Reflecting on the past looking ahead to the future

Wow!!! We are a few days into the new year already. As we look forward to what 2025 has in store I want to look back at 2024 and just see what and where God has brought us. It was a year full of Joy, pain, loss and celebration. I (Jessica) am having to have some help from the girls to remember what all happened especially at the beginning of 2024 because my memory is not so great these days. So let us start with some of the ministry highlights for year 2024. January and February where planning months for us and our ministry team here. We had a couple of new ministries and our continued ministries from years past. One of the new things we wanted to try out was to do a couple of sports camps for the kids of the community. So in January Jonah and a couple of the young people from church held a basketball camp for boys aged 9-12. They would meet once a week on Saturdays and start with a Bible study, learn a few basics of the game and then they would have a chance to play a game. While the boys where enjoying basketball the girls and any of the boys that did not like basketball had a volleyball camp. It was a similar set up with Bible study, learning the game and playing. Of course snacks where provided for everyone that participated. March also saw our first kids camp of the year. A lot of love work and thinking goes into these camps. The first one of this year we did in our own barangay(village) of Juagdan. We went with the theme of the Armor of God. We had crafts for each of the pieces of armor and the kids learned what the armor is and why each piece is important for our life. With a staff of 17 and over a 150 kids it was a wonderful day to watch the kids learn and know that seeds are planted but also a day of exhaustion for our staff. As a staff we meet for Pre-camp prep at about 5:00-5:30, We make sure everything is ready, last minute set-up, breakfast and lastly but most important is to pray over the venue, kids and staff for the day. Camp officialy starts at 8:00 with registration for about an hour. We then have a time of introductions, with laying out the rules, introducing the staff, we do a couple of energizers to get the eneregy and wiggles out so we can sit and listen to what God has for us to learn. For this camp we invited three young moms/people from our church to speak. We broke the Armor of God into three parts so three different speakers. The speakers share for about ten minutes, You know a kids attention span, after the speaker they get up and do an action song to get out the wiggles that built up and then they have time in there small groups to share more about what they learned and explore deeper what it means. The kids are served a snack in the morning about 10:00 and then lunch at 12 noon. In the afternoon they have one more session with a speaker and then we do our "station activities" these include games, crafts and coloring/activity pages.

There is a time of review and then the last events of the day for the kids is awarding and picture taking. Every kid gets a prize but the prizes are based on points that there team recieves throughout the day. They get to be in the team pictures and then we also try to do a whole group picture. Camp wraps up about 4:00-4:30 and then our staff has about an hour of work left to take down everything and clean up. About a week after every camp we have an evaluation meeting so this time we decided to treat our staff to a weekend away to relax, enjoy and fellowship with one another. We went a resort on the same island with a nice beach and pool. We spent two nights there so the staff could swim, play and hang out. We did have a set meeting time to evaluate camp. We do the evaluation because we know we are not perfect and can always do better. We ask two questions when we meet, they are what did we do well and what can we do better? We always look at these things when we plan our next camp so we can try and make it better. April was a break of big events but always planning meetings and our Sunday school classes that meet every week. We have two classes that meet, the one is for kids age five to third grade, and the other is kids from fourth to sixth grade. The younger class is working on going throught the stories of the Bible. The older kids are working on monthly themes to help grow them spiritually. Each class has one teacher and the younger class we try to have an assistant every week. Each class has 10-15 kids each week. They are at the regular church service till after praise and worship then they go to Sunday school for a Bible story and then an activity of coloring page depending on the class and teacher. At the end of class they get a snack and there picture to take home. We encourage them to share the picture with there family and share what they learned. Also during special events at the church the kids will do a little performance, example during the church's anniversary(Thanksgiving) the kids will do a song or dance and they usually will put on a christmas play or other kind of Christmas program. We did not this year because we had to many other ministry programs and did not have time to prepare one. In May we had our churches annual Thanksgiving. This is the time of year that we celebrate all that was accomplished during the church year We have a special service with a special number performed by all the church departments a slide show with hightlights from church events and a lunch. A couple of days after the church thanksgiving is our denominations national gathering. This is most often held in Negros where the majority ofd the Churches are at but has been held here in Bohol and even in Mindanao. this past year it was held in Negros. Most of the time our whole family goes but this year we had puppies that where only a week or so old and So I (Jessica) stayed with most of the kids while Jonah and precious went for the gathering. They both had to go because Jonah is on the board and Precious is a national youth officer. I heard stories but if you want to hear more about that advernture you will have to ask Precious or Jonah. Just after the National gathering We had our annual youth camp. This year camp was held from June 20-22. This year we invited all of the churches from the Northeastern Bohol area with one church from Tagbiliran joining us. The Church from Tagbiliran was here because our speaker was the pastor of that church and also the program director of the campus ministry on the college campuses in the area. Our theme was finding our Identity and Purpose in Christ. It was a great event. We had about 225 young people attend this camp. It was nice this year because we had the young professionals from our church staff this camp so that our young people could enjoy and be a part of camp instead of having to be so busy with the work that goes into such a large event. Lord willing this is how we will do all of our camps from now on. The campers had a great time of learning, small group discussion and games. Fun was had by all and everyone learned something. This was a great camp for our family personally as well as Precious and another friend from church invited and brought a bunch of classmates to the camp that where unbelievers. I know for certian seeds where planted and more importantly at least one is asking questions and searching. We were able to gift him with a study Bible, which was greeted with "This is the best gift I have ever recieved." We are still praying for the right time for the harvest, and ask you to pray with us for this young man, Justin. At the very end of May the youth said goodbye to a special young lady who was leading the youth as she went to work abroad. It was a wonderful time to share with her how she had encouraged and helped the youth grow and for us to encourage her as she moved onto the next chapter of her life. She was a special part of Precious and Faith's life and was a great support to them during some difficult times. July saw the start of another new ministry for us and that was the start of our Bible school. This has been a long time in coming with a lot of dreams and prayers. This is something my sister in law, the pastora of our church has dreamed and prayed about for a long time. We started classes in the beggining of July. We focused our classes on leadership and training for church growth and ministry development. Our program was three months long and divided into two parts the first six weeks was working through a leadership program. It was seven series long and taught by six different leaders from our local church. I had the privelege of teaching one of the series on how to grow teams and disciple others. It was a great time of teaching and learning. I am sure that I learned from the students just as much as they learned from me. The next six weeks was more on discipleship and personal growth and growth within the ministry. This portion made was made up of 10 different classes taught by 9 different teachers. It was interesting with the scheduling of the classes this time around because we had a couple of high school and college students taking the training so had to work around school schedules. We had about 18 students for the first batch and look forward to where God will take this ministry in the coming years. part of the training was for the students to join our staff in the planning and carrying out of a kids camp so mid August we had our second kids camp of the year. This camp was held in a nearby barangay called Cagting. This was the first time we did a camp there and so where unsure of how many to expect so we went based on the number of kids enrolled in the local elementary school. We only had about half of what we expected but was still a great turnout seeing as it was a first time event there. We had a little over 100 kids and we had a great time with the kids and our students did a great job helping us out. For our theme for this camp we used a tool called the wordless book. It is a great tool we learned about from friends of ours and have used it a couple of times. You have a book with five pages, each page is a different color and each color represents a specific part of the salvation story. First is Gold which represents Heaven and How God is perfect, then black is sin and how we are dead in our sin, Red represents the blood of Christ and how we need that shed blood to be saved, white represents How Christ views us after we accept him as our savior, and last is green which represents how we have to keep growing in our faith. If you want more just message myself or Precious and we would be happy to share more about it. beginning of October we had our closing for the Bible school. Each student recieved and certificate of completetion and a commissioning to go and put into practice what they learned. October also saw our third and final Kids camp of the year. This one was at a barangay about 30 minutes from where we live. We were invited by a local church to come and conduct a camp there and help them get a childrens ministry program started. Our camp was scheduled for October 19, but that was a scheduled power outage for the whole day so we postponed and week. Camp was October 26. We had about 150 kids and we again used the wordless book for this camp. Our staff puts hours of work into these camps and have a great time with the kids. I am so proud of the love, work and effort our staff puts into working with our kids. November saw the start of our third new ministry and that is a childrens ministry training program. Our family along with a couple of our Childrens ministry staff with the help of some mentors put together a training and went to Negros over semester break. We had 32 people come for the training with the heart and desire to learn how to do Childrens ministry and start a program in their own churches. Since we were in Negros we decided to make a week of it and did our second youth camp of the year. this camp we had just under 200 young people from all over the Island of Negros. About 40% of those had never attended a youth camp before. We used the same theme of Identity and Purpose in Christ. It was a very touching theme for a lot of the young people. We where blessed with three amazing speakers at this camp. Pastor Brian and two of his nieces who did an amazing job connecting with the youth. The rest of the year was spent planning the youth and Sunday School Christmas parties. The youth made there own supper, had great fun playing games, hearing Gods word and a chance to win prizes in a raffle. The kids enjoyed Lunch from McDonalds, games, a Bible story and a change gift. Pray with us as we begin to plan for the year ahead. The one event that we already have scheduled is our National gathering , but we will travel to the location a week advanced to conduct another Childrens ministry training and kids camp. This event will take place in Mindanao. Please pray with us that God will provide the way for us to bring our whole team for the camp and national gathering. Thanks for traveling through the past year with us and stay tuned for updates on the New Year.