Was browsing my multiply site and was surprised to see the early years of our church in Greenhills. The volunteers, pastors, people who have helped us when we started. The familiar faces who sacrifically planted this church with us. The birth pains and the excitement all crammed together.

Here with Jerome Guiterrez, one fo the businessman responsible for the church plant in Greenhills. His friendship, wisdom and support during the early stages of the church plant has helped me and my wife adjust to the new responsibility given to us. I miss the dinners we have at their home since Therese is one of the best cook in Metro Manila.

Our children’s church started at the lobby of Music Museum. It was so hard to manage 20 plus kids crammed together in a small place. It is only by God’s grace that we were able to survive doing this the first few months of church. We knew we had to do something drastic about it and prayed for God to provide a place for the kids to worship Jesus.

I think this is Kourtney teaching kids to love Jesus. Thank you to all our kids ministry volunteers.

Nove, wife of Pastor Chinkee was Ms, Worship. She was for the first 2 years of our church – the volunteer Worship Ministry coordinator. Her sacrifice week in and week out to lead the people to worship was amazing. Worship ministry is one of the hardest ministry to handle and I just want to thank Nove for loving Jesus and His church. Nove – thank you so much. Nove still leads worship once a month and she has successfully trained up and coming worship leaders and singers. Discipleship is still the key to effective ministry.

Thammie was pregnant when we planted the church in Greenhills. After 2 months of church, Mika was born. I could still remember having our staff meeting at home as our volunteer staff adjusted to my new work schedule. We were also officeless for the first 10 months which gave me a good reason to work at home and be with Thammie, Alyanna and Mika. It was hard to prepare messages because Mika was crying or there was a need to change her diapers, Alyanna wanted to play and my wife is just so beautiful I cannot resist not looking at her while I work.

Here was I preaching at CLUB FILIPINO since Music Museum was being used by a certain organization. We had to adjust and find a place to worship. I remember our team having to decide that for this certain Sunday instead of an afternoon worship- we moved it in the morning. This were my barong tagalog days. We haven’t yet identifed who we were trying to reach. We were clueless at that time. We just followed what we have been doing the longest time at the Fort till we realized that we have to crack the cultural code of the city. Glad we did and change how we do church – targeting the younger generation of students, business people and entrepreneurs. Last Sunday when i ask for a show of hands of people under 30 – we had around 70% of our church raise their hands.

One of the things I will surely miss in the days back is……

Me thinner than Pastor Chinkee but will definitely catch up with you bro!!!! Body for Life.

To all the church planters out there – enjoy the season of church planting. Birth pains and the joy of a newborn is all worth the effort.