Busy summer in Cebu

Hope you have been having a wonderful summer! School is about to start in England, meantime, the Cebu school year started in earnest about 2 weeks ago. This is the first time for most children to have face-to-face instruction for two full academic years. According to Save the Children, as many as 80% of children learned little or nothing during the school closures. You can read their report here. 

We've been following the heatwave that has hit many parts of the UK! Hopefully there's some cooler weather now. Apparently according to some reports, there'll be more hot summers to come! 

National Conference

Every couple of years, Youth With A Mission (YWAM)Philippines holds a conference. This conference is an opportunity for the all those involved in the wide range of mission that goes on across the country under the banner of YWAM to come together, worship, get teaching and share knowledge. It's a prized refreshing time for many who work tirelessly, often in remote locations, to meet with other like minded missionaries. We always really enjoy the conferences here and feel very refreshed and invigorated afterwards. 

Getting there wasn’t without its challenges – one of which was our flight being changed last minute by the airline from 6am to 11pm, which almost caused us to miss an important immigration appointment in Manila. Praise God that we made it to the conference and to the appointment - someone very kind at the airport was willing to book us on another, earlier flight without any additional charge. 

This was an amazing answer to prayer - thank you to all those who responded to the Facebook post for the prayers! God really helped us, especially when it looked like it was impossible! All the requirements have now been completed for our 2 year visa. 

Please pray that immigration issues the visa soon, because every month they don’t issue the documents, we have to pay £230 in tourist extension fees!

Getting registered

We are working on getting the charity that we've founded (4Freedom) registered as an entity here in the Philippines. This is quite a task, bringing all the necessary information for all the board members to be scrutinised by the relevant authorities. We have a social worker processing the documentation right now and will hopefully be 'live' soon. Pray that they will accept our application, so that we can open a bank account and start building a fund for the charity. 

 Prayer times

Peter has been organising prayer walks once a week in Cordova which is the hotspot for online child trafficking in the world. We also want to start a monthly online prayer gathering on the first Saturday of each month at 9am UK time (10am German time). If you would like to join, please send an email to peterclem@gmail.com and he'll send you out a link to join. 

Please pray for us in this time. Since the pandemic, we've gained some support and we've lost a major donor. Moving back to the Philippines has been expensive with new visas and set up costs (including back to school costs). Please pray for us as we continue to build this ministry that we will be able to find some more regular supporters for our personal everyday costs. 

Frog porridge

 One of the things that Becky and I like doing when we travel is to try the local cuisine. In the district of Singapore where we stayed overnight during our 20 hour layover, frog porridge (rice porridge with frog meat stew). The taste was actually quite nice - a mix between fish and chicken - in a very delicious sauce. 

The children didn't fancy it, so we gave them some spring rolls, french fries and mini burgers. All in all, a real treat for the family (and not too expensive) as a break away from airline food!

Saying farewell to Stockport (and England)

Saying goodbye is always hard. The children especially are affected by goodbyes. My daughter, Hannah was playing with a school friend of hers and came back very down and sad, slumped on the sofa, as she processed (in her 7-year old way) 'never' seeing her friend again. 

As a family, we are preparing to depart England for Philippines after a long Covid-restricted home-working season! This is the longest our children have spent in the UK. Usually when we visit Europe, we spend no more than a few days in each location. It's a very busy family time of speaking engagements and home visits. This time, because of Covid, it was much more grounded in one place and the children for the first time got to experience 'normal' English life. 

As the borders opened up in February, we had to make a decision, as a family - and in consultation with our mission agency, VDM -  when would be a good time to go back. It was decided that, because the children were in school and things weren't properly ready for us in Cebu, that we would wait until the end of Spring term 2022 (i.e. Easter break) to book our flight tickets. Well , it came about quicker than any of us thought and packing up our belongings, giving away stuff and shipping boxes takes its toll on our emotions. For me, now I've got the 'go' signal to return, I'm ready to say goodbye (nicely, of course) then go! After we've said farewell, I don't like to hang around for too long. It feels awkward and uncomfortable!  

When we left the Philippines in 2020. Like so many, we never expected Covid to last so long and the borders to Philippines to remain closed for so long. We anticipated returning in early 2021! 

Here is Becky's dad, Andrew, helping us get the final box packed up, ready to ship! 

Shipping boxes, known as 'Balakbayan boxes' take upwards three months to get to the Philippines, but are much cheaper than paying for excess luggage at the airport. Much of what we're shipping will be used for a book and toy library we're setting up to be used by those who are looking after survivors of OSEC (online abuse). Right now, as far as we're aware, this seems to be mostly kinship care (family), but we would love to see more foster carers recruited, especially among the Christians and supported by churches. 

This weekend we'll be visiting three churches: Trinity Church, Authentic City Church and Emmanuel Church. It will be a busy weekend, but we're grateful that so many people are wanting to engage with us and 'say goodbye'!

Thank you, St Mary's, Luton!

 It was so wonderful to be at St Mary's, Luton. 

Luton is a place where, even though I didn't grow up there, I always feel like I'm coming home. Sadly we don't have a house in the town anymore, and during the pandemic finding accommodation was nigh-on impossible! Thankfully, as things are easing, we've been able to travel back to this wonderful place that sent us into missions in the first place. 

As we process any change in our ministry work, we always seek advise and counsel from Luton first. St Mary's is where I got married to Becky and where I really deepened my faith and commitment to the Lord Jesus! 

If you're interested, here's the talk I gave (underneath is the transcript for the sermon, if you prefer reading to listening). 

Fear of the Lord only

We’ve been part of St Mary’s church since 1999. I was a cell group leader and cell pastor. I love Luton. It’s the place where I studied, it’s the place where I met Becky. This church is where I got married, and it’s this church where we were sent into missions 12 years ago. By God’s grace, He’s kept us going strong. And St Mary’s has been a huge part of that. Thank you.

Becky is a missionary kid, grew up in Nigeria. From the moment we met, she talked about travel and getting out there to share the gospel. It took me a few years to get on board! 

After five years of marriage, we finally went into missions in 2010. We served for 6½ years in Cape Town, South Africa before moving to the Philippines where we are now. The move to the Philippines was a chance for us to expand the work we’d been doing in South Africa and we felt it was the place with the greater need for anti-trafficking work, especially in regard to children.

This is one of the ladies we help, her name is [name removed].

After 20 months of being away from the Philippines, due to covid travel restrictions, the question came to our minds: is it safe to go back? Since January 2021, we’ve been regularly checking the entry restrictions and trying many different ways and means to get back to do the physical mission work, though we continued working remotely with the help of staff on the ground. Every avenue we tried didn’t work. Suddenly, at the end of February 2022, the Philippines announced the opening up and allowance of foreigners to re-enter the country.

The question then comes to mind: the borders may be open, but is now the right time? 

A typhoon in December hit Cebu hard. Our house, thankfully, wasn’t affected so badly, but we still lost parts of our roof, the water, electricity and internet connections.

After consideration and prayer, we decided that just one of us should go out and survey the land – is it possible and is it wise for us as a family to move back at this time!? What about our budget – can we afford to live? How are prices now and do we have enough support?

I had to go to the airport without a ticket and trust the Lord that if it was right to go that he would make it happen. There’s more to this story as to why I did that – not my normal way of doing things, but it was to do with a step of obedience and step of faith.

I had had a false positive covid test. I knew it was false positive, because I had recently recovered from the actual virus! The positive test result, even though false, caused my ticket to be invalidated by the airline (I called the airline with the news and they put my ticket on hold, until I could get a clarification of it being a false positive). Thankfully, I was able to confirm with the testing company that it was, indeed, a false positive and a repeat test showed a negative result. Going back to the airline, they'd already sold my ticket so someone else and there weren't any seats left at my price. On discussion with the agent and not having any easy option, I prayed about it and felt peace to go to the airport anyway without a ticket and trust that I could fly. 

On arrival at the airport, Becky reminded me that we had been forced to pay for extra insurance by the Philippine government to cover covid-19 incidences. We discovered, to our surprise and delight, that this compulsory insurance covered false positive tests and they agreed to pay the fare difference. This was a miracle - we didn't have the money for a new ticket and for the provision to come at this point (just 3 hours before the flight) was amazing and so exciting. It's my first time going to the airport without a valid ticket! I was nervous, but somehow knew that God was going to get me back to Cebu! 

So, I arrived in Cebu and met with colleagues and friends and began my work. It was such a wonderful time and full of God’s guidance and provision.

These are some of the ladies with whom we work and I was able to meet some of them on my trip. It was amazing to be back, to meet new members of the team and to survey the land! Straightaway work began on fixing the roof and it was completed in a few days. The internet was restored and inside the house was re-painted and broken items fixed. Only the Lord could have made all these things happen so quickly, because so much of it was out of my control. It really felt as though the Lord had his hand on our return.

I spent my time in Cebu visiting the projects where we work, putting things back together and putting together a budget for the next year of work if we were to return as a family.

I’m pleased to say that: based on the kindness and support from St Mary’s and others, we’re now up to about 90 per cent of our budget from donations and pledged gifts. This is amazing and we’re so grateful for this support, especially in this time of uncertainty and increased costs for all of us and for all of you. We really appreciate the sacrifice that so many of you have made in supporting us – especially supporting us through St Mary’s.

This gives us confidence to return, knowing things are ready for us, as a family, in Cebu and to continue the work and even expand on what we’ve already been doing. This is a really exciting time for the mission work and it’s so good to have a great team around us in YWAM at the House of Prayer. 

Our next task will be to see if we can raise enough to replace our car which is spending more time in the garage than on the road. It’s a 22 year old Toyota and I think it’s pretty much at the end of its useful life right now!

We will be flying out as a family on Monday, 2^nd May 2022. The children will be homeschooled for a couple of months whilst we register them for the new academic year in Cebu, when – finally – face to face instruction is expected to return. Children in Cebu have been off face-to-face schooling for over 2 years now.

The bible passage we’re looking at this morning is from Matthew 18, which begins with the disciples discussing with Jesus about who is the greatest. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I’m sure they never expected the response they got from Jesus, as he invited little children to come and sit with him. Jesus identified the pride in their hearts. If you think about it from the disciples’ perspectives – “hey Jesus, we left our entire lives to follow you – surely we get a special place in your Kingdom?”. This is a very easy place for missionaries to fall – we left our homes, family, comfort zone. Where is my reward? How great will I be in the Kingdom of God.

The answer is not so comfortable to read!

Jesus turned their question on its head and shows examples of the Kingdom of God and how we need to be childlike in our walk with God. Jesus talks then about how he will bring severe judgement on those who cause the little children to sin. He then concludes with a parable that says how he will persevere to protect his flock, even if it means leaving those that are safe to find that 1 lost sheep. I’ll come back to that 1 sheep in a bit, but let’s examine this childlike faith a bit further first…

It’s really only when we lay down our rights to these home comforts unconditionally – without expectation of reward – do this passage becomes truly comforting. As I lay down my own pride in what “I have achieved” and lean on Him, then this message from Matthew’s gospel becomes so powerful. If we truly look at my own abilities to do what God’s called us to do in the Philippines, the need seems overwhelming. But…

…if we just come to him, like a child, and have that willingness to just go, the impossible task becomes possible. This has rung true in so many ways. We often do not know how things will pan out and the work that God has called us to do seems overwhelming and I certainly feel underqualified for it. But… his faithfulness that we have seen over the years brings confidence to the unknown. My flight out to the Philippines was impossible, but with God, it became possible!

Thank you for your prayers

OK, let’s move on to look at the 1 lost sheep.

The need in the Philippines is so great. Our work is to help survivors of human trafficking. We feel led to expand that work to help the survivors of OSEC – online exploitation of children – and it is a form of trafficking. With the incredibly long lockdowns and with the closure of schools for 2 years now, online abuse has grown exponentially, as families struggle to make ends meet and seek increasingly desperate measures to survive. Within a few minutes, the traffickers can earn a week’s wages.

As we look at this growing problem of human trafficking, we can easily feel overwhelmed by the need. However, as we discussed this issue with one of our mentors, they said “focus on the one”. If you can start with helping one person or one family, then things can grow from there. This encouragement has inspired us to think – and reminded us of the parable of the lost sheep – that Jesus would go after the one. If we can bring the gospel to the one, share the love of Jesus to that one – if they respond and give their lives to Jesus – then we have helped that one.

In our mission work, we have a vision of 4 freedoms:

Freedom in Christ – bringing the gospel to the poor

Freedom from slavery – giving people a hope away from control and abuse

Freedom from pollution – of the body, soul and mind. Bringing an environment of clean, healthy living.

Freedom from poverty – bringing sustainable income, to remove the snare that brought them into bondage in the first place.

 

So, as we go back, even though we’ll be developing strategies to help whole communities escape from poverty, we will always look to celebrate each one we help.

Back to Pete:

The stumbling block for me on sharing the gospel over the years is fear. Fear of being mocked, being laughed at. Fear of rejection. Fear of how it would look to be a bible basher! For people I’m close to, my fear is based around losing the relationship – being rejected. I have really struggled to share my faith with my family, especially, as I’m scared to lose my relationship with them! It stopped me from going into missions for many years, much to Becky’s frustration! I’ve seen other Christian friends who have become isolated from those close to them, as they share their faith, people pull away from having a relationship with them.

In today’s Old Testament reading, we had Proverbs 9:10, The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. In 2nd Timothy 1vs7 it says: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” So, if I’m afraid of sharing my faith – the bible tells us that that doesn’t come from a fear of the Lord, it is a fear of man. It’s very sobering and it has motivated me to step out of my comfort zone and say: Lord, if you didn’t give me a spirit of fear, then help me to be bold, even in the face of rejection!

Supernaturally, God has given me boldness in the Philippines to share my faith in places I never have before – with bus conductors, or the mechanic fixing my car. Even foreigners I see in the malls. I’m still a work in progress – I still shy away, especially in my own culture and with my own family – and I need to ask God continuously to help me lay down my own fears and submit to the fear of the Lord!

Whilst praying on what to share today, the Holy Spirit is speaking to me about fear of man. Fear of man is simply allowing what others think (or even worse, what we think they think) to shape our actions, rather than leaning on what the Lord is telling us to do.

It’s something which I fall into very often and something which the Lord has been working on in my life over the past 20 years or so. And it’s not just limited to sharing the gospel. I still find myself making life decisions based on what others would think or say.

But when we think about eternity, that never ending life that we know exists for those who trust in the Lord, isn’t it worth it? Our walk with the Lord is a daily process of looking to him and him alone.

In today’s passage, Jesus compared obedience in the Kingdom to being like a little child. In many ways, we overcomplicate our walk with God, don’t we. We try and justify our actions as being the sensible way to do things. But our ‘sensible’ way, isn’t always the way the Lord leads. My experience has been sometimes that the Lord will take me halfway across the world, just to highlight an area of my life he wants to deal with.

 

I think that’s possibly our challenge for you: if you look at your community where you live, where you work, where you study…who is the one you could make a difference to? 

Who is the one that’s never heard the gospel that you could share with? 

A whole movement can start with the life of just one person being transformed by the gospel.  And you could be that one that shared with them. 

On the road to recovery

Thank you so much for your prayers and support over the past few weeks. I am resting at Becky's parents house at the moment. It has been frustrating, knowing that we leave the country for the Philippines in 10 days and not being able to do any kind of heavy lifting. However Becky has been a superstar, connecting in with friends and physically sorting many of the things needed to be shipped to Cebu! 

We are due to 'set sail' on May 2nd. Looking forward to checking in with folk in Luton when we visit St Mary's on April 24th and Emmanuel Community Church on May 1st. We have also been blessed by great fellowship with members of the Trinity Church in Offerton who befriended us during the lockdown when we didn't know anyone in Stockport. We are so grateful for the community we have seen here in Stockport which has sustained us! 

Unexpected turn of events

 After a wonderful time at St Michaels Church in Warfield who have been faithfully supporting our work, we headed down to my (Peter's) mums for the kids to see grandma and for us to say our goodbyes to her before venturing off to Cebu. However, maybe the goodbye will be slightly longer than anticipated, as on arrival I came down with acute stomach pains and was rushed to hospital and was diagnosed with appendicitis. I'm out of surgery now and I'm the recovery suite. 

Two weeks rest might mean longer at Grandma's than I had anticipated! 

Encouraging words

It's always exciting to get words of knowledge from friends. We visited Warfield Church North (aka St Michael's)  in Berkshire on Sunday 10th April 2022. This was our second attempt at visiting the church, as last time I (Peter) tested positive for COVID just before leaving! 

As we met with the wonderful people at the church, we were so excited to hear how many had been praying for us before and during our visit. They had pictures and images that were shared with us - more than one had the same image in their mind. Even after all these years in YWAM, it is exciting to hear people hearing the voice of God and being willing to share it so openly. May God bless this church and enable it to grow strong in the Warfield and Bracknell area. More importantly, may they know that their partnership means that the work of Warfield Church spreads strong the world, as they invest in God's mission work globally! 

Thank you to all who shared and encouraged us! Bless you!

We also got a sneak peak up the tower to see the view across Bracknell!

Arrived in Cebu after such a long time!

Greetings from Cebu, Philippines. Getting here was nothing short of a miracle! 

After having had covid a few weeks ago, I was sure that not only did I have the antibodies from the vaccine, but also the antibodies from the actual virus. Having consistently tested negative, I confidently went for my PCR test the day before I was due to fly, only to receive a positive result! I contacted the airline and they told me that I could not fly, but they would put my ticket on hold until I tested negative. On leaving the airport with this disappointing news, I felt sure that I was Covid negative and the test must be showing falsely, as I had fully recovered some time ago from the disease. I felt the prompting (which I think was the Holy Spirit) to go back and get another PCR test. I went, was seen straight away (even though I didn't have a prior appointment) and got a 3-hour express PCR test. We prayed ... and this came back negative! I then contacted the airline again, but they had sold my seat to someone else and told me that only higher priced economy tickets were available (meaning an extra £279). I still felt strongly that I was supposed to fly the following day, but didn't have peace about forking out all that money! Becky and I prayed about it again. We contacted the airline, and the price had gone up to over £340! After praying about it, and still sensing God's peace that I would fly the following day, we decided to sleep on it and return to the airport the next day (March 8th) to see if I could get the flight. In the morning, we contacted the travel insurance company to explain. Miraculously, they said that, in principle, as long as the difference is less than the cost of the flight, I would be covered! So, we went to the airport in faith, the desk told me the £279 ticket was available again and I booked it and flew out to Cebu on the overnight flight. 

Here I am on board the Qatar flight, still a bit shell-shocked by the fact that I was there!

 

Now that I'm here I can see how devastated the city was from the typhoon. So many buildings have been damaged and the whole infrastructure torn apart by the strong winds. One colleague described it as the worst storm he'd ever seen. Grace and Ann-Ann who have been taking care of the house described cowering on the upstairs landing, which is in the middle of the house, petrified as the wind started ripping off gutters, parts of the roof and screen doors. Water was pouring in from all angles. The Philippine economy is still suffering the effects of the Covid pandemic, and with limited resources and manpower, there is still so much devastation to so many buildings that may take years to rectify. 

You may remember we talked about the home of a poor family (the mother works as a cook at the YWAM base) whose roof was destroyed. I was able to visit today. Here it is now, under reconstruction, this time with concrete blocks instead of wood:

I was also able to visit our staff member, Ian's house and see its progress:

The ground floor building work is almost complete now. They have also been able to get water and electrical connections established. Their roof had been damaged by the typhoon too. Ian has been such a faithful and wonderful help on thje ground whilst we've been in the UK. I'm so grateful to him for what he's been doing. Once the building is completed, he will live there with his two sisters and his parents. 

I've hit the road running. I've only been here 48 hours and already attended a YWAM Ph national meeting, attended the opening of a new ministry house for street kids, run by Cebu House of Prayer, seen work get under way to fix our roof and guttering, I've also got the Internet re-established- this was done in a 'bush mechanic-style'. All the telecoms engineers are busy fixing tens of thousands of broken connections across the islands. Getting an appointment for reconnection has been really difficult. However, I went outside to inspect and found that the wire had been severed in two places. So I went to the hardware store and bought a new cable and spliced it into the old connections. Amazingly, this worked. I'm not sure how long the repair will last, but at least we have a connection, hopefully until an engineer can come and connect it professionally! There's quite a few issues with the house, both from the typhoon and from 18 months of neglect. My scooter (which I use to do errands and ministry whilst Becky has the car) desperately needs a service. I came to it to find the back brake broken, no working headlights and it was backfiring when I started it! Hopefully with a bit of TLC it will be back to its former glory! The car on the other hand is in a very bad state of repair. There is probably about £500 needed spending on it to bring it into a drivable condition. Even then, there's no guarantee that something else might go wrong! It's a 22-year-old car and has served us well over the past 6 years. Please pray for us to make some wise choices on whether to scrap it and look to replace it with something slightly newer, or whether to repair it and hope for the best! Cars are really expensive in the Philippines and this is such a valuable tool for our ministry work here. 

The final countdown

I'm back from my 3 week trip to the Philippines. It was a success and the way is now paved for the whole family to go to Cebu in 3 weeks. 

We are grateful to be able to find cost effective flights (£400 each, one way) which will give us an overnight stop in Singapore, leaving the UK on Monday 2nd May.

While in Cebu I was able to visit some of the IJM ladies we have been working with for these years while there. They are struggling with home.

Today was the children's last day at their school, Covenant Christian School, which they (and we) are all very sad about leaving. Becky's mum Jenny also shed a few tears, as she has been teaching most of Becky's allocation of classes and we have all fallen in love with the families there! They will be missed. To help the kids keep in touch with friends, we are planning to let them make short videos - so if you have a question for them, please send it to us!

Friday photo on 8-4-2022 WhatsApp Image 2022-04-08 at 13.26.22.jpeg

This was our last day with the school. They threw a little goodbye party for us, with gifts, which was so moving! 

One of the things I was looking at when I visited in March was the ability to continue to do our work. That included the state of our home after the typhoon, the status of the schools (whether they are opening), transport links and ability to reach those we minister to. I'm pleased to say that the trip was an overwhelming success and all is ready for us to return. One of the areas that I highlighted as a need was to replace our car. Twice it was in the garage whilst I was there and they struggled to fix the ongoing problems with the steering and oil leaks. The bodywork of the car has deteriorated since we left significantly. Therefore we are getting ready to sell it. At 22 years old and being used every day for the last 6 years, it has served us well. 

If you know of anyone interested in supporting us to buy another car, we're running a fundraiser on GoFundMe. A replacement of a car about 8-10 years old will cost in the region of £5,000 to £6,000 (cars are expensive in the Philippines!), but the more we raise the better the car we can purchase and the longer we can use it for. Our last car was already 16 years old when we bought it and the previous owner felt it was 'on its last legs' when we bought it! Praise God that it lasted this long! Hugs thanks to those who helped us bluy 'The White Warrior' (as it is known).

Here's the gofundme link: GoFundMe

( https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-replace-our-aging-car?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1 )

More info can be found on our blog fundraising page.