Church Ministry

The team put together a children’s program for the church and community children.  We had 200 children both from the church and the community show up for our program, whose centerpiece was a drama/lesson that the children enjoyed.  We also put on a youth program for the combined youth of the Agape church and several other churches totaling about 75 youth.  Members of the team taught lessons and shared their testimonies.  One particularly powerful moment was when we had all the youth write down things that they struggle with and we anonymously put them on a cross and prayed over them.  Many of the youth wrote long essays, which was encouraging given the normally shy nature of the culture particularly when it comes to ‘losing face’ over any perceived problems or struggles.  In our later interactions with many of the youth, we found that they were much more open with us given our own openness with them during the program.

Children's Ministry

Youth Ministry (praying over the cross and the Youth Prayer Requests)

Between Pastor Johnson and me, we preached and conducted Bible studies for the church throughout the week as we covered topics such as consecrated living, faith and the Way of the Cross.  Lastly, we put on a health seminar for the church community that featured a number of our medical/dental volunteers conducting teachings on dental hygiene, nutrition, mental health, wound/burn care and illness prevention.

Medical/Dental Clinics

We conducted medical/dental clinics at 4 separate locations and overall we saw 663 medical/dental patients and more than 300 people prayed the sinner’s prayer (Praise the Lord!) with our spiritual counselor team (a mix of our team members and the church leaders including the Ildefonsos themselves).  We noticed one huge area of need was the dental care.  Typically, people can barely afford food let alone medical care.  Dental care is absolutely dead last in terms of priorities so the teeth we saw were in terrible conditions.  Our dental team had to pull hundreds of teeth unfortunately.

Clinic #1: This was held in a small local prison that housed 160 prisoners crammed into a tiny facility.  In the states, such a building would probably have held 20 people and somehow for lack of space, 160 were crammed into unspeakable conditions.  The medical conditions here were relatively severe with a lot of scabies (small mites that burrow into people’s skins) given the extremely cramped conditions.  We suspected one particular man of having TB so our medical volunteers told him that we’ll do the best we can to help him.  He broke down and started crying and said that no one had ever tried to help him before in his life.  Probably the highlight of the clinic was at the end when several of the prisoners came over and sang several Christian songs for us as a way of saying ‘thank you’ and it left many of us in tears.

Clinic #2: This was held in a much larger prison facility that had 700+ prisoners.  It’s a more progressive prison in that there was much more space, freedom of movement and more accommodations for worship.  This is a prison that the Ildefonsos have been trying to visit and bless.  I had taken a medical team here in the past and the prisoner in charge of helping us was a man that I had led to the Lord on my visit a few years ago.  It was encouraging to see how he has progressed over the years.  Although many prisoners were very open to the Gospel message, one particular troubled young man who was arrested for being involved in a kidnapping was very hardened.  Andrew spoke with him for probably an hour trying to break through but he wouldn’t budge.  His family appeared to disown him and no one ever visits him.  Every time he said he was leaving, however, he would stay and continue talking.  He knew that he was being shown a supernatural love and despite his resistance, was drawn by it.  We pray that the seeds of Jesus’ love will bear its fruit one day.

BT Volunteer Dentist during the Medical Clinic

In the prisons, many heard the true Gospel for the first time in their lives (many were typical non-practicing Catholics) and said the sinner’s prayer for the first time in their lives.  We pray that prison ministry will continue and for the new believers to join or form new fellowships in the prisons.  We gave out all our New Testaments and we had to re-order new Gospel booklets due to the high demand.

Spiritual Clinic with Marilyn and Alland Ildefonso

Other observations: in the progressive prison, they spend 30 pesos/day on 3 meals for the prisoners.  That’s about 75 cents.  It’s barely enough for children to survive on, let alone grown men or women.  If prisoners don’t have family involved, they starve.  Unfortunately, it’s the reality of the poverty of the region that many families outside the prison don’t have it much better.  The average income for a farmer in the area is about $5-$7/day WHEN there are jobs, which are seasonal.  Fisherman earn around $2 – $7/day if they catch enough fish.  The economic reality in Pila Laguna is grim.  In some places in the Caribbean or Africa, we would notice a relatively high involvement of NGOs, churches, UN, etc.  Very few come to this part of the Philippines.  Throughout the trip, I asked many questions and took down many notes as I hope to come up with some self-sustainability projects to help the Agape church long and short term, God willing.

Clinic #3 was held at the Agape Church where we had a chance to help the church members as well as others in the community.  Once again, these types of community clinics are invaluable as a way to knit the community to the church especially when they face opposition from the dominant Catholic Church.

Clinic #4 was held in an area called ‘Le Playa’, a poor fishing community that a few years ago was very badly damaged from severe flooding.  The Ildefonsos have come into this area with humanitarian aid in the past.  This area has very little Evangelical Gospel witness and little health care facilities so we had to conduct the clinic in the community center.  The people here were much more resistant to the Gospel, but we rejoiced in the seeds that were planted both in word and in deed for the community.  There was one person that Andrew spent a lot of time speaking with and praying with.  I asked him later what happened and he said that this man was very interested in the Gospel and asked many questions and when he accepted the Lord, he wanted to learn more and share this with all his family.  Because of the lack of nearby churches, we directed him to the Ildefonso’s church, but Andrew shared how he felt like the Lord’s hand was on him and big things would happen with our new brother.

- Please pray for the growth of all the new believers and that they wouldn’t fall to the wayside.

-Please pray for the Ildefonsos and their church.

In addition to seeing all of our brothers and sisters again, I was eager to see the progress of the country since my last visit.  I was encouraged to see that a lot of the rubble has indeed been cleared out of the capital and country-side.  There also seemed to be quite a number of reconstruction projects throughout the city.  On the road to Jacmel, I also noticed quite a few areas with new buildings and even the small huts on the side of the mountains seemed to have been replaced with brand new structures.

On the down side, there were still quite a lot of people living in tent refugee cities scattered throughout the capital including right across the street from the presidential palace.  At first, I was disappointed to see that the palace was still in ruins, but I was told that President Martelly declared that he wouldn’t have the palace rebuilt until all the people were out of their tents so at least politically that was a good thing.  I was told that out of 1.2 million people living in tents shortly after the earthquake, there are now 400,000 left.  So this is great progress, but honestly I felt a sense of despair and grief for all the people that I saw living in these tents 2 years after the tragedy.  I know that this will be a long process and I can only pray God’s continued grace and patience for the people.

Both ministries are doing very well by God’s grace.  They both have wonderful ongoing projects, but challenges.

Sister Elsie continues to raise up and train her young leaders into godly and mature young men and women.  Many of them are finishing high school and college and some have now graduated and are entering the work force.  One young man, Nicolas, graduated with a computer science degree and works for the Customs agency.  His salary is minimal (~$500/month), but he’s just beginning his career.  Elsie also continues to make over a thousand meals a week for hundreds of destitute children and provide food care packages for dozens of families.  The challenge is that since the earthquake, donations have leveled off back to where they were pre-earthquake while costs are still high.  It costs about $3500/month just to do the food program (that includes food, water, propane, salaries, etc).  Committed donations to the ministry barely meet even that.  This doesn’t include some of the education sponsorships that she has for many students.  For example, med student Prophete is doing a residency in a remote area of Haiti.  His annual school cost is $1,700.  Please pray that the ministry will be able to continue helping these young people.

If the Lord so moves in your heart to give, we have an area on our website to do so and 100% of the donations go to the ministry and all of the missions that we oversee. (https://www.brooklyntabernacle.org/giving?contributeTo=34–Haiti,%20Port-au-Prince%20(Caribbean%20Grace%20Tabernacle))

Sister Bonite has a growing church that continues to reach out to her community.  Her challenge is raising up leaders and deacons (1 Tim 3) within the church that can faithfully minister alongside her as the church grows.  Leadership training and teaching was in fact the primary purpose of our recent trip.  Please pray that the Lord would raise up godly leaders and that they would serve the Lord with all their heart and soul.

Sister Bonite also continues to feed about 300 children every day.  In addition, she has embarked on a major building project to construct an orphanage a few steps away from her primary ministry location.  I was able to survey the foundation that has been built and I was amazed to see the progress.  Thankfully, a major donor committed to fund most of this project.  If you are also so led to give towards Bonite’s ministry, you can do this at: (https://www.brooklyntabernacle.org/giving?contributeTo=34–Haiti,%20Jacmel%20(Christ%20Hope%20Center)

God bless you,

Pastor Jerry Park

Happy New Year!  I’ve passed the 3 month mark in Thailand and went for my visa run to Burma.  December has been packed with Teams, new friendships and music.

We continue to teach English to our students who work in the bars.  The number of students has dropped from 30 to 10 as many just want to learn quick conversation that will help them interact with their customers who want to buy them.  We are not willing to do that as the purpose of our teaching is to intentionally take time and build relationships with them.  The faithful few have remained and we will continue to be faithful in our teaching, even if it’s just one.  It’s all worth it!

I have become friends with a lady named Bee who used to work in the bars.  She has been working for our ministry outreach, Love Acts, for the past month as a translator for us when we teach English in the bars.  She was working in the bars, and now she is helping us help other girls who work in the bars!  Her life is being transformed.  She is seeing the light and asking questions about who this Jesus is that we follow, and other questions like, “why was He hanging on the cross?”, and even asks to pray before meals.  Please keep Bee in prayer, that she will come to know this Jesus who loves her so much, and who has a plan to give her a hope and a future!

Please pray:

-For wisdom to facilitate teams and to make decisions.  We need creativity for new projects and events for reaching the bar girls, red-light children and the children in the slums.

-Continue to pray for protection physically and spiritually, especially from the spirit of fear.  We go out into the red-light district at night and teach in the bars during the daytime.

-For a Ministry House to better serve the community we are reaching.  We are praying about the house in the picture below.

-Pray for more full-time volunteers to help in the work of Lighthouse in Action.

-That God would continue to give us favor as we do outreach in the bars.

-For my language learning in Thai, so that I can effectively communicate with the children.

Bethsaida

During our Team’s visit to Uganda, we visited a school and an orphanage where the team put on our children’s program. Pastor Beatrice loved the program so much; she wished we could do it at the main church (we ran out of time, however). So she invited people in the community to the orphanage where we put on the program for adults and children. 16 people accepted the Lord that night.

Brooklyn Tabernacle purchased shoes for about 30 orphans and at the end of the evening’s program, I handed out the shoes to all the team members to give to the orphans individually. The first child came up and she flicked aside her old, ripped up shoes and eagerly came up to our team member who then bent down and put on her brand new shoes.

I couldn’t stop weeping at the sight of these kids that had so little receive with such joy these new shoes. One girl that I put shoes on had such large holes in her socks that all her toes were basically exposed.


I was told that the school clothes they had on were their only real clothes.

The day before we arrived, I had been told that they ran out of food. We had money left over from the shoes so they also bought food including rice which was considered a huge treat for the kids. It was a very humbling experience to say the least among many humbling experiences our teams have experienced over these many years in missions. I told the pastor to please purchase more clothes and food with the leftover money that BT had sent. The shoes cost around $20 per pair, which is a month’s salary in most of the areas we ministered in. The economics make it clear why so many children in these areas have no shoes or have old torn up shoes. More needs to be done and I am praying about how to move forward. The woman that oversees the orphanage is a Mslm background believer (MBB) and takes a far smaller salary doing this. She had been kicked out of her family after becoming a believer. May the Lord provide for her and the children.

I thank God for our partnership in the Gospel! May God use each of us to do our part to “share the blessing of the Gospel” to those who need it in the upcoming year.

Happy New Year!
Our church brought in the New Year with our first ever Watch Night Service. Most Filipinos are accustomed to spending the New Year in the town plaza or with families at home, but we had a wonderful turn out for this service. Praise the Lord!

Christmas Eve
We had an outreach service for the community with a Christmas drama presentation. Over 150 people came to see the presentation with most being first time visitors to the church. The Gospel was preached after the Drama and many came forward to receive the Lord Jesus. We pray that God will help us to disciple those who came forward. Praise God!

Operation Flip Flop
We are so excited to once again be handing out hundreds of flip flops this Christmas Season through our Operation Flip Flop campaign. This campaign was started by Agape Blessings Ministries a year ago to bless hundreds of poor children and adults that didn’t have proper footwear. Supporters gave $2 or more to purchase flip flops, and the response was incredible. This Christmas season our goal is to hand out over 1500 flip flops to the children in our feeding program, families in local poor villages, church members and inmates from one of Laguna’s local prisons.

Senior Citizen Ministry
By God’s grace, we were once again able to celebrate the birth of Jesus this year with a special Christmas fellowship for our senior citizens. Through your generous support, we were able to provide a nice meal for 40 seniors from the church. They also enjoyed games and Christmas worship songs sung by the worship team. For 80% of the seniors, this was their first time ever eating in a restaurant.

Senior Citizen Ministry Meal

Prison Outreach
We had the opportunity to bless the inmates from Laguna’s largest prison. With over 700 inmates, Laguna Provincial Jail is home to men and women who are serving sentences up to 20 years. Many 3rd world prisons are often filled with violence, depression and spiritual darkness. Overcrowded prison cells and poor health conditions plague prisons like Laguna Provincial Jail. We were able to bless 300 of the 700 inmates by providing them with a delicious Christmas meal, a pair of Flip Flops and most importantly, the Word of God. Through this outreach we seek to establish relationships with many of the inmates and follow-up with them through monthly visits where we can encourage, uplift and teach them the Word of God.

Laguna Prison

Alland & Marilyn Ildefonso
>>>

This year’s main theme was ‘Jesus is the Rock’ and our program followed the life of Peter. We had themes of the day such as ‘Accepted by Jesus’, ‘Protected by Jesus’ and ‘Saved by Jesus’ all with Bible lessons, skits, memory verses, activities, etc. The team worked hard at presenting the VBS lessons and the Youth Ministry lessons. At the end of the week, the kids said that they enjoyed the memory verses, skits and lessons the best out of the week. We also had a talent show at the end and quite a few of the kids chose to recite the memory verses as their talent.

Like we’ve done in the past, our team leaders fashioned activities that corresponded to the team’s gifts and talents. For example, we had a professional pastry chef who worked for high-end restaurants in Manhattan. So, we had a cooking activity where the kids were able to create their own cookies. We also had a birthday party for all the kids where she baked cupcakes. Some of the children don’t know their birthdays and some had only celebrated a handful in their lives so it was a joyous occasion as you could imagine.

Another example is our team member who is a gifted artist who created a large mosaic picture that was divided where the kids painted their own individual parts of the picture. All these parts came together to depict Jesus on the Cross and a scripture. It was a great metaphor of their unity as a ministry together as well as their unity to Christ.

A few stories with the kids: the teens seemed to have a cloud over them during the week. There had been trouble a week before with one of the teen girls that rebelled and left the property and ended up in a brief destructive relationship. The Smiths have taken her back on probation, but it added a level of tension. One of the other teens who had been with the ministry a long time was extremely distant and uncommunicative. It was very odd because in past years, she was usually very expressive, would sing hymns and there was a joy mixed with the troubles and clouds of her past. This time, it was all cloud. The team worked well in adapting and ministering to her. I also eventually took her aside and spoke to her very bluntly and straight about her situation (long story) and told her she had to make a choice between asking God to do a miracle in her heart or to go down a path of destruction. She had to come to a desperate point and stop playing around. She ended up praying for God’s help. Later, for the first time, I noticed her singing a hymn softly to herself. Just before we left for the airport, the team prayed over the kids and I asked one of the kids to pray for us and this young woman ended up praying this blessed prayer over us. She had turned a corner, by God’s grace.

One of the youth that had been there from the beginning of the ministry in ’05 ended up visiting the ministry while we were there. I had not seen this young man since ’06 or so. Back then, he was extremely troubled and depressed, but also very gifted with mechanical things. I took a few pictures of him years back and I remember one time asking him to smile and he gave me the deepest frown instead. My heart broke for him. Since then, he grew in the Lord under the Smiths and eventually joined the Navy. Well, when he returned, he was a different person. He spoke about how the strongest he ever was in the Lord was with the Smiths and he is even trying to switch his job because he’s not able to go to church regularly. At one point, he had his arm around Glennis like a son with his mother and I took his picture and he smiled. I started to cry because I just remembered this troubled young man with a shattered history and how God transformed him and gave him a chance to live and smile. I told the team what a victory it was just to see this young man smile for a picture. Praise the Lord!

Since the team’s visit, things seem to have stabilized for the older girls for now. In addition, one of the older youth that is now working and living on his own, but joined us for the week, went to church with the Smiths on Sunday. He was planning to go to church last Sunday as well. Again, it seems like a small thing, but I saw how far he has come over these years from being a very disengaged and disinterested person to someone that engaged and actively sought out help and fellowship during the week we were there. Just the simple fact that he was willing to go to church is a victory.

Please continue to pray for Romeo & Glennis and the children and youth in their care.

“There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places…Nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.  Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world”.  This could easily describe what’s happening in the world today even though this was taken from Luke 21.  During our trip to Haiti, I heard about earthquakes happening in Turkey,Indonesia,Taiwan and Japan.  Just before we left for Haiti, the devastating earthquake hit Chile.  The Lord is shaking the earth.

Our team did medical/dental clinics in 4 locations: Elsie’s ministry in Port-au-Prince, one of the largest refugee camps in Port-au-Prince, Bonite’s ministry in Jacmel and in one of the large refugee camps in Jacmel.  In the full week of clinics that we did, we saw at least 1,000 people.

There is a definite renewed spiritual awakening and openness unlike anything we’ve seen in Haiti before.  We prayed for every single person that came through the clinic and hundreds of people received the Lord. We prayed and encouraged hundreds who were believers, but have suffered terrible loss.

We were humbled by the survivor spirit of the people, but just underneath the surface, there was an enormous pain and sense of loss.  As one woman put it,‘From now on, the eyes of the Haitians will always be filled with tears.

Medically, many of the patients suffered from super infections of various wounds and lacerations suffered from the earthquake, scabies, ringworm and PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) related physical ailments such as hyper-sensitivity and hyper-alertness or sleep disorders and depression.  The team performed numerous minor surgeries to treat necrotic and gangrenous limbs.  Malnutrition was also very evident, especially in Jacmel.

Emotionally and spiritually, this is where it was hardest.  So many people have suffered such devastating loss.  One young man had suffered the loss of almost all his immediate family and asked why he shouldn’t drink Clorox and end his life.  Another woman described how her 2 year old baby was in her arms when a brick fell and killed her baby instantly.  One teenage mother who lost two of her children and two cousins talked about the flashbacks she gets whenever she hears the noise of a car.  Another man described his depression because he cannot find the body of his 5 year old son.  A police officer related how he lost his fiancée, aunt, brother and cousin and how he had to spend weeks digging up dead bodies and searching for all the criminals that escaped from the destroyed jail.  Nursing and med students lamented their future as their schools were destroyed and their teachers perished.  On the other side, there were also many miraculous stories of escape such as a child who was inside a house when the house pancaked, but somehow came away without a scratch.  Dr. Pierre, our social workers and spiritual counselors on the team were very busy throughout the week ministering emotional and spiritual healing that really can only come from the Lord.

The refugee camps were horrific.  We worked at this one refugee camp that has 100,000 people sleeping at night.  We visited this area a week after the earthquake and it has just continued to grow a month later.  We did a clinic at the edge of the camp in partnership with a local provider and he said that he had only 1 or 2 other teams come and help him in these 2 months.  In our first visit post-earthquake, someone on our team had shared Christ with him and he became a believer.  He’s been just devouring his Bible, praise the Lord.  In the meantime, we ended up seeing about 275 patients that day, many suffering from trauma, but also many open to the Lord and sincerely accepting the Lord.

Walking through the Jacmel refugee camp was just as difficult.  1,666 families are crammed into a soccer field.  The living conditions were just as horrific as the camps in Port-au-Prince.  When we got there, a family living there recognized Sister Bonite as they were her church members.  They took us to their little tarp covered area and there were many holes in the tarp and they said that when it rains, it pours in.  They don’t even have a tent.  There’s a field medical clinic there that was staffed by 2 doctors from Argentina and Mexico that day.  They referred all the difficult cases to a nearby hospital that is staffed by Doctors Without Borders.  We did our own medical clinic at the edge of the camp and we had about 250 patients that day.  One patient came in with a very badly damaged foot.  Our doctors determined that his leg was necrotic and gangrenous and if it continued this way, he would have to get it amputated.  We referred him to the nearby hospital I just mentioned.  However, he said that he had been to that hospital that week and they just gave him some ointment and let him go.  We made the quick decision to do everything we could to save the leg and Dr Cruz and Olga did surgery right there.  I came to realize that these hospitals are probably so overwhelmed that unless your foot is dangling by a thread, they can’t help you and when it’s at that point, they’ll just amputate.  We had patients that said they were afraid to go to clinics or hospitals because they felt they would just amputate without trying to save the limb.

We visited a hospital in Port-au-Prince to see if we could work together with them.  They showed us around the make-shift tents that were setup since the earthquake destroyed many of their buildings.  One heartbreaking building that we were shown was the pediatric and delivery room building.  There were 30 children and 4 women delivering babies the moment the earthquake struck.  They were still buried underneath.  In fact, hundreds of buildings throughout Port-au-Prince and Jacmel are still in the same state of rubble as when the earthquake struck.  For whatever reason, most of the buildings including the presidential palace and other major governmental building haven’t been cleared out or excavated.  It seems like it will take decades for the nation to recover.  Our flight back to NYC was canceled so we had to sleep an extra night in Elsie’s ministry.  We slept there during the week in tents.  All week, it hadn’t rained, but it rained that night.  I was in a waterproof tent when the rains came hard in the middle of the night.  I laid there as I heard the screams and shouts of people that were just up the road where dozens of families were living on the streets under tarps as they were getting drenched.  I prayed for God’s mercy for them, but also felt a renewed determination to do my best to help them in whatever way I could.

Despite the situation, Elsie’s ministry is doing well.  We had some Bible studies and prayer meetings and the young people were in very good spirits and dedicated to the Lord.

They worked hard to help us with the clinics.  Bonite’s ministry is also doing well and the workers are also working hard to help the people.

Please continue to pray for them as they are working very hard under difficult conditions.  So many people are coming to them begging for legitimate help and how can they refuse?  How can we refuse to help?

As we drove from the PAP airport through the city, most of the people seemed like they were simply trying to get back to their lives. Mass destruction in most areas, but mixed with other buildings that looked to be in good shape. Most of the bodies had been cleared, but the rubble appeared to be barely touched. It was disheartening to see so many buildings and businesses that I remembered so well completely destroyed. Yet, it was also encouraging to see how everyone seemed to be making the best of their difficult situation. We were blessed to see our friends at Caribbean Grace Tabernacle.

The ministry had a food program that fed 800 poor children twice a week a good solid meal. Sadly, one young girl and her mother died from the ministry, but thankfully the rest survived. Since the crisis, Elsie, the ministry director, had been feeding the children rice and beans every day from her leftover supply. The ministry grounds became a refugee camp where more than 100 people were sleeping at night. By the time we arrived, there were about 30 people left as many families started to migrate to the countryside.

We conducted a medical clinic at the ministry where we saw 75 people from the shantytown areas where most of the families live. Most of the wounds were lacerations and bruises suffered during the earthquake. We were able to leave a substantial supply there for our future teams.

We visited a refugee camp nearby where our friends have been delivering food and medical supplies and it was a horrific sight. This was a former golf course that was completely transformed into a makeshift tent city where 100,000 people sleep at night.

Local medical people walked us all the way through it. Despite the unspeakable living conditions, everyone that we met and greeted were friendly and polite. They showed us the meager medical supplies that they had and explained the types of emergency procedures that they had to perform with no anesthesia and dirty equipment. The ‘ambulance’ they showed us was a motorcycle that now has lost a wheel. I promised them that we would send over whatever supplies I could. After we finished our clinic, we sent over half our supplies (anesthesia, analgesics, wound care supplies, bandages, etc) and left the other half at our partner ministry. We left Haiti empty-handed.  We would return several times later that year.