like it was yesterday when Kuya Aries Reginio and I traveled to
Mindoro, Batangas and Marinduque provinces looking for a place to
start a discipleship ministry for older former street boys who
trusted Christ as Savior at one of our ministries such as camp. A
place where they could be trained in the Word and needed life skills
had been identified by pastors, street children workers and
missionaries as a missing link in our chain of ministries so we
started developing the vision and raising funds. But finding a
location wasn't the major issue. We needed a missionary with a
calling to do this, enough determination and faith to pioneer and
develop the ministry and the ability to raise funds for it.
Carl Loewen did his Bible school internship with us and did a great
job. After the internship he returned to Canada, and to make a long
story short, he married Lisa who's a missionary kid from the
Philippines. After a while they came to the Philippines to look for a
mission organization to serve with and determined the Lord had lead
them to ACTION to start a new ministry which we named Honest Hands
(HH) after Ephesians 4:28. After the Loewens studied Tagalog for a
year in Batangas we all decided that ACTION's ministry compound in
Cavite province called 2nd Mile was the place for HH and a home was
built and furnished. Then Carl and Lisa needed Filipino co-workers
and veteran street kid worker Pastor Mel De Jesus and his wife Tess
joined the HH team. Now after 10 years they've had eight graduating
classes and their ninth will graduate in March 2012.
There's so much more I could write about HH, the Loewens, the De
Jesuses and their excellent work but I won't. The Lord is very
gracious to give us memorial stones so we can measure a ministry's
progress and HH's are the many boys who once were public nuisances
but now are becoming fine young men. This is what ministry is all
about!
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