Hosea Ministry International
A great new mission field has opened for us, covering almost two hundred thousand people! Nathan describes this exciting news as follows:
“At the request of a good Christian friend who is a senior leader in the Philippine Directorate of Education, we signed an agreement to preach and conduct Christian work in 362 schools among 178,000 students. We are now free to visit all the schools as often as we want and gather all the students for meetings with preaching, praise and intercession. We will also work together to fight malnutrition and extreme poverty.”
We have been doing school evangelism for years, but only in those schools to which we have been invited. This opening of all the schools was such a great surprise and blessing!
Nathan has also been working hard in the prisons. There are a lot of young prisoners in the country, and Nathan has been a really popular preacher because of his young age. Recently some prisons where evangelists are not usually allowed have opened up for Hosea, in particular prisons where terrorists are incarcerated. The prisoners endure miserable conditions, and that's why Hosea also brings them food rations and help whenever possible. There was a young woman from the NPA terrorist organization in the Mamburao city prison, to whom Nathan proclaimed a message of salvation. The woman started to cry and explained that imprisonment had been a really tough experience for her. She regretted becoming a terrorist and leaving her parents and her studies. She said she would have to spend the rest of her life in prison. Prison sentences in the Philippines are long, with double life sentences possible, and for terrorists the sentences are even harsher.
We have continued to distribute food aid, including to the most remote and previously unreached areas, where people have not heard the Gospel, and where there is much malnutrition. In these mountain areas we still need the army to provide security for our outreach teams because of the presence of terrorist forces there.
In one such area, our Hosea team met a young boy, one of the many hundreds of children living in the mountains. No one actually knew where the boy lived. He walks four or five hours in the mountains to get to the elementary village school and he only owns one T-shirt and one pair of shorts. The boy said that he doesn't have anything to eat every day. The other children said that he tries to catch snakes and small animals for food if he can. The Mangya tribesmen have a habit of roasting rats and snakes over campfires, especially when there is no other food to eat. Hosea also plans to start relief work in this area, which includes distributing food and clothes, in addition to the Gospel. Many children have to live in violent homes and environment. We plan to establish a church in the area and take care of the children in particular, depending on the availability of funds.
Among our other mission areas, Tonga has suffered from an earthquake. Tonga has had constant earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, to name just a few of the calamities that have befallen it. Thanks to our Heavenly Father's miraculous protection, the modest Hosea school building has always survived without damage even in typhoons! And our school headteacher Dorothy has managed to bravely struggle on in the midst of all these disasters.
Papua New Guinea suffered a massive landslide that hit our mission area in a province called Enga where we have churches. More than two thousand people are feared dead as the entire village was buried in the landslide. It happened in the early morning when people were sleeping in their huts, and it is expected that another landslide may hit the area.
Hosea's work is often pioneering, into areas of new opportunities: as Paul wrote in Romans 15:21 "...“Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Pioneers open a path from which others can continue on.
Blessings,
Anne
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