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We are once again amazed by God’s divine orchestrations over the last few months! It’s almost hard to keep up with our “Jeepney Driver.” (As we always say, God is the driver, and we’re just passengers inviting people to join Him in His work at BCCL). Lately, the Lord has developed deeper relationships and wider reach with the people He has entrusted us to minister to. There’s too much to share but so little space on these pages to tell you everything that the Lord is doing. Here are just a few of them.
Creative Worship Time with Some Hindu Youth
“We love Jesus, big sister!” Those words are just music to our ears coming from some of our young Hindu friends. By God’s grace, we have started creative worship services with three Indian students on the first Sunday of December last year. A lot of them would attend church on Sundays just “to say a prayer.” When we ask them what they got from the sermon each week, they would say, “Nothing, big sister. The preachers were speaking in Filipino language.”
One day, the Lord gave Claire the courage to ask a small group, “Would you like to do church worship time with us instead?” They all said yes. One young lady, Varsha (not her real name for privacy), was elated! “That’s an answered prayer, big sister! Finally, I will understand what the Bible says in English!” She had received Jesus many months back, but just in addition to the many Hindu gods she believes in.
We’ve been meeting consistently every Sunday afternoon since December until now. We gave them English Bibles that they would bring without fail, and we have been teaching them the life of Jesus, starting with the Jesus film, and now we’re using Scripture video on Matthew.
Varsha testifies that when we started our Prayer Time (as they would call it), she was having nightmares. We prayed about that, and the nightmares stopped. Recently, she and her friends have been at odds with her roommate. It is amazing to see the transformation in Varsha. They have heard Jesus’ teaching on loving your enemies, and Varsha has been so patient, kind, and gracious to her roommate, even if the person kept hurting her with words and actions. She has found peace that she couldn’t understand ever since we started our Sunday afternoon worship times, teaching them about Jesus. The two young men with her are quite receptive to Jesus and the Gospel as well. They are starting to ask questions.
We only have a few months with them before they move to another city for their internship. We will faithfully make the most of our time with them, planting the seed of God’s Word and showing them His love. We pray for that day when they decide that Jesus is enough and follow our one true God.
Mentoring Opportunities
It’s always our joy to walk alongside believers in their journey with the Lord. In the last few months, He has brought forth local and international believers for us to mentor.
Last December, we met Kenta, a Japanese believer who is a tentmaking missionary in a nearby province called Sorsogon. We got connected through his mentor in the US, who is the brother-in-law of our senior pastor in Lodi, California. It was getting more difficult for Kenta to be alone doing ministry (for three years now). He is hungry for mentoring and is already calling us sensei (“teacher” in Japanese). He was blessed to see our missional cafe as a model for reaching out to the community that he is thinking of maybe starting up a missional coffee shop in Sorsogon as well. This would possibly boost his growing ministry with university students in the area.
In January, he started attending training courses at BCCL. He has decided to move to Legazpi for a season to be equipped at BCCL and learn the culture and language more. He will go back to Sorsogon but sees this season as a time to be further mentored and equipped. It would be our pleasure to mentor and help Kenta in any way the Lord enables.
Kaushic helped us start our unexpected ministry with Hindu medical students. By God’s grace, we have established a relationship with him and his wife that enables us to mentor them as well. Tim has a mentoring time with Kaushic every Monday, where they discuss a book of the Bible and pray together. Lately, Claire has been mentoring him on how to prepare sermons, since some churches have asked him to preach every so often. He feels so inadequate and in need of equipping that he looks forward to attending courses at BCCL soon. He reminds us of Apollos who was mentored by Aquilla and Priscilla. Kaushic is very passionate when talking about God to others. Please pray for these cross-cultural mentoring times. Pray that Tim and I would continue to get deeper in our faith journey as the Lord allows us to pour into these wonderful believers’ lives.
Another ministry that God has entrusted to us is a marriage counseling of a local leader and his wife. Please pray for wisdom and God’s mighty work in their hearts as we join God to help restore their relationship with Him and each other.
Need for Biblical Training in Asia
In December, we had the pleasure of visiting Kaushic in Hong Kong, where he lives (he and his family are citizens of Hong Kong). We saw him in action preaching at a Nepali congregation at the heart of the city.
It was so refreshing to see this Nepali church so vibrant in their worship and love of God! Nepalis usually keep to themselves, so we were pleasantly surprised at how welcoming and warm they were to us.
As we got to talking with the people and their leaders, they were so curious about the biblical training that we do at BCCL and how they can attend the classes. It broke our hearts to see their hunger for biblical training, and we wish we could easily bring the training to them. We suddenly remembered Jesus when he saw that the crowds were like lost sheep without a shepherd. Jesus felt for them, and He started teaching them. We felt the same way.
After the worship service, Kaushic, his wife, and I (Claire) went to a coffee shop. He was so concerned about his struggle and lack of training on how to prepare sermons and how to preach that I couldn’t help but teach him the basics in the few hours that we had with each other.
May the Lord pave the way for more biblical training for local and diaspora congregations in Asia.
Backyard Chicken Farming Ministry
For over a year, we have been preparing for a community development ministry using backyard chicken farming to reach more communities for Christ. We had two of our staff, Joseph and Winston, who are passionate backyard chicken farmers, trained and licensed to train others. The Lord provided a little piece of land for us to rent to grow the livestock. The area has been prepped, organic food plants grown, and chicken coops and a breeder hut built. Then finally we bought the livestock in December.
At the end of last year, the BCCL staff went to this little backyard farm to dedicate it to the Lord for His use.
When ready, the ministry plan is to gather people in communities who are interested to do backyard chicken farming as a source of food and income for their families. They will build each other’s chicken coops and, once ready, they will be given a dozen chicks. During the training sessions, they will hear the Gospel, and the trainers will do Bible studies with them using the orality method (creative Bible storytelling). After six months or so, they would have hatched chicks, then they will just give back to us the dozen chicks so we can give them forward to people in other communities. A lot of pastors and church leaders are interested to do this and raise chickens as a tentmaking as well. They can be trained together with interested people in their communities so they can do follow-ups and minister to them as well using this platform.
Right now, as a business-as-mission model, livestock that are hatched on our little backyard chicken farm will be sold to raise funds for it to be sustainable, pay for its operating cost, and subsidize the materials to build participants’ chicken coops when we finally implement this in the communities. Please pray for this community development ministry.
Creative Outreach Ministry
We had the joy of having Sharla come and visit to do art ministries with us once more. This time, she brought a friend with her (Grace) for a brief ministry exposure experience with us. They only had two full days of ministry, starting off with a kids outreach we call Art Reach, where Sharla uses art to engage with kids and share about Jesus. Some BCCL students combined kids from two communities they were reaching. The kids had a blast with arts games and Bible storytelling and food.
In the afternoon, we did an art hang out we call ArTambay with some Indian medical students at the campus coffee shop. The conversations and the cultural learning were amazing over coffee and doing art together! We were able to share our faith and pray for them as well.
The next day, they participated in our creative worship with another small group of Indian medical students. The Spirit moved in our midst as Sharla and Grace shared their testimony with the students.
Sharla is a Christian artist who hails from Baguio city (north of Bicol). We got to know her when she joined an international mission exposure team that Overseas Missionary Fellowship organized in 2024 and BCCL hosted. After that, she has come back a few times each year to help us in the ministry, using art as the platform to engage with communities.
We’d love to have more believers participate in God’s work using their talents in practical and incarnational ways. It was just two days of participating in what God is doing, and it made a huge impact on Grace, who is currently seeking direction in life and ministry.
For more information on how to come and join us, join God in His work, please contact the NAB International Office for short-term mission exposure opportunities.
Praise be to our Lord of the Harvest!