Christ the King - Rock 4 Jesus concert

The feast of Christ the King is celebrated every year on the last Sunday of ordinary time. It is the last Sunday before the season of Advent marking the four Sundays of Christmas.

This year, our parish invited us to be part of their celebrations. A concert for the youth and the young at heart. The concert was called “Rock 4 Jesus”. Our item is a mime presentation called ‘Testify to Love’.

The audience was fully participating and clapping along with the many bands and items being presented.

All in all, we were happy to be a part of the festivities.

Christmas celebrations for families

On December 21, we held a Christmas program for families. Many new families we met while carolling came with their children and spouses. A drama was presented by the children of the ICPE Children ministry, a time for families to pray together, and a time for us to pray with them. We hope that they will bring the true meaning of Christmas home with them.

Christmas (reverse) Carolling

On December 20, we brought the joyful Christmas carols and food hampers to more than 100 families in the province of Rizal, in the little town in Montalban where we serve. They are poor families recommended by our own Balikatan members.

Merry Christmas from our ministries!!

Merry Christmas! Here’s a video clip with greetings from those in our ministries.

Advent celebration for families

On the 29th November, we organized an event for families. The theme for the session was about Advent – season of Love, Peace, Joy , Hope and Light. We encouraged families to pray together God grace and to take this season of Advent as an opportunity to evangelise.


During the 2-hour session, we had games for the family and also a activity where the families have to make an advent wreath. Most children from our ministry attended the session together with their mothers. About 45 families attended the event. It was a great experience organizing an event for families. We could feel God's presence amongst the families as they prayed for one another and during the time of worship.


Here's a short video clip on the families who attended the session.

Living Letters, our enewsletter - Oct 2008

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Christ the King - Rock 4 Jesus concert

The feast of Christ the King is celebrated every year on the last Sunday of ordinary time. It is the last Sunday before the season of Advent marking the four Sundays of Christmas.

This year, our parish invited us to be part of their celebrations. A concert for the youth and the young at heart. The concert was called “Rock 4 Jesus”. Our item is a mime presentation called ‘Testify to Love’.

The audience was fully participating and clapping along with the many bands and items being presented.

All in all, we were happy to be a part of the festivities.

Youth Worship nights

We started hosting worship nights every Friday since the middle of September 2008. This was established to give another avenue for young people to hang out on Friday nights to worship God with other like-minded youths. These nights are truly a gift.

The youths who have become regulars are mostly college students, or just starting on their first job.

In the upcoming year, we will focus on formation and building up a group of youth worshippers.

Children's Camp. – 'We are Children of God.'

Our community held a children's camp for nine selected children on the 28th – 30th October. The aim of this camp was to lead children to an encounter with God as Father and to deepen their identity as children of God. The nine children selected were those who also had potential to be young leaders.


This three day two-night camp was jam packed with teachings on different topics, games and prayer ministry. The sessions includes God's love, Our identity in God, Jesus as Lord and Saviour, Sacrament of Reconciliation , Growing seeds of Faith and Commitment. Different hands-on activities within the sessions helped inspire the creativity of the children and emphasise the teaching points.



In one of the activities, the children were asked to do a photo collage depicting their journey of faith and God's love for them. It was heartening to see the creativity of the children and their enthusiasm for the faith. In another session, each child was 'robed' with a new garment and given a ring, symbolizing that they are prince and princesses of the Father. Each child also had the chance to affirm and praise one another.


At the end of the camp, the children shared that they experienced God's love for them. Some also shared that God healed them of their hurts and also taught them how to forgive those who have hurt them. They also learnt how to praise and encourage one another. We are thankful to God for his faithfulness and for revealing himself to His little ones.

Milk and Vitamin supplements for the children

Since July this year, our Children’s ministry began to provide milk and vitamins to the children they serve, to support their dietary and health needs. Recognising that most of our children come from families that live below the poverty line and lack nutrition, this initiative aims to provide supplements to those who are undernourished.


"Vitamins are good for my health and keep me healthy. They are also yummy and provide nutrition." --- Mary Clarence, 13 yrs old, High School Level 1.

By God’s gracious providence, we managed to sufficient raise funds for this initiative through different partners. One of our partners for this initiative is a children’s liturgy group from a parish in Singapore. They raised funds for this initiative by selling food in their parish canteen. Php14,000 (around US$310) was raised to provide milk and vitamins for 80 children.

We would like to thank those who had supported this initiative. God bless you all.

LISS Building up session

Three weeks after conducting a Life in the Spirit Seminar for the students at Fondacio, we held a follow up session with them during which we shared more in depth about some of the charisms of the Holy Spirit and also emphasised the importance of the charisms for building up community. This was followed by a time of praying for one another and we were encouraged to see their openness to the Holy Spirit as they listened and allowed God to speak through them to each other. We thank God for this opportunity to reach out to these young people and for having received in turn much encouragement for our own faith and missionary journey.

Balikatan Evangelistic Outreach 25 July 2008

It was our very own experience of God calming the storm as we started our evangelistic outreach. Just as we completed setting up the equipment and the chairs, the rains poured down suddenly and heavily. In our open basketball court with just a zinc roof shelter, we ran for shelter to cover the amplifiers, speakers and equipment. And a few moments later, the waters rushed in and flooded right where the chairs were!
Thankfully, the Lord of the rains calmed the storm just in time for us to reposition the stage and clean up. And praise the Lord we did, as seventy plus adults and over eight children and youths turned up for the event. Balikatan members performed mimes and shared their testimonies, followed by a time of preaching and ministering to the people in prayer. As people gathered around the cross for prayers, truly no storm, sin or sickness could stop God’s outreaching love for His people that night!

Balikatan Livelihood Project

On September 9, 2008, we organized a one-day training of 23 members of Balikatan Ministry on how to make candles. On Sept 25-26, 2008 Balikatan Livelihood project will begin its candle production. It’s our hope that this project will bring hope and financial upliftment to the lives of our friends in Montalban, as well as hands-on Christian character formation as they learn to work together as a community. Our special thanks to SINGA Ship Management Phils., Inc and APLAYA LAIYA Corporation for channeling us to different contacts and sponsoring the training of our Balikatan Candle Making Project.

We praise and thank God for His provision of these contacts and trainer so that we can finally begin our Balikatan Livelihood Project.

We have more books!

The children ministry mobile library has expanded, and now we have more books than we can count. Once every 2 weeks, the 'library' is open for children to return the borrowed books and soak themselves in yet another book of adventure. It has been running for nearly 5 months now and the response has been overwhelming! This is also an opportunity for us to teach the children about taking care of the books, sharing resources and following simple rules. One particular week, the books were all laid out on the table, but once the announcement was made that books are available, they were all snapped up in less than 5 minutes! Here's a big thank you to those who have kindly donated their books for this purpose. You have contributed much to the expanding of young minds. Thank you!

Gift of clothes

We distributed a set of clothes to each of our 100 children from the ministry. This initiative began in June when we started to gather old clothes for children as most of the children from our ministry come from very poor families who cannot afford new clothes. In fact, some of them even wear clothes that have holes or are a little torn. Hence, we decided that we could bless them with some 'old- new' clothes. The clothes we collected were contributed by kind donors from Singapore and Korea. Although these were second-hand clothes, most of them were still in-tact and looks good.

The children were all very excited as they formed a queue to select a set of clothes they like. Our team together with some volunteers helped to find clothes that fitted each child. All the clothes were distributed and everyone went home delighted.

We thank God for inspiring our donors, and a big THANK YOU to all our donors!! God bless you!

Fondacio Life in the Spirit Seminar

Once again, we have been invited by Fondacio Asia to be resource personnel for their students in formation. We were roped in to conduct a Life in the Spirit Seminar for the new batch of students. They are an international community much like ours, and the students come from countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, China, Philippines, Laos.

Our two days with them was very encouraging. For many of them, speaking English does not come easily. However, as the sessions went by, we saw them very open, honest, thirsty to know more about God and language is not even a barrier.



The days were filled with short sessions, testimonies, praise and worship creativity, group sharing, fellowship, games, celebrating the Eucharist, reflection etc.



For many of them, they have never experienced anything like this before. In two very short days, we saw them filled with so much joy and enthusiasm, hope and love, and freedom to dance and worship God.


We are also very blessed by being there with them. God can do wonders even in two short days!

eVANgelcal van - an Urgent appeal

In 1997, we received a gift of a second-hand 14-seater Mazda van. Though it had no power steering, and required a lot from the driver to drive it, especially on the long distances, it has served the needs of the mission centre faithfully. From moving the missionaries around to various venues of outreach, to the weekly ministry outreaches to Montalban, (an hour’s drive away on days without traffic jam) to meeting all the travel needs of the mission centre. Recently, during a thunderstorm, it was also converted into a make shift classroom with the missionary-teacher seated at the driver’s seat facing the back of the van, with 25 kids squeezed onto the 2 rows of seats.

However, after more than a decade, the trusty van is showing signs of aging. Since a few years ago, it had gone on an overhaul, a radiator change, the compressor of the air conditioning needed a few changes, full body repair work, and rust is now even visible to the naked eye. When it rains, it leaks as well, this can be tricky when we have equipment to transport to our ministry sites; amplifier, musical instruments, teaching materials etc.


Because Mazda has now phased out this particular make of van, it has no resale value in the market. It still runs on gasoline (not diesel as most vans are) and can run only 6-8 km per litre.

We are in urgent need of P800,000.00 approximately US$20,000.00 to purchase a new locally manufactured van. After making all the preliminary fact finding, we found the Mitsubishi L300 to be the most economical, since we only need a simple van to serve our needs, no additional accessories will be added. The mileage is 10-12km per litre of diesel.



We are making this urgent appeal now, the rainy season is arriving, the rust is getting worse from week to week, every time we close our door, some rust is falling out. It only takes 40people to contribute US$500 or 200 people to contribute US$100. If this call is in your heart, if you know someone, or have some idea of how we can purchase this van, please, feel free to contact us immediately at our email found on this blog. Thanks and God bless you!

Community Experience - Mike Arents

"My name is Mike Arents. I'm from the Netherlands and am 27 years old . After being a seminarian for the past 9 years, I completed my theological studies, and now decided to join ICPE Philippines for 'Community Experience'. The missionary call in my life was already present a long time ago, but God led me first to the seminary. Now I want to find out whether my missionary call is a call from God to join the ICPE mission longterm.

Although I have been to ICPE Manila a few times before. many things are still the same and familiar, but there are also many changes. Especially the community and the places of mission outreach. So far I really feel at home here and I feel very welcomed in the community. Being surrounded by only women and one married man is quite a change in my life. So far I only lived in communities of only men. But I have to say that everyone is very nice and so I feel OK with it now.

Also the missions we go on build me up. It is great to share the Gospel with people in Montalban, and our recent outreach to a local seminary was very nice. It is great to be back in the heart of Asia, being surrounded by Filipinos and other Asians here in our house. My heart goes out to them and I can experience God's love through them."

Being part of a bigger CHURCH!

World Youth Day, here we come! One more day to go and we're excited. Much has been done, much has to be prepared, some are packing, some are practising.

From the Philippines, a small group of us will journey on to Melbourne for the Days in Diocese and then onward, on a 13-hour bus journey to Sydney.

In Melbourne, there is an exciting event happening; FIREBRANDZ, our very own ICPE youth festival happening in Brunswick at Our Lady Help for Christians on July 8 and 9. Days of sharings, concerts etc!

In Sydney...For those of you who are coming to World Youth Day, we invite you all to come visit us at the Vocation Expo at the Convention Center, Sydney 15th -18th July. Booth E09.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you usually do each day?
Besides community prayer, daily Eucharistic celebrations, serving each other through in house ministries like cooking, cleaning, we also have times of worship, preparation for ministries and outreaches. We run weekly ministries for children and adults at a relocation township near a rubbish dumpsite. A monthly youth leaders formation. And ad hoc invitations from different parishes, seminaries,

How do you live?
We depend on Divine providence and that includes partners in mission who have been supporting us in prayer, in kind and through monetary support.

What is the formation all about?
This is a two year formation program designed to build up future ICPE missionaries who will be full time in the mission.

What programs do you run?
In the Philippines, we have been running Life in the Spirit seminars, Emmaus Experience (2 weeks), School of Humanitarian Work and Christian Formation (3 months), Pastoral Care School (3 weeks) etc...

Do you take vows?
No, but we live according to the Christian values and acknowledge covenant commitments for varying periods of time such as 2, 3, 5, 10 years or lifetime.

Are singles consecrated for life?
Consecrated life is not mandatory in the mission, and those who do choose, they make private promises.

What about married couples and their children?
They live in the community as full time missionaries as well. Their family life is preserved, and the children go to regular schools and lead regular lives. All ICPE missionaries do not hold jobs outside of the community. We depend on providence.

I am interested in your life and work, but I am still unsure, what can I do?
There are opportunities to 'Come and see', experience life alongside full time missionaries for a period of time. One can also attend a School of Mission at the various mission centres. Do check out our official website for upcoming schools. www.icpe.org

Life in the Spirit Seminar for Youth

May 27-30 saw 28 youths with ages ranging from 14-22. Most were experiencing this seminar for the first time. Unlike the usual praise and worship, sessions, cell group sharings, fellowship, creativity, prayer ministries, there were also games! By and large everyone experienced God's love in a differently new way and wanted an extension! Next year guys!

Update on BALIKATAN MINISTRY

It was a record breaking seminar with..
a) the largest group of participants for a Balikatan seminar (16 participants)
b) the most number of male participants (4 men)
c) the oldest participant (71 years old)
d) the youngest participant (14 years old)

The only thing that remained unchanged from previous seminars… God’s faithfulness in providing all needs, in touching and changing lives! He is truly an awesome God!


14-15 June 2008. Balikatan Life in the Spirit Seminar, batch number 4 with ICPE members.

Snippet of the week

DID YOU KNOW? The elementary school pupils (ranging from 7 to 12 years old) use writing paper that’s unique to each grade. As foreigners to the local education system, we quickly learned the difference between writing pad, spelling pads and one quarter writing pads, not to mention Oslo paper, Bond paper and Cartolina paper amongst other essential stationery!

For their school needs, the parents write down a list of essential stationery for their child. The materials are then purchased and disbursed by ICPE members.


10 June 2008 - Back to school!!!
Distributing essential stationery and school needs for the start of the academic school year to children under the children educational sponsorship ministry.

Children Library

We started a trial run on June 7 for books that we received from donors. The trial is only with 6 books and even while we were explaining the borrowing system, the kids were already eyeing on them! At the word 'Go', all the books were snapped up that morning. When we met them again later that afternoon, they were still hanging on to their books carefully, devouring every word. Here's how some kids were enjoying their book!

Reverse Carolling@ Christmas 2007

One thing that made this Christmas more meaningful for us is our experience during our Reverse Caroling on December 22, 2007. It has blessed not only those families whom we have visited but each one of us who participated in this event.

The entire community, together with the members of our Balikatan Ministry (a ministry reaching out to the marginalized adults in the congested area) and a number of children from our children ministry, we started the day visiting families, bringing the light of Christ symbolized by the candle. We sang Christmas Carols, prayed for the family and gave a hamper of food. Some of the families were nicely surprised, some cried with joy, some were so touched by our prayer and unexpected visitation. One family was so grateful that though their house is in the mountain (very far from the rest), a group of people have shown love by the visitation. One mother said she was pleasantly surprised and blessed that for the first time the Carolers were the ones who gave instead of receive payment. One old lady was filled with joy to see us dancing while singing.

Most of our Balikatan members expressed their great joy that though they are poor themselves, they were able to bless others. They also realized that there are others in worse situations than themselves and that they can make others happy. We were able to visit 69 families that day. Each community member has experienced the deep joy of seeing Jesus in the lives of the poor. One thing that we also enjoyed is our fellowship with our Balikatan and Children Ministry members as we walked through the streets, crossing the river and climbing the mountain together. It was indeed a Blessed Day!