Martin Family Update, September 2010

Bryan and Jacinda Martin are missionaries in the Philippines on the island of Catanduanes. Cemeteries in Payo It has been a prayer request for a long time - that our town would get a public cemetery. That may seem like a strange thing to pray for, but it is key to the health of the church here. The Catholic church owns the only cemetery in our town, so if they take you off their "list" of good Catholics, then you cannot be buried there. Our Western values may lead us to say, "so what, just bury them some other place". But the worldview of the people here makes it a very important issue as to where someone is buried. If the people must take their loved ones to be buried in some other town, they feel they are just "throwing them away". It has already happened that a Bible study was destroyed when one of those attending was not allowed to bury his father in the Catholic cemetery. After that, everyone was too afraid that the same fate may fall on them if they continued to study the Bible. The local government has recently allotted an amount of money to purchase some land for a public cemetery. We have been working with the Vice Mayor and others in the local government to ensure this gets done, which is also giving us some good contacts which we may use to start a Bible study at the municipal hall. Last week we visited the proposed site, as seen in the above photo. Tom Buursma and Teng Candelaria are pictured talking with the Vice Mayor at the site. Field Director and Area Conference As less young people are committing to long term missions, our numbers are starting to be affected. Our field was in need of a field leader, but everyone was already involved in full time ministry that they did not want to leave in order to be a full time field director. This created a leadership crisis. We decided to step into the role of field director, but with a different structure. Instead of having 1 leader who would be full time and based in Manila, we decided to divide the job up into the different parts. I assigned people to the different roles according to their gifting, and in this way we were all able stay in our current ministries but fulfill the leadership roles needed to run the field. I am very thankful for the competent and hard working people that God has brought to the Philippines which has enabled us to operate this way. Jacinda has also accepted a role as the Asia Area Conference Coordinator, which means she will be planning an international conference in Indonesia from our small island out here. The conference will be for all of the World Team missionaries in Southeast Asia which account for over 100 people. Pray that we will not be overwhelmed by these new roles and that God would continue to use us to reach the people of Payo with the Gospel. San Andres Survey It was an exciting day as we traveled to the town of San Andres, Catanduanes. Amy and Edwin Samson, Teng and Edna Candelaria, Tom Buursma and I went to San Andres to survey it as a possible destination for a church planting team. Weeks earlier, while at the municipal hall here in Payo discussing the cemetery issue with the Vice Mayor, we met another man working there who is from San Andres named Joel. We told him what we were planning to do and he offered to introduce us to the government officials and give us a tour of the town. With him as our guide, we were able to go straight in and talk to anyone in the local government we wanted to. Everyone was very welcoming and positive about the possibility of having a team of people living and working there. We are thankful that God answered our prayers to go before us that day - He certainly did! Now all we need are workers - anyone interested? Mens' Retreat It is time again for another men's retreat, which will be held this Saturday on an island just off the coast from Catanduanes. The theme for this men's retreat will be "Men of Faith", where we will be talking about different men of the Bible who trusted in God. Pray for our time there, and that we will be able to sart some new Bible studies as a result. Other Info Check out our : Blog The World Team Philippines Website Our Youtube Videos To Make a tax-deductible donation to the Martin's ministry in the Philippines, make checks payable to World Team with Bryan Martin in the notes section, and send them to: World Team, 1431 Stuckert Road,Warrington, PA 18976 To give online, go to: World Team Website