Weeks Seven and Eight

                It seems that God really has planned for me to be here, because He has not stopped blessing the time that I have been here!!  Some might thing that at this point I might be getting tired or ready to go home, but that seems not to be the case.  (Don’t get me wrong I still miss you momJ) Everyone here has really come close together and it feels like I am a part of the family of God here, everyone in the province knows my name and calls out to me or smiles real big when I pass bye, it’s such a huge blessing!  Let’s see though where did I last leave you off . . .  that’s right God had given me a crazy vision, which is still going strong and my brain is going crazy with ideas, and we were starting on another hut for a family real close to me.

                The start of week seven was great, Ate Maria and Joe Joe left the house and it was just me and pastor Al, only the guys!!  Which can be a good thing, and a bad thing all at the same time, it was nice to have some deep one on one conversations, but the bad thing was there was no (sweet and wonderful) woman to do her God given gift of cooking!!  And seeming that I am an American and incapable of doing to much, I was not allowed to cook, so Pastor Al took it on himself to be the cook.  Long story short I got so sick, that I was incapable of doing anything for two days!!!  That Monday night was bad, sore throat, stuffy nose, but in the morning I thought that I could still go to work, maybe try and shake it off.  Lucky for me Pastor Al decided that today was a good day to burn everything!! That’s right me with a throat that can hardly breathe normal air, is now haling heavy objects into a fire that was blowing smoke right into my face!!  So that being said, my illness elevated to the extreme, and I got a cough, throwing up, and major headaches on top of everything else.  So for the next few days I couldn’t do anything, which proved to be a set back with all that I had done.  The reason I say this is because I am American they believe that I am not use to working or serving, and I had spent all that time proving to them that I was different, and they finally believed me.  But after I got sick a lot of that work went out the door, because they thought I worked too hard and I needed to slow down.  It ended up being ok because, I kind of went behind Pastor Al’s back and told Maria that it might have been his cooking that almost killed me! 

                As some of you may know I have had the opportunity to preach every Wednesday night for the church and that means about 600 plus people, so with me being sick and all I had a lot of time to really get the message to heart, which proved to be a great blessing.  Cause in the middle of the service the power went out!!  Which is a common thing, but this was the first time it had happened on a Wednesday night, but that did not stop anything, me being an American I have a voice that carries much further than a normal Filipino, due to that they are all very soft spoken people. . For the most part that is.  So without even losing a step, I continued to preach, sore throat and all.  It went very well, l preached on how we can trust in God to take care, and I was able to use a visual illustration that worked great!!  I took a chair up on stage and started to talk about how we trust this chair without even thinking, but do we do the same thing with the creator of the universe?  Anyway I won’t go into details but it worked out really well.

                Getting late into week seven and into week eight we had to move out of the house that we were staying in, for reasons to long to explain, and now we are staying in the church.  This has proven to be very hard, because there are no naps for me anymore!!  I know what you’re thinking “what is he ever going to do!!”  But taking naps here is something that everyone does around noon due to the extreme heat and hard labor, but I can’t cause my bed is literally in the kitchen!  So there is a lot of traffic and I kind of feel weird sleeping right where everyone is walking by and looking at me. . . So really what I am asking is please pray for some heavenly sleep at nights!! 

                Week eight has seemed to be like I am with my family and friends, and it kind of hurts to think of leaving them, we have come to be closer and closer every day, and knowing that I will be leaving them in less than two weeks brings a small pain to my heart.  It might seem easy for someone to say that leaving them should be easy for me because I will be going back to my awesome family and friends, but that’s just it. . . I will be going back to comfort and luxury while they are all staying here working hard with each other to build a community in Christ, and I will miss it.  But like a famous American once said “I shall return!!”  (for those of you who don’t know history that person would be General McCarthy who is one of the most famous Americans in the Philippines).  But to end this week I was able to meet a lot of the local pastors form the community that are coming in for a Pastoral conference, and I got a chance to play some basketball with them, and I met a man named Toto who really wanted my information, so I gave it to him and I think he wants to either have me work with him in the future or help me get set up over here in the Philippines as a missionary!  In fact it looks like a lot of the pastors were talking to Al about me and they all showed a big interest in me.  I really think that God can use it and I hope that it leads to building His vision that He gave me for the Orphanage/safe house.  But only time can tell, in the meanwhile everything is in God’s hands and yes I can take my own message to heart, trust in God, just keep serving Him and loving others!!

                Prayer requests

• SLEEP!!!  I am very tired, in fact I am getting to the point that my body is moving much slower, and it’s even getting hard to dunk!! (This is huge for the people here!)
• That the transition of me leaving can be in Joy and not sadness/ that these next few days can be awesome and finish strong.
• Continue to Pray for the vision that God has given me that it might continue to grow and form into reality! 

  

God is good!!!

                It’s been quite an interesting two weeks, and I am not sure where I should start but I’ll try and make since out of all of it for you.  We are now through weeks five and six and going into the seventh week out of I believe to be eleven or twelve total weeks!! 

                So to start this madness off, the Sunday of the end of the 4^th week I was in church, kind of day dreaming while Pastor Al was giving his sermon (don’t judge me it’s in a different language!)  and while I was looking over the people and how this ministry got started I started to think of what I was going to do and what kind of ministry would I start? 

                If you know me very well, you will know that the Philippines is where I’ve always wanted to do my ministry but I’ve been up and down about what I am going to do.  I have a passion for a lot of things, which can be my down fall, but anyway back, to the morning in church.  I was day dreaming and a CLEAR vision and voice spoke to me showing me a building that was shaped like an upside down U (with a straight bottom not curved)  then the voice started speaking to me and showing me things about this building and what it was for.  At first I was a little confused then I say myself in this vision!!  I know I sound crazy but it’s true, and it gets even better.  I have this huge passion for kids, but my heart also goes out to girls that are in sex trafficking and or prostitution, but let’s face it, kind of hard to put the two together, and I am not sure really how to start a ministry for sex trafficking or people in prostitution.  So this summer I was hoping to find something that I could maybe start for long term ministry, and here it was, an orphanage that was also a safe house!  Its all so crazy but I really think it could work, it would be called something along the lined of Saint house (yes this was in the vision).  Anyway I could go on and on about what this would look like but for now I will keep it at that and if you have any questions about it or are interested to hear more about the story/experience I had, feel free to facebook me or e-mail me at kfoster@mccks.edu. 

                Ok for the rest of the weeks, in the 5^th week it was kind of slow but fun, we did a lot of work around the house and church, on Tuesday we weed wacked the grass at the church, which I racked into piles and put into a compost pile.  Then Wednesday we started around the house.  I assumed it was the same drill, but that is where I would be wrong.  After racking for about an hour Pastor Al came to me and said “hey racking is not good enough, could you sweep it? To pick up more of the grass blades on the ground”…. I looked at him with a very puzzled look, of course I nodded my head and said “of course”  but what I was really thinking was (why in the world did you not tell me this an hour ago? We could have saved so much time and energy! Plus it’s called the blessed winds of God; I think the grass will blow away after I rack it!)  But we all know I did not say that I went right to work sweeping the lawn!!  But this is something you have to know, to the Filipino having the appearance of looking clean and tight around your house is very important, to the point that you often see people sweeping dirt, just to make it look…. Better.  So the blades of grass just sitting there that might (if not blown away) would turn brown and we could not have that, so I went on sweeping, but it turned out for the best cause I wore a cut off and got a good tan on my white arms. J

                On Saturday of week 5 a group of people from Wichita KS came on a little missions trip and they helped us with the VBS’s so that was great!! Got to be with some English speaking people, but the funny thing was when they were around the Filipino people seemed to connect with me a lot more, on top of I was a lot more comfortable being with them!  I was this kind of bridge between the two groups, the Americans trusted me and the Filipino’s trusted me, so it was a great day!  After we got back to the house it was raining which means hang out side and enjoy the coolness, so we played this style of dodge ball, then me and a bunch of high school guys went down to the river (which was running high due to the rain) and swam!!  It was a great day to the end of a great week.

                Week 6 however proved to test me, we stated to week off by started construction on a welding shop.  Which means we were building another hut, just bigger than one you might live in, and it was more of an extension off of one of the neighbor’s houses.  Anyway started off as normal, we did clean up, which means I get to move the heavy objects and rack.  After that we started building, which also means bringing and moving heavy objects, which makes since seeming I do not know the final plan for the building so I am not that much help when it comes to that area.  But throughout this week everything seemed to just be down for me, whenever I would go out to work I knew that the guys were talking about me, now this was not un-normal, but it just really got to me this week.  I could not help but put words into their mouths, and they were things that just were not encouraging.  So on Wednesday I decided after not feeling very well in the morning to take the day off and just finish working on the sermon that I was giving that night.  After a very long day, the service had come; I had prepared another part of the prayer series that I was preaching on, it was about how we might pray and opening the door to Jesus to work through our prayers.  It went well, but I was still kind of down, so that night I really went to God in prayer, seeking what I should do, and sure enough the next day, people came to me saying they loved to message and that it really helped them out.  That was all I needed, just a little encouragement, and for the rest of the week I worked hard and we finished the hut and are now about to start on building another one, this one is going to be a house for a family.

                I’m very excited to continue on, and I know that with God on my team that I can keep my head high knowing that no matter what might come my way, He will be there to help me and lift me up if I am to fall. 

Please continue to pray for strength and courage to be intentional with my relationships with the people here, and also pray that I may get some rest, I am putting in very long hard day’s and not getting very much sleep at night, also be praying for my new found mission the Saint house.  I know that God is moving in that, and wants me to pros sue it, so please be praying that God can continue to guide me through what seems to be closer to my future and a life time ministry for the kingdom of God. 

                God bless

                                                Kevin Foster  

Weeks 3 and 4

Well I’m now on to the 5^th week crazy I know!!!  But I am still very excited to be here, the start of my third week here I went to the first church service for pastor Al, and discovered that being on time is not a big deAl here.  Pastor told me that church started at 8 and went to 11 so I was there with him at exactly 8 the chairs were All set up and everything. . . but no one was there! 8:30 rolled around and the chapel slowly started to fill about hAlf at this point, then at 8:45 pastor Al’s family comes in!!  just so you know the family is the worship team, so then we start church.  That was a very interesting experience, and the same thing happened the next week, but I was ready for it that time.  I Also help out with children’s church on Sundays where I become a huge jungle gym for the kids, they love to climb All over me, but they love to have me swing them around, which is quite the workout!!

                Being put to work has been great, the locAl people here love to watch me, it is not uncommon or rude to stare at someone, so that is what they do.  Seeming I am a strong person, or at least to some of the people here, they like to see how much I can lift, then they All point and say something I don’t understand, but I just laugh, I know it’s nothing to bad J  but the work of a locAl pastor is just to serve everyone around, in fact pastor Al and I are the locAl lawn mower!!  He is the only one who owns a weed wacker and well I am his helper so I rack everything after him and wheel it away into a big pile.  Seeming everyone else has to work hard to just barely live around here they do not have time to keep maintenance on things around the village, so that is what we do All day. 

                It has been raining a ton here but that only means one thing for pastor Al and I, cooler weather to work in!!  it’s nice but sometimes I wish we could get some sun, cause with no sun I can’t do my other ministry and that is basketbAll!  After I work in the morning tell noon, I will have some lunch take a quick break then it’s up to the gym to hang out with the children or even adults and play around.

                That’s what my days look like for the most part with a few exceptions on some days, like Wednesday I preach, it’s been fun.  Kind of strange seeming I know that hAlf the words I say go right though their heads, they don’t understand English All that well.  So they can only pick up on some parts of my sermons.  But they have been affective, well at least that’s what pastor Al has told me.

                Thanks for the prayers and I will continue to be praying for all of you in your summers, may God bless you and keep you safe!

                                                                                Kevin Foster

WOW God is good!

Well sorry this took a little longer than i would have hoped but now it has fainaly come!! for starters for those who are interested in being updated through out the summer, be passiont with me cause i can only get the internet if i come into town so this might only happen once a week or so.

Ok well strating off I want to thank all of you for the prayer support it has been a huge blessing God is really working in my life while i am here.  The first week i was here I spent with a friend that i knew, he is a missionary for OCI and helped me with some quick orinetational things.  But it was great, this country is beautiful that is for sure, and the people are extremly friendly.

Skipping to the next week and the real action that i get to be doing, I am now in a place called Porta Galira.  This is the place where Threeds of Hope is located, along with a (not so normal) orphanage.  the reason i say that is because the kids have parents that they live with but other than a roof over their head the kids have nothing. this is where the church comes into the picture.  giving then work they can be paid and then get money to eat.  So its a very interesting situation, and thread of hope is nothing like i thought it would be!! it is a community thing that the people come to the pastor and he is the one who holds all the material.  he will give it out to them, then the pastor will keep track of who has what, then the people make the bracelets on their own time.  The give it back to the pastor (alan) who then will send it to places that will bye it.  (like what i did)  But the women who make these bracolets do not all come from prostituation, although some have many of them just need a job or source of money, so if they are to make these bracolets, pastor alan tells them they have to come to church!  and through that they have become a strong church (lots of women) but it has been very effective for the church and the body of Christ.

Now for how I am doing, the first week was great i got to do what i wanted and Rich henderson took me to places to show me some of the great needs of the Philippines.  That was great but then I was put on a boat and sent to where i am now.  When i first got here I expected someone to pick me up right away, but that did not happen!! I called and was told that my ride would be there in 20 min..... about 1 hour later my ride showed up, being who i am I greated pastor alan with a big smile, he was happy to see me not mad i guess, and we grabbed my things and got on a bike.  fastforward a little, over all i kind of feel like i am a well trained pet, when i got here they treated me like i have not worked a day in my life and was suppose to be treated with high care.  That is not who i am so i started to serve them!  it is working out way better now, but for awhile i was going crazy when the people i am working with would not ask me to do anything.  (there are some good stories there but i'll tell them later)

anyway getting into the third week and i am very excited for what God has in store for me, and this ministry, I have been seeing a lot of opportunities for ministry here in the Philippines for the future!  The kids here love me and always ask me to dunk it (thats when they are not hanging all over me!)

thanks for the prayers again and a specieal thanks to Aleesha for helping me put this together!!
In Christ love
Kevin Foster