Newsletters

Welcome to another newsletter published for Nigel Pyle and his family and his Disciples Ministries Team. While not without some big challenges, Nigel and the Team are doing well in starting the Cebu City Church of Christ, primarily called City Church. Nigel is now in his 11th year working in Cebu. God has blessed his efforts. What follows here are some notes and news about this work.

Nigel and his family would love to come to the United States for one to two months this coming Fall. They were able to visit supporters in New Zealand and Australia last year; but finances did not permit them to come to the United States. Please be in prayer that this will be possible this Fall.

FEBRUARY 28: I'll send you a longer e-mail tomorrow. Last night we had a bit of an emergency with David. Over the past few days he's been running a fever and we knew he had a touch of tonsillitis. Well last night in the middle of the night he came down with asthma-bronchitis. (Struggled to breathe) We phoned Dr Verna at about midnight and she told us to take him to Talisay hospital. Well, they had him on a nebulizer and about 2:30 he recovered enough to take home. His breathing was very horsey all night so in the morning thought we would have to take him back into hospital. But decided we would go and see Dr Verna first. Well the horsey breathing improved when we took him outside, so she examined him and prescribed a stronger antibiotic. He took that and we took him in for further tests, x-ray and blood test. He's doing Ok now, just has a nasty cough and tonight hope he keeps recovering, and doesn't have a repeat of last night. It appears his inflamed tonsils brought on his asthma-bronchitis attack.

We had a great Festival of Praise on Friday night! About 80 were present and all were encouraged!

Sunday saw Marydel bring along some people from her ministry in the city. She had informed us sh
e had 6 for baptism, and as we were planning to baptize one young man, she brought them to our morning service. Well another lady went forward after the sermon from Marydel's ministry. And in the afternoon Lemuel baptized 7 people from Marydel's work, 3 Ladies and 4 young girls. Our prospect backed out from being baptized!

Pray David keeps recovering!

(Recent picture of David and Melody)

MARCH 1: Well, we are relieved. David did much better last night and slept soundly. He has a bronchitis cough but other than that he seems to be recovering Ok. Dr Verna's stronger antibiotics are working. She was the speaker at last night's mid-week Bible study... did a great job. We had 11 at it. Loida stayed home to make sure David was Ok.

Loida's brother Adam is here, so he helped make and put up a cabinet in the music room and built a steel bench to sit on out in the garage. He is now working on the San Isidro Church.

MARCH 13: Greetings! We're doing Ok. This last weekend we had a good attendance at the services. Melody though is now complaining she has a sore throat and sure enough she has a throat infection. She had a fever most of the night and we need her to see a doctor today so she can get some medicine. Dr Verna is gone today, so we will have to try someone else in the city. Must go now as we have our team meeting in the City every Tuesday morning.

APRIL 2: This weekend it was Cebu Bible Seminary's graduation and Noemi Omilig, one of Loida's sisters, graduated. Loida's Mum was present for this special occasion. We held a prayer breakfast meeting Saturday morning, only a few attended, but it was very inspiring. The speaker for CBS services Larry Arienzano and his wife came. We've met him before but didn't know he was to be the speaker and were thrilled he came. We invited him back and he spoke in our Sunday evening service. He's a good speaker and we're impressed with his commitment and dedication. Well, when he prayed in the morning he prayed very powerfully for our work in the City. In the afternoon we went to conduct our outreach programs. No students could assist us as they were busy cleaning up CBS for graduation. I dropped off Loida and two others at Tisa and then drove Percida to meet with Eunice for the other outreach behind CAP. After dropping them off I went back to pick up Loida and the others from Tisa. Well, I arrived back and a man who opposed the Gospel was really attacking the work. He was saying things such as, "You have no permission to work here! You are from Satan!" Kids and mums were crying and so was Loida. He wouldn't listen and even tried to curse Loida while I was watching. She stood her ground and prayed Jesus would protect her and cover her with his blood. I tried to talk to him a bit but quick- ly realized he would not attempt to understand English and it was no use trying to conduct the program while this man was hanging around he was just being so disruptive. The result, we cancelled the program that day and left. The Mums and kids really want us back, so we informed them quietly we will be back next Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile we will have Lemuel and others visit during the week to see how committed the people are to have us back, see if they are willing to take a stand and have us there and check out if we can get permission in writing to be there. You might wonder why we didn't do this in the first place. Well, I've seen that done. We did it when Jhun Mills con- ducted a "sowers program" in San Benito, and even though we had a permit to operate in the Market and because we had done all the right things some people were aware of our plans and then proceeded to make it difficult. Hence we were hassled even when we did bow to their wishes.

Some people are really opposed to the Gospel and we are reminded all the time that Cebu is a resis- tant area. Technically there is freedom of religion in the Philippines. It is neat to know that the constitution and its freedom of religion does permit us to do the type of work we are doing! I guess it is just a shock when it gets ugly like it did!

(Don Lloyd note: June Mills, short for Millendez, was a very important part of the Disciples Ministries Team, but died suddenly about 2 years ago, July 4th, apparently of heart trouble. He was 26 at the time. June had graduated from Cebu Bible Seminary, and had attended Minnesota Bible College in Rochester, Minnesota for one year, 1992-1993).

APRIL 11: Thanks for all the e-mail since we've been away visiting Loida's parents in Camindangan for the oast week. We had to ao visit them because they were very concerned about some important matters about their land and requested help to sort out the paper work. Well, it worked out okay. We found the right peo- ple for them to work with and they now know how to sort out their problem.

We could only go to Negros because of our Team helping us to do ministry in Cebu City. They gave us the peace of mind that things would continue and min- istry would be accomplished in our absence, and they did a good job. lemuel did the preaching, Brenda helped lead songs and teach the kids in Sunday School. Yes, we are thrilled we have a competent team to handle things. In May this Team will see the addition of Reinboy Daguman, who graduated from Cebu Bible Seminary in March.

Our trip was good. While there we started the building of an addition on to the house so that they can have visitors more easily and helped with some Church activities. The young people had a fellowship night on Sunday evening and I preached in the morning and gave a short talk on Praise and Worship in the evening. In the morning loida translated my message. I also did the Adult Sunday school. Then on Tuesday a confer- ence began conducted by Simon labrado. Several Churches came together and I preached in the evening. lots of little kids were in the service so I spoke on Jesus' saying -"I will make you fishers of Men." The little kids seemed to understand and Jerry Siasat from Negros translated my message. Our son David came up front and sang "I will make you Fishers of Men" when I asked the little kids to sing this song. He did it at the beginning and end of the sermon. It wasn't planned. He just came and stood next to me and sang. One man made a commitment when Simon gave an invitation.

We had a good trip but did break a windshield and had that replaced in Bacolod.

On the way back we stopped off briefly at the Santander Camp site. We were planning originally to stay overnight but Melody came down with Tonsillitis, so we decided to get home with her rather than staying the night in Santander. (She is now on the mend with the antibiotics beginning to take effect. ) The Camp site is looking great and hopefully in the future we will have a group come up from Scarborough Church of Christ in Perth, Australia to help build a cottage for it. At pre- sent it has two cottages and another is planned to be built in May, so the one Scarborough does would be the fourth. A session hall and chapel is under construction and also a dining hall. City Church plans to have a Family camp at Santander camp site on the first weekend in May.

Our barge trip across from Bato Cebu to Kampi Negros was smooth so we had no problems putting the car on that this time and going across to Negros and back. The trip cost about $120 and that includes 3000 pesos or $70 for the windshield.

APRIL 23: This past week we conducted our first VBS with Kids from behind CAP. Thirty six came on Tuesday morning and we kept those numbers through- out the week, actually going up a bit, and over 50 were present for the graduation on Saturday. About 8 Mums and a few Dads came to the graduation. Our theme was "We Shine for Jesus." The whole program seemed to go well. The majority of the kids were non- Christians. On Sunday some came back. We were especially thrilled to see five boys walk in on the evening service. It looks like we may see more of them.

This week we will start our VBS program in Tisa. Once again it will run from Tuesday until Saturday but this time as we are out doors we will only have an after- noon program.

During the week I heard via a letter from Mum in New Zealand that my nephew Micheal Pyle was seri- ously injured in a fall down a sand hill in New Zealand on March 6th. He broke his back in two places and was flown to Auckland hospital via rescue helicopter. I managed to phone my brother and got his answering machine. They later phoned back and got one of Loida's brothers. It seems Micheal is slowly recovering. In the same letter Mum also informed me her brother Ray was in the hospital with a heart attack. It's so hard to be so far from your family. If I knew things like this sooner I could pray sooner.

We're doing Ok. Church numbers are down a bit as most people are on vacation and students have gone home for Summer.

Today quite a crew is off to Manila to attend the Church of Christ Centennial convention program. We aren't going as we think it better to spend money on our outreach, such as VBS, etc. On May 3-5 we at City Church plan to have a Church family camp at Santander. After that Eunice and lemuel will be able to spend some time in Negros.

Well not much other news other than I'd better go and have breakfast and then take these students from Cebu Bible Seminary who are going to Manila to the boat.

APRIL 23: Regarding your question about what CAP stands for: CAP is where we met when we transferred from Shoe Mart. It stands for College Assistance Program. They have a hall and conference center you can rent and this place is right opposite McDonalds on Jones Ave or Osmena Blvd and is about 100 meters from where we rent. The other significance about CAP is that it has a small road next to it that leads past a Mormon Church right into a large squatter area that is located behind this main road called Sambag I and II. It was when we walked down this short no end road and came to a small chapel of St. Nino and walked down past that on small paths and entered into this area that people started to respond and show interest in Bible studies and it was especially the kids that gathered. Now we've had about 1-1/2 years minister- ing in this area. Most of the time through Saturday afternoon kids colouring Bible studies. Some are now coming to Sunday School as well. Nearly all the kids that came to VBS came from this area. So when we refer to the area we call it "behind CAP." It's real name is Sambag 1 and Sambag II.

I'll try drawing a map of this area and send it with the photos so it can become more clear as to how this area is set up.

APRIL 25: Our VBS in Tisa started well yesterday, with 44 kids in attendance. All seem excited and I think we will have a few more students this afternoon. As we are holding it outdoors we start at 3 p.m. and conclude at 5 p.m. That is so we keep out of the hottest part of the day. Please pray that the man who attacked Loida and others doesn't come back again. We saw him walking on the road about a mile away. He may hear of the program and interfere.

A final note -May 26th sees the coming marriage of Team member Joey-Marie Borja. He is marrying for- mer Team member Roger Pat tic's sister in lIoilo.

MAY 1: There is some unrest about our ex-President Estrada. Most of that seems to be happening in Manila and I think the country will pull through it OK. News today shows some civil disorder but it appears to be under control!

We're doing Ok! On Thursday we will have our Church Family Camp down in Santander. We plan to be there until Saturday when we will return to do our outreach programs. These programs have been well received! Kids are open to hear more about Jesus and this is opening up parents as well! We can only praise God for the way He is working! Our numbers are down a bit in Church attendance (Summer slump I guess), but our outreach is increasing and God is at work in wonderful ways. We are now praying that some of the older kids will accept Christ. We know this may take a little time but the potential is there.

Well must go now! Please greet all of our great friends and partners!