Few weeks ago, we’re able to meet with a couple of people here in Pasig. We visited the family of our best friends in South Bend, who are living a few minutes from where we are stayin. We also met up with Tori Beaver (from First Love in Boracay) and had a nice afternoon conversation about missionary life here in the Philippines. Back in 2011, we went to Boracay and serve at Dan and Tori’s ministry to the children there. Right now, their ministry continues in Boracay and as well to the Ati Tribe in Caticlan (a boat ride away from Boracay island). I developed their website shortly after we return to the US that year. Right now, it’s a privilege to again be part of re-developing their website to re-focus the target audience of their ministry.
I’m beginning to go back to my culture, yet preserve what I’ve learned from the American culture. I’m thankful to have both world’s perspective in mind as we dive into the opportunities for ministry here.
We also met up with the Ross family, missionaries here in Philippines with primary focus on serving and equipping the youth. Derek and Amanda are heading the True Love Waits Philippines and have reached thousands of students nationwide. I love to hear their honesty and humbleness as they share their over 10 years (forgot the exact number of years) of mission experience here in the country. I helped with building their True Love Waits Philippines website which is wagmuna.com (’Wag Muna means Not Yet). This website reaches thousands of Filipino students daily. After we did their wagmuna.com website, we developed Bridging the Gap Asia, an off-shoot website to explain more what Derek and Amanda’s ministry is about to our western friends.
If you feel the thug in reaching out to the youth schools here in the Philippines, I’d recommend contacting Derek to find out how you can partner in prayer and support their ministry.
In our conversation last Sunday, Derek shared that they were invited by Vice Governor Jinkee Pacquiao for their True Love Waits team to come to GenSan and conduct a TLW event on August 2015. Vice Governor Jinkee and her staff has been using True Love Waits already in GenSan to reach out to the youth there. Jinkee is Manny Pacquiao’s wife.
As we conversed about this opportunity, Derek presented us with challenge also. One of that is raising fund for him and his staffs to fly to GenSan on the last week of April to meet Jinkee’s staffs . A round-trip ticket to GenSan would cost about 3-5k pesos (that’s about $60-120 dollars per person). In total, he’ll need to raise an extra $300-$500 dollars all for him and his 3 staff to fly there (GenSan is where Manny Pacquiao is from and it’s in the southern part of the Philippines). If you feel led to help with this event or cover the cost of their staff’s flight, you can visit http://www.cten.org/derekross/