Living Letters, our enewsletter - Oct 2008

Oct 08_living Letter

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

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!