Here's an interview with one of the youths...

How have you benefitted from Youth worship nights?
It changes a lot in me. It helps me to be with myself and God more, and makes me realize that I'm worth something, maybe not to all, but to someone, greater than all of them.

How does it help you in your day to day work?
I gain confidence, and it continuously provides me hope, that no matter what happens, I'm not alone and I can make it, it lessens the stress and pressure.

Which part of the whole evening do you enjoy the most… praise and worship? Adoration? Short teaching? Sharing? Reflection? Fellowship with other youths?
Sharing, reflection and fellowship with other youth are my favorite parts. Sharing makes us feel that someone is willing to listen to us and respect our opinions and feelings over a matter. Reflection helps us to think over some things in our life that we often look over and took for granted. During the Praise and worship, it's my time to speak with God alone and I don't take it for granted.


Cressa Morado
Age: 21
Job: communication and promotion associate

Youth ministry - Where have we come from?

After the last few months of journeying and praising God together, it was appropriate to spend some quality time looking back at the year 2008 and looking forward to 2009. We allocated a Sunday for this.

The theme was "Where have you come from and where are you going?".

It is in looking back that we can look forward. So there was a guided time of reflection and journaling, with workshop and celebrating the Eucharist. Each youth made a collage (or picture montage). This helps to better express emotions, events and situations, new/old relationships of the year. The youth were also led to a reflection of what they feel about their hopes and dreams, desires and wishes for the coming year. Now that we have given them the tools, we are hopeful that with this they can better set spiritual goals, physical goals and emotionally goals.

All in all we had a fun and fruitful time together.

Living Letters - our January enewsletter from the Philippines!!

Jan 09 LL

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A huge smile, glasses and a treasure in the bible

"I am so happy that I can read the Bible! The reading glasses are such a gift. With my clearer eyesight I feel that I am closer to God because I am able to read His word. Also, I don’t have to squint anymore when I provide my manicure and pedicure services. I thank God for this gift!"
Neng, Balikatan member and mother of 8 children. Neng works part time as a free lance manicurist

It all started when we were presented with a pair of old reading glasses from a visitor to our centre. We brought it along with us for our Balikatan meetings to see if anyone would have use for it. When Neng first tried on the pair of glasses and looked at the faces around, she immediately took it off exclaiming that it made her vision blurred. After explaining that it was only for reading, she read a few words off her Bible and broke into a huge smile, saying “I can read!”. It was a heartwarming sight as Neng had never before read the scriptures aloud at Balikatan meetings due to her long sightedness. At that meeting, she read beautifully off the pages of the Bible and was so pleased to be able to participate. Nowadays, Neng attends our Balikatan meetings with her glasses and carefully stores it back in the case once she is done. Through that pair of glasses, she has found the treasure box of the Word of God unlocked for her.

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

Oct 08_living Letter

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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!