About Masbate

I was assigned to Masbate as a Strategy Coordinator and started working on it as early as November 2005. I moved to Lucena city where I can take a boat ride to Masbate City on the island of Masbate.

I was happy to learn that there is a southern Baptist pastor and and his family residing there in a barrios (a small district of a town) called Istambar of the town Cataingan, which is located 80km from Masbate city. He had a church called The Living God and many outreaches in the surrounding area. He was trained as a Strategy Coordinator, but I am not sure if his training was on level one or two. One thing I am sure is that he has been a dedicate pastor for more than ten years and labored without tiring for the Lord. His wife had also a heart for the work of the Lord as well as his children.

As I arrived in Istambar after riding on the back of a motorcycle on the dirt road, I met the 10 year old son of the pastor. The son got out of his class and lead me on foot to the barrios of his father's outreach. We arrived and heard that the pastor has baptized three adults and one of them is going to be a leader in those barrios for the Lord.

I am the only Strategy Coordinator from the IMB here with no team from the IMB. It will be a big help if I can have at least one IMB team member whether it is a single or an ISC couple. It will be difficult but not impossible for me to use one-week volunteers there because it already takes 2 days to travel from Manila and the one week volunteer has only one day left to serve the Lord.

My strategy is to work with the pastor in Istambar and with any Christians with the same faith to reach the Masbatenos for Christ and start strong Southern Baptist churches there. My training will not be restricted to T4T or level one but will go deep into relationships. I believe Sam Stallings is right when he reminds us of relationships. The highly valued activity is not only the training on how to do the simple bible study but how to build relationships while you lead the Bible study.

The weather, the rough sea during the rainy season really affects the work there. The economic situation of the people also affects a big part there. The risk of the rebel group is high in Masbate since it is far from the capital of the Philippines.

People are mainly Catholics. The more provincial it is the stronger the Catholic practice is.