Dear Praying Mission Partners,October 30, 2009

/ Philippine Missions
September / October 2009 Prayer Requests and Newsletter
Jeremy and Kristine Ferguson –
HighlandBaptistChurch
Gainesville, Florida (352) 373-2138 - /

We thank you for all that you continue to do in support of the ministry of the Gospel here in the Philippines!Please take time to not only read through this letter, but to sincerely pray over it and ask for God’s hand to move in mighty ways in the ministry here.

These past two months have certainly been filled with lots of action.Recently, when we were taking some people home after Church one evening, a drunken man came out screaming and shaking a whip. He was angry because his teenage nephew and two other teenage boys had come to Church, even though the parents had given them permission. He then started chasing and whipping them. He then approached us and we tried talking to him to get him to calm down, but he was totally irrational. He walked up to one of the young men who was with me and punched him in the shoulder. I thought he was going to start whipping him also so I had to threaten the man to get him to back off and, after that, we left the scene. The unfortunate thing is that these three young people haven’t come back to Church since.Please pray that we will be able to get these three teens back to Church, as they desired to learn the truth, and that this man will come to be saved.

Most of you have probably heard about the incredible storms that have come through here recently. As of now, nearly 1,000 people have been killed here and over 1 million displaced because of these strong typhoons that have come through the islands. These storms brought in the heaviest rain in more than four decades and brought incredible problems, particularly into the capital city of Manila. The rain that fell down on us on September 26 was indescribable; you would have thought you were living in the days of Noah. Within just 6 hours a month's worth of rain had fallen. This was more rain than what Hurricane Katrina brought down on New Orleans in 2005. This left more than 80% of Manila flooded. Many people drowned and more people are still dying to-date as a result of water-bourne diseases that are spreading. Please pray for God to help these people and, more than anything, that they will come to see their need for Christ’s salvation during this disastrous time.The very next weekend saw another strong typhoon and a third typhoon nearly came through right after the first two, but God turned it away just at the last minute it seemed. A fourth typhoon came through on October 30 and the weather experts are predicting more to come in November.

There was a good amount of flooding in nearby areas where we are also. Many of the nearby barios were flooded. The bario where we live is a pretty flat area so we only experienced minor, typical flooding, but many farmers lost their crops of rice and vegetables. I haven’t heard any reports of people drowning in the nearby areas here, but there was a landslide at a nearby mountain which buried several people alive. I was shocked to hear about it because I've been at the exact spot before where the landslide occurred. We’ve heard that this area has now been reported as extremely dangerous to live in because of potential landslides and 3 barios are going to be relocated to other areas. We’ve heard that these people might be relocated nearby to our area so please pray that this will happen so that we can share the Gospel with them.

As the storm came through here it did a lot of damage and made many roadsimpassable. This was the biggest problem that we faced here in our area as many people were unable to come to Church on Sunday, September 27thas a result. We have a member who works in Manila during the week and he couldn’t get back because there was no transportation. However, we still had 130 in attendance and 170 the next weekend even though another large storm came through.

We were also unable to get to our mission point in Nueava Ecija for over a week as the road was deeply flooded and there was no way to get across, but we’re now able to get there and things are doing well.The work in Nueava Ecija is now seeing nearly 40 people in attendance regularly. Please pray for this work to grow in number and faith.Please pray for us also as we desire to send a fulltime worker to this location sometime in the near future. Currently, we are conducting outreaches and a prayer meeting on Friday as well as leading the Church service on Sunday.

Church attendance here in Pampanga continues to increase always as we win more people to the Lord and we’re seeing 200 in attendance these days. One Sunday morning I asked some of the young men to bring out more chairs and they came back saying that there was a problem because there weren’t anymore chairs, praise God for such problems! We’ve had six more baptized and, by God’s grace, there will be eight more baptized in December. There were supposed to be two other young men baptized with this recent group, but they suddenly moved off to another area far away from here. I think that their older brother moved them to go to work in that area, so that was unfortunate to see because we have no more communication with these two. Please continue praying, as we’ve mentioned before, that the Lord will provide more work for people in nearby areas here as we’ve seen so many people move off to other areas far from the Church for this reason.

God has blessed us with a new outreach point just nearby. Just recently the government constructed a newresettlement site with 3,000 homes in the middle of farm land only 10 minutes away from where we are located. This site was built for people who were relocated by the governmentfrom another area because they were living on land that the government is going to use to build train tracks. About 80% of the people have already moved there and we’re going there several times a week to share the Gospel with them. We have already seen several people coming to Church from this area and some will be baptized this upcoming December.Please pray that we will be used by God to bring many of these people to salvation.

Please pray for the health of some of the believers here who are struggling with illnesses. Please continue praying for Sis Lelaine. By God’s grace she is doing better now and able to come out to Church again, but she needs continual prayer. She is an incredible blessing which we all will be able to enjoy when we get to Heaven. Please pray also for Sis Nenita, a believer in Nueava Ecija. She is undergoing chemotherapy as she is battling cancer. Three years ago the doctors gave her 6 months to live, but she is still alive today, though she is often weak. By God’s grace she was led to salvation and she has became a great blessing to the work in Nueava Ecija. Please pray that God will strengthen her physically and give her more time here on Earth to serve Him as she has a strong burden for souls and uses her strength in striving to win the lost people in her area. Please pray also for Kristine as she has been battling against asthma. Her asthma problem has been a frequent nuisance to her lately.

Please pray also for our outreach in the public schools. I’m currently showing a Tagalog Gospel video in the classrooms of the High School and we are sometimes seeing youth coming out to Church as a result, but we sure would like to see more. We’re also seeing children coming to Church as a result of our outreaches in the Elementary School, but we would like to see more there also. Also, we’ve been striving to begin Bible studies at the Elementary School in the immediate area, but the prior principal didn’t give us permission. However, there is a new principal now and I hope to speak with him soon. Please pray that God will touch this man’s heart and give us permission to conduct Bible studies there. This particular Elementary School has over 3,000 students and would be an excellent opportunity for us to reach more souls in the immediate area here.

Please pray also for more people to surrender to the ministry. If you were to ask me what is our biggest need I would tell you that this is ourNUMBER ONE NEED! We have a good number of young men in the Church so please join us in praying that God will call some of them to the ministry and that they will surrender to His call. We’ve identified some other locations where we can begin mission works, but we don’t yet have the workers to send. This breaks our hearts and we understand what the Lord felt in Matthew 9:36-38 when He saw the great need for more workers.

We’ve had some encouragement in these regards from threemore foreign Filipino missionarieswho have come to visit our Church here recently. God used their messages to challenge our people in becoming more missions-minded. Please pray for two of our young men, Paul and Daryl. They are third and fourth yearHigh School students and they have told me that they are feeling God’s call on their life for mission work. Also, we have two other new young men who are set to be baptized in December. Rogy and Marlon are 19 years old and have already expressed a desire to study in the BibleCollege, praise God!

Again, we thank each of you from the depths of our hearts for your faithful prayer and financial support for the Lord’s ministry here in the Philippines. Remember that this is a team effort and each of you are part of the team! Let us all continue doing our part, God bless you all as you serve Him!

Yours in Christ,

Ferguson Family

1 Thess 5:17, “Pray without ceasing… Magsipanalangin kayong walang patid”

The sidecar we use to pull the trailer with has 12 passengers on this day!

We fit 25 people into the trailer this day which made for a total of 37 people riding in the sidecar/trailer setup! I was so shocked that I had to take these pictures! These are all people coming from the new resettlement location, praise God!

The Filipino Missionary couple to the right recently visited us. Sis Clarita is on the left.

This is the missions board at the Church

Recent picture from Church

Recent baptisms

New resettlement area

Our Church sign was vandalized recently, but fortunately we were able to remove the spray paint.

Due to the recent storms, many local farmers suffered great loss at the recent rice harvest. Many lost entire crops while others were able to harvest 50%+ less than normal.

People riding a raft through the floods in Manila

People walking through the floods in Manila

Flooding at an underpass in Manila

This picture should remind us of the great need to get the Gospel to the lost before they perish

Homes totally destroyed in Manila

Man driving his tricycle through flood in Manila

Recent family picture

Josh is getting tall

Josh likes to act goofy, I don’t know how he learned to be that way!

Jeremy and Joshua

!!! Check out our webpage for more pictures and videos as well !!!

(Lookl under the “About Us” and “Mission Field Reports” areas)