August Newsletter

Here is the text from my latest newsletter.

-----

This is not really related to the work, but a reality of life here and I just wanted to share something interesting with you. When it rains here it rains! I know in Vancouver we get those oppressive months of drizzles that force you into a life of coffee and raincoats, but here you get a months worth of rain in a couple hours! It really is amazing. Our ministry site flooded quite badly because our pump failed during one of these rains a couple nights ago. Oh well, all the kids still got fed and its always a bit cooler when it does rain that hard.

We have been experiencing some refreshing and rebuilding times here at HFTN in the Philippines. As I mentioned a while ago we had been experiencing some tough times and were really relying on God for wisdom and direction in our ministry. Well, I thank you for your prayers, God has been very faithful to us and has been bringing renewal to us and to those that we minister to. For example, we were really questioning whether or not the church that currently runs at our ministry site would really be able to continue and we had prayed that God would make the direction clear and begin to raise up new leaders. Well, God has begun to answer those prayers. We are seeing that the direction for the church is to move from being dependent upon HFTN to being an independent church. Lets face it, one day HFTN may not be in the Philippines, and if that happens God's church will need to continue here. We are also seeing a lot of the youth begin to rise up and take responsibilities in the church. Praise God, without these new leaders we would not be able to continue with the church ministry.

There is a team of three pastors coming on August 11th. They are from an American church on the east coast who have been supporting the work here for a while. They will be preaching in church, doing a two day seminar called "Walking in Freedom" and will be doing pastoral care/counseling with our staff and couples. I really look forward to having them here to be with us and bring some fresh perspective and life. I have had some great moments at my bible study these days. Two weeks ago I shared on God's grace to us as sinners and showed a scene from the beginning of the movie "Les Miserables." It is a really powerful story of God's overwhelming grace to us. Some of the guys could really identify with it. Two pictures below are from the latest Bible study and one is from Tabitha a couple weeks ago. I am preaching again on Sunday. I will be preaching in a few days but I still don't have a message yet in mind; maybe I will preach on Romans 8 and 9.

I have been trying to increase our numbers in the Tabitha feeding program from about 75 regular attenders last month. The goal is to be feeding 150 kids by the end of the year. Right now we are feeding about 100 kids (an increase of 25 in the last few weeks) and this has proven to put some stresses on our resources, but I believe that unless we press forward that we will not be able to expand.

France is doing well. The complications do not seem to be as bad as some thought; please keep praying for complete healing. Well that's all I have space for today, I am trying to keep this under one page but I hope this is a glimpse into what God is doing here. Please keep us in your prayers. God bless!

www.dawicks.blogspot.com