesis to Revelation). The children are very much enjoying and we are so blessed to be able to invest our time, energy and love into these children our volunteers are doing a wonderful job in this ministry!
Community Members:
Our pilot area consists of around 9,000 people and is divided into sub-communities (Puroks) we have 18 Puroks in our Baranagay. We are targeting working in two Puroks right now, Purok 2 & 16. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday our staff go to the community to conduct home visitations. Wednesday some of our staff conduct Mother's Classes in the homes of the pregnant woman. They have chosen families to work with and visit the same family every week to share physical topics like preventative health, disease prevention, awareness like how to control diabetes and taking blood pressure etc. The other half of the home visit they teach spiritual topics like prayer, the Attributes of God, developing your prayer life with Christ, new life walking in the Spirit etc.
Just last month 40 people in our community received Christ as a result of this visitation ministry, and they are being followed up and discipled every week! If the people aren't going to Church we will take the Gospel to them! People see the volunteers coming and say great your coming for Bible study, a group of 5 woman wait patiently for our team to come and minister to them they like hearing the Word of God and getting their blood pressure taken because it's free!
Training Team:
The training team is being discipled and strengthened! We have 4 full time staff and 25 official members to date. We have morning devotions for our staff Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, Wed is prayer and fasting. Every Tuesday evening we have a Growth Group Meeting for our volunteers studying the book of Acts. We are very pleased that one of our members Tan Tan has a burden to reach out to the people in his high school so we will help him start a Growth Group next week, he already has 7 people interested! Please pray the school Principal will allow us to pursue these plans in the school.
Other Ministries Started or Starting This Year:
-PAD - Participatory Agriculture Development
-Adult and Child Literacy Training
-CHE Training, Workshops, and Seminars
-Eye Screening
-Livelihood and Micro Enterprise Training- Soap Making, Pressed Flower Card Making, snack food selling, and mushroom cultivation.
This Months Needs:
We really need your support this month as we have extra costs and are really trusting God to provide for this as He called us here He will sustain us!
He may want to do that through you! AMEN!
We need more than $700 just to get to the end of this month.
-I have to apply for my full residency Visa, I'm already a temporary resident and have to apply ASAP to upgrade my status or I will have to go back down to tourist visa and repay all the fees and start the process all over again.
-We have to fill our Annual Income Tax for WELLOFLIFE as the bookkeeper we had failed to complete this for us and now we have to pay a late penalty and hire a new bookkeeper for this transaction.
-We have to pay over $100 for our bank account retaining balance or they bank will close our accounts (we had to us this money last month for an emergency).
-We have 2 unpaid bills.
Need to pay our staff wages
-Ministry shirts
-Buy food for the month.
-Celebrate one staff's birthday.
-Celebrate WELLOFLIFE's Anniversary
-Print proposals for our School Garden Project.
We have no money for any of these expenses as we've already spent this months support on the other bills and payments which were do.
If God puts it on your heart to help us this is the time we need it the most!
Thank you very much for your prayers, support financially and even taking your time to read our emails! You mean so much to us and we love you all dearly!
We give God all the Glory and Praises that are due to His Name! Jesus we do it all for You!
Bless the LORD Jesus!
Love, Jeffrey, Lydia & Josiah Smith and WELLOFLIFE Team