Jonathan's Home! October 2007

Jonathan at home again!

A Quiet Day in Baguio City
Greetings from the Hilario family and a nice quiet day for us in Baguio City!

Family Ministries School 2007
Our lives have been quite occupied the past few weeks with the Family Ministries School (FMS) starting. However as we have handed over the leadership of the school this year to our staff it has a whole different feel and role for us. Mel and I were the speakers for the first two weeks and it was certainly a blessing to be totally focused on the teaching and the students without all the added responsibility of running the school. Our topics were mostly marriage and family ones such as the role of the wife/husband, communication, managing conflict, the Balswick cycle, and teaching the students how to make their own genogram. We will also be teaching other topics in the weeks to come.

The FMS is going very well and the new leaders are doing a great job!. We are meeting regularly with them to coach and encourage and to just be there for them. However everything is running quite smoothly for now. God is good!. This week Jim & Jean Hatton are teaching on Shame & Anger in the family. Next week will be the students mid term field assignment. This will take place here in Baguio as most of the students are without cash as usual!. The ministry they will be involved with will be a Dental Mission for poor families and also parents and children's meetings with the Student Sponsorship Ministry that we run here.

Nearly all of the students are Filipino YWAM staff and they are so receptive to the teaching and very open to change. We are blessed! Please continue to pray for them.

Jonathan's Home!
Another highlight for us and one which keeps us busy is that our son Jonathan came home from New Zealand two weeks ago. His time in New Zealand is over for now and he is between jobs presently. In the New Year or even earlier he will go to London. We are enjoying the time of being reunited as a family. The sun also has been shining here for the past week which is so enjoyable after months of rain. Last week we had an overnight stay at the beach. It was so good to just relax, have fun together and regroup as a family.

Joanna's happy to have her brother home!

Mass wedding In Baguio City...sixty couples married!
Early this month during Baguio City's ' Family Week" the local government officially married about 60 poor couples who have been living together ranging in
ages from teenagers to those well in their sixties. Many of their children and grandchildren were present as well and were so happy to see them finally married! The local officials provided the wedding clothes, the wedding cake (the largest cake I have ever seen 20ft by 20ft!), noodles for two thousand people, gifts for the couple and the location for the wedding. They held it at the large shopping mall here in the city.

Enormous Wedding Cake!

Seminar Opportunities
Last week Mel was invited by the Department of Social Welfare to do some seminars again for the Barangay officials of Baguio City. This is an amazing time for him as he finds many of these non-Christian men weeping as he shares about fathering and parenting. Also last Saturday he was invited by a ministry that provides financial support for highly intelligent students from poor families. He spoke to the parents of these students at one of our local universities here. His topic was "The six Secrets of Strong Families.'

Joanna
Joanna is doing well and was on vacation last week. She was supposed to be at the National Student convention for all the ACE Schools here in the Philippines but after praying about it she did not have peace to attend this year. Interestingly enough her brother decided to come home and so they had a good time just reconnecting as siblings. Joanna continues to enjoy her youth group for MK's(missionary kids) She now has a lovely Christian friend from Auckland NZ who lives here in Baguio. They both go to the feeding program for the street kids every Sunday afternoon. We are glad that the Lord has answered this prayer for her in giving her a good Christian friend. This Friday night they will attend the Jesus Revolution Convergence which is running here all week in Baguio This is a large gathering of Christians (mostly young people) who change the nation through prayer gatherings.

Joanna still very happy!

Well this is all for now. Thank you for reading this far..

' Celebrate Asia! ' August 2007

Scenes from the YWAM University of the Nations Consultation in Taoyuan Taiwan

Our Founders Loren & Darlene Cunningham greet us via video link up to all four sites.

Hi everyone!
It's Saturday Morning here and just over a week until Mel & I leave for Taoyuan City in Taiwan. In case you don't know or can't remember we will be attending the (YWAM) University of the Nations (UofN)Workshop from September 3-8. The theme of the conference is " Celebrate Asia."

A little about " Celebrate Asia "
" Celebrate Asia " will be one UofN Workshop taking place in four locations simultaneously, linked together through GENESIS which allows us to see and hear one another as if we were in one place. We can choose to go to India , South Korea , Thailand or Taiwan. All four locations will help to shape the overall program for the daily GENESIS session, but each individual location will have its own unique expression with workshops, celebrations, teaching, worship, intercession and great opportunities to network and make new friends. There will also be events offered by the UofN Colleges and Centres as well as other YWAM ministries.

Here is a quote from Loren Cunningham's invitational letter.
' We are living in an amazing season in missions history. There are unprecedented opportunities on every front, and we are experiencing a deep unity within the body of Christ that is catalytic for us together to actually accomplish the Great Commission!
The upcoming University of the Nations Workshop is a gathering to learn about God’s heart for Asia and how to engage. We believe that He will teach us His ways and mobilize us to be involved in many more places with fresh, God-breathed initiatives. Our prayer is that He will give greater revelation of His plan for YWAM/UofN and each one of us individually in this amazing time in history in which we live! '

After the U of N workshop is over we will be having the Family Ministry Consultation in Taiwan beginning on Sunday night, September 9 and ending on Monday night September 10. YWAM Family Ministries Intl. Leadership team will meet also with the Family Resource Centre Leadership Team all day Tuesday, September 11.

Thank you so much to all of you who have prayed with us to see the finances released for this trip. Miraculously they have and we were even blessed with a huge discount on our air ticket which is a third of the usual price. God is so good!

Prayer Requests....Please Pray......
We would appreciate your continual prayer covering as we travel and also for our time at the conference, leadership meetings and family ministries consultation.
For Joanna as she will remain here in Baguio this time with one of our staff staying with her in our home.
Also continue to uphold the Family Ministries School (FMS) commencing on September 19. We would still like to see more students enroll. For now we have 10 accepted students and 8 possible students. In fact one of our students will be getting married here at the YWAM centre next week.
This weekend we have new family ministries staff arriving from Germany and Cambodia. Please pray that they will settle in well and bond quickly with the FMP team and to their change of environment. These three staff were all students here during the FMS 2005.
Thank you so much. We do appreciate all your efforts on behalf of us here.

Thanks also for keeping in touch as we so enjoy hearing about your lives too..

Blessings!

Mel Brenda & Joanna Hilario

Shaking & Moving in Taiwan September 2007

YWAM Family Ministries International Leadership Team & YWAM Taiwan's National Leaders

Mel loves the Philippine Flag (and me! )

Shaking and moving in Taiwan!
Greetings! Yes that's right we were moved and shaken in Taiwan spiritually, emotionally & even physically! Please allow us to explain.....

Earthquake
An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter-scale with several aftershocks shook Taiwan on our fourth night there. News reports said that buildings in Taipei were damaged, 4 people were killed and more than 200 injured. It was quite an experience in our hotel room on the 7th floor and we surely prayed hard. Its at times like this that you are so aware of the powerfulness of our God. We were extremely thankful for His protection and grateful for your prayers - they are so essential!

University of the Nations Workshop
We had an outstanding time together during the conference. The work of the Holy Spirit was evident among us from the very beginning. Of the 16,000 long term YWAMers around the world 2000 of us gathered in 4 locations for five days linked by video-conference. The locations were as follows;

South Korea, with 900 participants from 44 nations
Thailand with, 460 participants from 34 nations
India, with 500 participants from 37 nations
Taiwan with 170 people from 23 nations.

Pagentry & Celebration
Opening night was filled with pagentry and celebration with presentations from each of the four sites. It was a spectacular and inspiring evening, watching rich cultural diversity displayed from throughout Asia. Loren Cunningham opened the conference with a fatherly appeal to all of us in YWAM to "stay close to each other" and to affirm the fact that we are all part of the YWAM family and to make sure our relationships were okay.

The Call To All
The first full day of the conference focused on "The Call To All!" We were challenged by David Hamilton, Mark Anderson and Loren Cunningham to embrace the mandate in scripture to reach ALL (nations, families, individuals, etc.) and to go and preach the Gospel to EVERY creature. Our commission is to ALL, ALL, ALL, EVERY, EVERY, EVERY. Mark Anderson shared how God sovereignly led him to become the leader of the Call2All global initiative. God has called together a coalition of over 200 major ministries and denominations to work together in completing the Great Commission. Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, had called together these 200 leaders before he died and challenged them to work together to win 1 BILLION new converts in the next 20-25 years and to plant 20 million new churches. YWAM is being challenged by the Lord to step forward and to lead out in this initiative over the next several years.

The Holy Spirit
The focus on the second day of the conference was the Holy Spirit. and for us to acknowledge our utter dependence upon the Holy Spirit to accomplish what we have been called to do. "Does the Holy Spirit have all of you?" was one of the questions we were asked.

.........................
The focus of the third day was on....... David Aikman who wrote the book J...... in B........... gave us a very insightful overview of the history of God working throughout ........ especially in the underground church. It is estimated that in 1949 there were 4 million believers in ........ Some officials now estimate there are 135 million believers. The great need among believers in ........is for teaching and discipleship. They are excellent in evangelism but there is a cry for teaching that "touches and transforms the heart."

................... Our Focus
We were all encouraged to make ............a focus over the next 10 years and to ask the Lord to show us initiatives we should take during this next year and beyond. YWAM has produced a booklet to help everyone interested in taking teams into ........... We are all encouraged to go into .......... but we are encouraged to go in through some Gateways that have been set up for orientation and for security.

9 x 6 Metre Map of ................
We finished off our focus on ...............with a very special application. At least three of the sites had made huge maps of ............broken up into the 850 Omega Zones. The map in Taiwan was 9 x 6 meters in size. The map was on the floor and we then did several prophetic acts. We marched from East to West Across ........., then we marched from North to South. We all stood inside the borders of .......... and had a powerful and extended time of worship and intercession. We all took slips of paper from the various Omega Zones and then found them on the map to pray over each of the 850 Zones. It was an incredible and exciting event to participate in. ............. will never be the same and neither will most of us.

Praying over the Map of ..............

Focus on Children
The final day of the conference focused on Children. Loren Cunningham shared how the Lord had spoken to him 25 years ago in a strategy conference about a Christian Magna Carta that included the right for everyone to have access to Christian education. He also shared how the Lord had spoken that Christian education was to begin with preschools and then go all the way up through university education. YWAM's focus is to be at all levels. Our goal is a discipled person not just an educated person. Loren used this workshop to announce the formation of a Global Accreditation Association for Christian schools. This is the first time in history that anyone has set up such a global accreditation association.

Commissioning
Our workshop was concluded with a very exciting commissioning service and again we were challenged to Converge and Convene. Loren implored us not to miss our moment in history. He shared that 380 disciples to whom Jesus appeared after the resurrection were not present with the 120 on Pentecost and missed their moment in History.

Family Ministries
Following the UofN workshop we then had the YWAM Asia-Pacific Family Ministries Consultation. Another incredible time where God spoke to us of how he wants us as a ministry to be involved in ............. The following day we also met as the International leadership team of YWAM Family Ministries and Family Resource Centre. It is so wonderful to be together with like minded missionaries!

The Family Ministries International Leadership Meetings in Taoyuan, Taiwan

Asia-Pacific YWAM Family Ministries Consultation Taoyuan Taiwan

Marvelling, Absorption & Processing Time
Now that we are home again we are marvelling at all that happened and yet at the same time trying to absorb and process all that this will mean for us here in the Philippines both personally and as a ministry.

Thank you so much to all of you who stood with us in prayer for this important event. We are grateful.

Blessings!

Mel & Brenda

P.S. By the way Joanna was fine and hardly missed us! Thanks again for your prayers.