Update from Ella Santos

God’s peace and love be upon you always! We truly miss seeing you and sharing how we have been. We are truly thankful for Bright Hope World for taking time to listen to us as well and we hope that how the Lord blessed us in the journey will bless you as well.

Recent Events

Activities

My highlight for 2022 is finally being able to see the communities where our church planters are and being able to talk to our church planters. Being in charge of pastoral care for the teams, we spent time for debriefing, retreats, meditations and even having fellowships with their families. It was truly a joy for me, and I am very thankful that my husband could come with us.

Another thing I am most thankful for is finally forming the campus ministry and seeing how the youth has really grown! Despite the challenges of the pandemic, they tried to rise above it and gave time to help the church even if we cannot go there yet.

Before the pandemic, we had to change members of the campus ministry because some had other things to take care of. But the Lord worked through the other young people in Aramaywan and they were able to form a new team. Talking to them was another highlight for me making me realize the importance of mentoring. At first, we were firm that it is their church’s role to do the mentoring. But I realized that the Lord impressed in me the meaning of being a counsellor for them. Me and my husband were able to minister to them during our last visit for module last November. We had time to get to know the team better and pray for them.

One more highlight for me is being able to revise the modules of ECPM. We observed some are outdated and needed more contextualization. It has been our goal, but we were having a hard time doing it on our own, so we decided to spend three days together, just focusing on the modules and we are very happy with the result. That way we can discuss the revisions, bible passages and re-group the curriculum by modules.

Plans for the Future

In 2023, since we have new teams, I will do pastoral/on-site visits, create new retreat programs for the teams and will do our scheduled interviews.

Campus ministry modules and mentoring are also up next, and we are trying to have our youth and young professionals in the church involved as well.

The revised modules of ECPM are currently being formatted to become textbooks for our trainers.

We are also praying to create sponsorship materials for ECPM for possible new sponsors and we are praying to attend IBCM in Malaysia and set up a booth to share what the Lord is doing in the Philippines. We are very thankful that despite all, it is amazing to see God moving through the church planting teams. I really feel blessed, so it is my prayer to share to others, internationally how the Lord has made this possible specially in the rural and tribal areas of the Philippines.

Current Issues and Challenges

For me honestly the greatest challenge is health. We are thankful ECPM was able to provide flu and pneumonia vaccine (aside from Covid vaccine from the govt). But we realized the value of also taking care of ourselves. We are planning to talk more about our own health and medicines that we could bring and prepare every time we need to visit the teams.

Covid-19 changed how we go about our travels. We need to be more extra careful and yet there is a part of allowing the Lord to cover all things being in mission work. There is a need for balance between trusting God and also taking precautionary steps – I am still re-learning this since Covid happened. Me and my husband try to save as well so he can come along if I visit teams. The good thing is that he has been teaching and mentoring the campus team previously so he is able to reach out to them also. We are praying to involve our youth leaders in our church as well to help us in campus ministry. We might bring them along next month to meet the campus ministry team in Aramaywan.

Prayer and Praise Points

Good health and daily provision for me and my husband. May we always be fit and healthy because we’d like to spend our days serving the Lord thru church planting.

Am also praying for someone I can mentor, someone younger than me who can also be involved in ECPM. I have been praying for someone I am discipling in the church but no answer yet.