November 2022 News Hope House

It is really November 2022. The old saying is Time Flies. I turned 64 years old this month. Like you I look back and wonder where the time went. Time really does fly. I came to Cebu City in March of 2009. I had been to the Philippines before, for three short visits, but I didn’t know much about it here. I saw the children in Manila in 2003 and I was very affected by what I saw. That was almost 20 years ago. Where does the time go? I came here to help the children. I didn’t have much idea at all how I would do it. I worked one year here as a home based call center agent, and although I made more money than most Filipino working people, still it was low pay. I made 500 dollars a month. That is twice the pay of an average worker here, and there are many jobs that only pay 4 dollars a day. Its not that cheap to live here, and the low salaries are part of the grinding poverty here.

I am working on updating and editing My Story and I will have that up soon. There I go into a lot more details about this journey I am on.

We had a difficult time during Covid as probably you did as well. There were also problems brewing here. I separated from my wife in April of 2021 and I came back in June of 2022. As a result of all the troubles of a couple of years our support went way down and I can understand that. I will say that I have always had a heart for the situation the children are in, and I have only lived here and taken care of basic needs for myself.

Hope House and my life are stories of the Grace of God

No one is immune to attacks of the darkness and we all are human. Gods amazing grace shines forth in our lives. We learn from our experiences and we learn to trust God, and seek God for His help.

I gave a lot of thought to this and quitting and going home was one of those thoughts. Sometimes we can feel sorry for ourselves. I did all this and I did all that , and thats the thanks I get. Poor old me. Its easy to think like that. We were always abused by people who have never even been here and say unkind things about us, and people here with bad motives have said bad things. The common root of all that seems to be jealousy. I have been around long enough to see this bad spirit that people display and its demonic. People can be quite religious and miss the whole plot.

I thought about all the years and all that has happened here, the good times and the bad. The false people. Paul said in perils of false brethren. People I had helped even so they can have ministries who are unthankful, ungrateful, backstabbers. Many people I have helped who are ungrateful, backbiters. History tell us the Apostles had a bad time. Jesus had a bad time. They killed Him and all He did was help people. One thing we really do need in the church is maturity and not quickly believe bad things said about someone. My many tens of thousands of photos and videos and ongoing story tell the story. Yet someone says something bad and people forget all that in a second. that is pretty sad indeed.

What I am attempting to do is too big for one person or ten people. So to that end I am going to work harder at reaching out to others. Here is what I am doing so far and I will tell you where we are going. I reached out to YWAM House of Prayer Church and the Hope House people have been meeting there. That has been going well. It helps that there are foreigners there and the petty jealousy isn’t present as it is in some other churches. I had reached out in the past and was discouraged. There is so much pride and the flesh operational in churches. I am also very much an out there guy and many church people are in here types of people. Church inside the four walls. I believe the church should be active in social problems. I believe our Bible teaches what I am saying. We should be Active. We should be taking actions. Love is best spoken in actions is it not?

I still do Bible and preach wherever I want to. As I say, I am an out there guy. It might be the YWAM people will let us use their space some Saturdays as they have church on Sundays and we can do our Hope House Church. Our Hope House church is pretty informal. I am working on the house and we will be using it more soon. We had a lot of typhoon damage.

They asked us to join them at the YWAM church and be one community. I feel this is a good move for us. This will also put us in YWAM channels and I can reach out for missionaries to come here and help us.

Pastor Shawn has 23 years experience in the Philippines

Pastor Allen is in his 30’s He has a passion for holiness and right living

Ansel has 20 plus years experience in missionary work

Doug is from Canada and I think Jim is from the USA.

We are a praying community

We still feed the children after church like we always have

Our people make up about half of the people attending the church. I have not been bringing as many children as I could bring. They have order there and the space they have, and I dont want to cause disruption. We are doing our Hope House outreaches out there, and church out there. I think things will open up soon and we will have a big space for our Hope House church in addition to meeting with the YWAM group. We have always allowed dirty children and children who havent had good upbringing and are noisy and etc. Our church can be pretty rough and tumble, so as I say I have been bringing the ones more suited for church there. We bring around 100 people.

In the past I helped trafficked girls,but going forward I will be more involved with law enforcement. It is dangerous. It is more dangerous than what we have been doing. The more children we sponsor, the greater our network is and we can do more and more to stop child sex trafficking. We get information the police do not get. IF WE CAN SPONSOR 1000 children, we can literally shut down child sex trafficking in several urban poverty slum areas. We can do that because of the network of information that would provide. We would cast a net of protection over a very wide area. It is a very profound thought. What an amazing accomplishment it would be. We can do it.

I recently got information from one of our sponsored girls that there was an active pedophile here from Australia. I took action and got solid evidence on the man. We also got 6 of the 8 victims to make statements. This is very hard to do here. We also helped police locate the victims so they could transport them to make statements. The case was filed in Regional Court in Talisay and I am told the prosecutor has it now. Clearly we are also going to build new and better relationships with police here. and also with barangay officials.

We continue to do what we have always done.

In Summary, in the past I devoted all my time to helping the very poor, especially the children. Now I will work hard to build much better relationships with Barangay officials, Police and a few churches. We need to make that bridge. The children are ignored. The best way to do that is sponsor 1000 children and then integrate them into existing churches and schools. Integrate them into the functioning part of society here. In the past we were a separate entity, and that is not the way to go. Bridging and integration will close the gap, that vast divide that separates the children of the very poor. I believe we can do it. Im asking for your prayers as we go forward in this new amazing chapter of Hope House.

You can help at the link below.

Founded by David Wilkerson, the Philippines Ministry | GoGetFunding

hopehouseministry29@gmail.com

Me speaking to over 1000 people