2008 - A Year of Stretching and Growing

(Caption: Pictures from YM's Thanksgiving Dinner held at Bayview Hotel last December 9, 2008 in which 130 pastors and leaders attended. The pastors and leaders came from 35 churches and organizations)

At the start of the year 2008, the Lord impressed in our hearts that the year 2008 will be a year of stretching and growing. It filled our hearts with excitement but one question remained in our hearts. How can we really stretch and grow if up to that point, we only have 1 partner church? We’ve been operating as a team since 2004, but we haven’t had more than 2 churches as our partner. Aside from that, we thought we did everything we could to partner with churches but nothing seems to work.

So we thought we did, but we forgot that God honors the work of His people, that our work in Him will never be in vain. Then finally, the breakthrough came.

Through the tireless effort of Pen-Pen, our partnership director, things begun to unfold for us. We never thought that through a simple effort of helping one church could open so many doors of opportunity for us.

It was in one of a community church in Caloocan where it all started. First there was the Overnight Modular Training for youth leaders, then the DVBS, then the connection to other churches and organizations, and as all of us would say, the rest is history.

We ended the year by hosting a thanksgiving dinner for all the churches and organizations we have connected with in the year 2008. 130 pastors and leaders attended coming from 35 churches and organizations. It was a night of giving glory, honor and thanksgiving to our God for His faithfulness to all of us.

As we look back at the year 2008, it never fails to amaze us how awesome our God is. Imagine working with 40 churches and organizations that resulted to the launching of 6 feeding ministries for the street children, 1 medical mission for poor families (more than 600 participated), 6 hygiene days which close to 1000 children benefitted and of course, the Christmas parties that blessed close to 3000 children and parents (including one in the Smokey Mountain dumpsite in Manila). All of the said activities have full participation of the youth leaders we trained and the church leadership and their members. Moreover, in 2008, we saw 180 youth leaders (from 35 churches) trained, exposed and encouraged to participate in our outreach ministries (dumpsite, children, and rugby boys ministries).

From 1 partner church, we now have formal partnership with 7 churches. If this is not stretching and growing, I don’t know what it is.