This is a report that my brother, Michael wrote recently.
Hi friends! You are about to read an exciting report
coming to you straight from San Jose city in the Philippines. Your penman is
Michael Hargreaves, the assistant director of the PAFCOE program. Without
further introduction, let’s go!
Where is San Jose? San Jose is a city located in the province of Antique on the
western coast of Panay Island. It was founded in 1872 and has much Spanish
influence from the 17th century when the Spaniards settled and
catholicized the islands of the Philippines.
It is about two hours’ drive by car from Iloilo City. The city has an estimated population of about
50,000 or about 1/10 the size of Iloilo City. Although the main language of the
Island of Panay is Hiligayon (or Ilongo), the local dialect spoken in the city
is Kinaraya. As you are probably already
aware, there are hundreds of dialects spoken here in the Philippines, each
unique to the area. Tagalog and English are the official languages for the
Republic of the Philippines but each region has a native dialect spoken by the
common people.
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| Church in San Jose, Antique |
It was agreed that we
would do the meeting at the San Jose Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This is a beautiful new church built only
months ago from the sale of previous property and from various donors and sponsors.
It is the largest church in Panay Island and the West Visayan Conference’s
(WVC) largest church. It can probably
seat about 1000 people when crowded. But less than two hundred members are registered
on the books. Not more than 100 regularly
show up for meetings. It is a couple of kilometers outside the city
of San Jose.
We are staying in
an apartment connected to the new church (the parsonage). When we arrived
here, the apartment was finished and ready for us to move in. God provided beds and other essentials for
us. The Conference sent one of its vans and the driver to move us from Iloilo
to San Jose. We arrived in San Jose May
3, 2012 just one day before the meeting was to start. By the grace of
God, we managed to get settled into our new apartment and get everything ready
for the first meeting.
Let me now share
with you how the seminar is going. May 4
was the starting date for Revelations of Prophecy San Jose. About 100 people total showed up for our
topic, “Mysteries of Bible Prophecy” (Daniel 2). About 20% were non-SDAs.
This seminar was
unique in that my father and I are sharing the preaching—we trade off
every other meeting. I preach one
night; he preaches the next night. I preached the second and third nights because my father was sick.
This was followed by a free night during which my dad got better. The following day I preached the fourth meeting
on salvation.
Although our adult
meetings have not been well-attended by non-SDAs, our children’s
meetings sure have been. During this
seminar we have once again to see the need of child evangelism in the
Philippines. Each night, the children’s
program is packed with bright, eager children ready to grasp whatever my mom
and sister share with them from the Bible.
Their minds are like a sponge, ready to soak in the precious stories and
truths from the word of God. The children listen eagerly and attentively to
the Bible stories; they are fascinated by the stories. Some are hearing these stories for the first
time in their entire lives. More than
80% of the children attend are non-Adventist
children. Most of them have no biblical
background. At best, the people in the
villages are Catholic by heritage but most of them have no clue what they
believe. They may only go to church once
or twice a year. Hence, many of the
children grow up with little to no knowledge of God’s word or spiritual
truths. Many of the
children coming to the Revelations of Prophecy Children’s Program do not come
with their parents. They come from areas
around the church. All around the church
are poor houses and families with many children.
Many poor Filipino
families have 5 or 10 children. The vast
majority of the population in the Philippines (80%+) have large families. That’s
why the population of the Philippines is growing so rapidly. The first night, there were less than 50
children. But then, as time progressed,
more and more children started coming.
Recently the program has grown to 100 children! The children tell all the other children in
the neighborhood about the exciting program—the lovely Bible songs (Bible verses
put to song) they have learned to love singing, the fascinating Bible stories,
and their favorite part of the program: the crafts. Thus, the children’s
seminar becomes known by word of mouth as a very desirable and interesting
place to be. Children here in the
villages are plentiful, sweet, and simple.
They will listen to whatever you
say. Being very affectionate children,
they will love you if you make friends with them. We hope that not only will the seeds of truth
be planted in these children’s minds, but also that they will be instrumental
in bringing their parents to the knowledge of the truth.
Children here in
the Philippines comprise nearly 1/3 of the population of the country. The median age of the Philippines is only 23
years according to the World Factbook. Hence, the Philippines is a young nation—filled with young people.
The weather here
has been very nice. It is supposedly
the “dry season” but nothing is normal these days. When it is overcast or raining, or in the
morning before the sun comes up, it is usually very pleasant (23-30 C or 75-90
F). When it is sunny, however, it is quite hot. Often rain showers or thunderstorms
come in the afternoon or evening. This
can make it challenging to hold meetings because transportation in the rain is
not easy. Most of the people coming to our seminar do not have cars and motorcycles and public transportation is difficult to use in the rain.
We often pray that God will turn the
rain aside during the nights we have our meetings that no one be discouraged
and fail to come out because of the rain.
Now let me share
with you a couple of personal testimonies.
May 4, 2012, the day we were to start our prophecy seminar, I wanted to
pass our fliers to the people living around the church. However, I did not want to go by myself. Yet I felt convicted that I should go do it, my
parents encouraged me to go, and I had no peace by trying to put it out of my
mind. Finally, I set out with fliers in
hand. I walked down to the end of the
dirt road on which the church is located.
This road merges with the main asphalt road going into San Jose. Before I had even reached the main road, I
got scared and went back home without passing out a single flyer. After more
prayers and encouragement, I set out again. Soon I was back. This time I spent a
long time debating and praying. Finally
I felt convicted that God would not help me if I sat around and did
nothing. I had to actually go out and do
it and in the process of doing it I knew God would give me strength. That day I had victory over self even though
it took a couple of hours of prayers and encouragements. I passed out a number of fliers to people in
our area. It was really not that hard
and people were friendly. I knew my
fears were ungrounded and a suggestion of the enemy that people might not hear
about the meetings. Friends, if you are
afraid to witness for Christ, just do it!
You will never gain courage by hesitating or failing to act. Step out in faith and in the strength of
Christ you can be an effective witness for Jesus.
I had another
interesting experience last night. After
the meeting when we were greeting people, we talked with a
distinguished-looking woman. She said
that she had come out the second night (the first night I preached) and had
been so fascinated by what she was hearing night be night that she was
compelled to continue coming out. She
even brought her cousin with her last night.
This was God’s encouragement to me.
I never feel like my meetings are compelling but I believe that God is
using me to preach His truth and that He is interesting the people and making
it plain to them.
Please keep this
seminar in your prayers. It has just
started and there is still great potential.
Although we have experienced all kinds of setbacks and opposition, we
know that God has a work for us to do here and “no weapon formed against us
will prosper” (Isa. 54:17). Ultimately,
no matter what the enemy does, the gospel will go forward for “we can do
nothing against the truth but for it” (2 Cor. 13:8).
Please keep the
student seminars in prayer. We have some
20+ meetings that our students are doing (all at the same time we are doing our
seminar here in San Jose) with 24 meetings total. Please pray that God will multiply results
through this on the job training. We will try to update
you with the fascinating testimonies from their meetings as soon as we get
them.
We hope some of
you reading this blog will be interested in joining us for the next PAFCOE
session in August.
We finally decided that translation was necessary for the seminar. We realized that less than ½ the people were
really getting the full message. Now, with translation into the dialect
(Ilongo), we will be able to effectively communicate the three angels’ messages
to our audience.
On Sabbath, there was a federation worship with all
the churches from around the area of the Antique Province. There were perhaps more than 500 people. Unfortunately, they don't all come to the meetings every night.
We have now started seminar visitation. This also requires translation because many
of the people here in the country are poor and cannot speak or understand much
English because many of them haven’t even been to school (in the Philippines,
English is taught and used only in school or in professional places such as the
government, businesses, medical facilities, etc; common people speak to each
other in the local dialect or in the national language—Tagalog). Many of the people in the country around the
church live in very primitive conditions.
Some of them only have a simple bamboo “hut” with a mud floor and
animals running around everywhere. Of
course, downtown or on the outskirts of the city there are some wealthy people
with lovely concrete houses and new cars.
They are only the exception though, not the rule unless you are living
in a “high-class” subdivision of the city.
However, the good news is that many of the people in the country are
also very open to the gospel. They are
receptive and eager to listen to the truths of the Bible. The rich are often uninterested in the truths
of the Bible or content with their own religion.
Tonight, it is Dad’s turn to preach since I
preached the last time and we take turns.
Pray for God’s blessings on our seminar and the 20 seminars of our
PAFCOE students.
Keep in mind that
all this was possible because God moved the hearts of some donors who sponsored
both PAFCOE and all these seminars. If
you would like to be part of a seminar, we are told by local brethren that a
good seminar here only costs about 80,000 pesos ($2,000). Money goes much further here than in the States
where one would expect to pay 10 or 20,000 dollars for a good seminar. If the Holy Spirit impresses you to give,
here’s how you can do it:
“Give according to your
means, or God will make your means according to your giving.”
I have been blessed by
giving. Did I suffer?
No. God has blessed and repaid
what I have given Him. “Give and it
shall be given unto you.” We are glad we can use every dollar to
advance His work. We hope God’s Spirit
will so inspire you with zeal in His work that you will find giving to His work
your delight and will do all in your power to advance His work.
“Give me one hundred men who love nothing but God,
hate nothing but evil, and know nothing but Jesus Christ, and I will change the
world.” – John Wesley
Good-bye for now, God bless,
Your companion and worker for Christ,
Michael Hargreaves
