Hi Dear Ones,

Over the past few weeks we have been able to distribute rice to all our churches in Mindanao to help our brothers and sisters through the hard times they are experiencing due to the pandemic. Most of their communities have been locked down, some have not been able to get their produce to the town to sell, some have been unable to work, some have been sick …… so the rice is a huge provision from the Lord to help them during these times of difficulty.

In order to determine how much rice we needed, we had to have a census done of each of the churches throughout the 6 regions we work in and the following figures are what we found out. Today we have:
73 churches including a few new outreaches
860 two parent families (where both parents are believers and come to church with their kids)
622 one parent families (where only one of the parents is a believer and comes to church with their kids)
135 widows (including a few widowers – a lot because of the warfare in our areas – especially in the past)

We were sort of blown away by these numbers and amazed at how God has grown the work and continues to grow it! And through this census we came up with the amount of rice we needed – we wanted to give each family and each widow a 25 kg sack of rice – which was a staggering 1617 x 25 kg sacks or around about 40 tons of rice.

One of our team members – videographer Jan Amper from Cagayan – went along during the rice deliveries and took this video footage for us and made up a short video clip to record this project.

Many were involved in the blessing of making this all happen: those who funded the rice, those who helped us with all the administration – sourcing the rice, organizing the trucking, delivering the rice to drop points so that it could then be shuttled out on foot or motorbike to each of the 73 churches …… and more. It was a HUGE undertaking but has all been successfully pulled off with safety for all involved. Our Talaandig and Higaonon brothers and sisters were overjoyed and thankful – all thanks and glory to our Great God and Provider!!!!

Hope you enjoy this video – it brought tears to our eyes as we watched it. We’re so, so THANKFUL to our Heavenly Father for His great love and provision.

Love Paul and Deb xxx