anascomissions.org

I found some interesting statistics here on short term missions trips. Who takes short term mission trips? 9% of American adults (only 3.5% of American adults went in the last 5 years) 11% of churchgoers 23% of evangelical Christians 12% of people ages 18-24 9% of people ages 25-43 7% of people ages 44-62 9% of people aged 63+ How do short-term mission trips affect those who go? 75% say the experience changed their life in some way 25% say it helped them become more aware of other people’s struggles 16% say it taught them more about poverty, justice, or the world 11% say it increased their compassion 9% say it enriched their faith 9% say it broadened their spiritual understanding 5% say it boosted their financial generosity In Matthew chapter 14 we read that Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion on them. There is something to be said about seeing things with your own two eyes. A person can read about missions in a newsletter (or a blog like this), or you can view a visiting missionar...

Father's Day is a relatively new holiday in the Philippines. We enjoyed church service at Victory Christian Fellowship, then we played games in the afternoon, and then we ate at my favorite pizza place, Dos Marias, home of their famous thirty-two inch pizza. Even though there are just five of us in our family, we got the big one. We brought half of it home because as most of you will agree, cold pizza is a great midnight snack and even better for breakfast.

Here is Eric and Faith outside of their new school on a very windy first day of classes. The morning was a little rough for Faithy, she found it hard to adjust from home school to school outside the home, but the day got better for her. They both made friends, and Eric was even elected to be on of the class officers. It will be weird to have them out of the house during the week days. This new school looks promising. Today was also the first day of classes for the Sonshine Learning Center. It is hard to believe that we are starting our fifth year of preschool at the Sonshine Center.

If you have been following my posts on Facebook you probably figured out that we went to the nearby island of Guimaras. We went with the YFN-IAM team to have some downtime and also do to one more camp, a day camp with around 300 kids.

Danny getting down with one of the dance teams at YFN-IAM:

Personally I am not a fan of big evanglistic events, unless they are done in partnership with local churches. What is the point of hundreds of youth getting charged up or of dozens of new believers being welcomed into God's kingdom unless those being ministered to can get plugged into a good local church for continued discipleship? It's great that we can have an incredible week long youth event, but there are still fifty-one more weeks in the year. That is why for this year's YFN-IAM event we started meeting with local churches and their pastors months and months before the event. Through the leadership of Calvary missionary Nate Shuck and Sonshine Center director, Pastor Chris Patricio, we approached local churches, offering the YFN-IAM event as a catalyst for growth for their churches and youth ministries. Our desire was to partner with churches in Iloilo so that these new believers and energized youth could maintain their commitments through the ministry of a local churc...

Last night the power of God continued to move, even though we had a brownout (power outage). Twenty one new believers were added into the family of God. Tonight is our final night and we are expecting Christ to punctuate this incredible week with a huge exclamation point. Pastor Chris shares the Good News of Christ with the hundreds who are hungry for Christ.