Partnering with Filipino believers to plant churches amongst the unchurched communities of the Visayas
As a couple we come from different backgrounds yet in the following ways are similar: We both began following Jesus Christ at young ages and both began to realize God’s call to cross-cultural missions as adolescents.
Raised in Kennewick and Walla Walla, Clifford was led to Christ as a boy by his father. Raised in Tacoma, Jennifer’s family turmoil drove her to seek refuge in a neighborhood church. There, in her middle school years, her faith blossomed, and she received her missionary call. Clifford realized his missionary call through reading the book of Acts in high school. We met our freshman year at Trinity Lutheran College in Everett, Washington. After graduating, we married in the summer of 2011 and moved to Kennewick to establish our family. We have four kids born between the years 2013-2019: Galadriel, Hezekiah, Zephaniah, and Aurora.
Through much prayer, various signs, and with the affirmation and guidance of our church’s leadership, God made it very clear we are to serve Him in the Philippines through WorldVenture (WV) as church planters. We arrived in the Philippines August 2022. We are partnered with the Conservative Baptist Association of the Philippines (CBAP). CBAP’s vision is to see 2,025 churches planted in the Philippines by the year 2025. More specifically, we are working in Cebu City, the largest urban center of the Visayas region. The city and its province remain less than 5% Evangelical, and The Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches sees this as an unreached area.
The Philippines is a place exemplifying Jesus words, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). Most Filipinos are Roman Catholic in background with the perilous con of believing eternal salvation is works-based, but with the pro of many being open to discover what the Bible really says. Neighborhoods have asked CBAP for church planters to come, and they had no one to send.
We are in the midst learning Cebuano, the local language. We anticipate shifting our focus to full time to church planting activities within a year.
Our big prayer requests are:
– Fluency in Cebuano
– Discerning local believers to partner with in church planting
– Our physical health which has been hit hard in various ways in our first couple years here
Blogs and Articles on WorldVenture.com:
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