Ministries in Southeast Asia Adapt to COVID-19 Restrictions
For local missionaries in remote areas of Southeast Asia, use of social media and Zoom as solutions to COVID-19 restrictions is not always possible and can sometimes be dangerous.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures for Those Serving the Poor in the Philippines
Even as their own resources dwindle amid the global coronavirus crisis, local missionaries in the Philippines are taking extraordinary measures to get aid to needy people hit by the pandemic.
Coronavirus Crisis Gives Local Missionaries in the Philippines Unique Opportunity
Local missionaries in the Philippines are facing steep challenges to help people afflicted by the coronavirus even as the pandemic threatens their own lives and families.
Drug-Addicted Couple Finds Surprising Path to Christ
Doing dangerous drugs with her boyfriend by night and earning a decent wage by day, Sarah dismissed a male friend’s talk of eternal life in Christ.
In their native Philippines, they were too busy climbing the economic ladder in their urban metropolis to pay much attention to ancient things.
Things changed, though, when Sarah ran into her friend – and the gospel – in a place that seemed like another planet.
Poor Preschooler Needing Surgery Faces Steep Odds
A law passed last year providing health care for all people in the Philippines takes effect this month, but that will not matter to remote villagers where there are no doctors or medical facilities.
Impoverished villagers have long suffered from lack of access to health care in the Southeast Asian country.
Against this backdrop, a 4-year-old boy in Mindanao whose hernia made it too painful to play with other children didn’t realize how lucky he was.
They Need Health Care – and Someone Who Cares
Villagers in the Philippines had waited in vain for foreign aid organizations to fulfill their promises to bring free medical clinics to treat their first-degree burns, pneumonia, respiratory infections and other ills.
Then a stranger from their own country showed up.
“He was attired in a traditional manner,” a ministry director said of the native missionary. “With blackened teeth strengthened by chewing betel nut, he smiled and disclosed that he came all the way from a tribal village together with his wife, children and grandchildren.”
Small Business Start-Ups Transform Lives
A young Christian woman in the Philippines whose speech impediment kept her in the shadows was devastated when her baby died before his first birthday. At any church service or gathering in an undisclosed town on the island of Mindanao, Maria Dominguez stayed back in a corner. In the past year she tried recovering from the trauma of losing her child by selling snacks in her neighborhood, a native ministry leader said. “Unfortunately, she did not have enough capital to finance her business,” he said.
Lasting Peace in Lands of Violence
A widow in the Philippines who came to faith in Christ in her 80s was just beginning to get passionate about visiting homes to share the gospel when she knocked on the door of the man who had stabbed her son.
