Dean & Sheba Padayhag
Grace Berean Church, Kempton Park, Johannesburg, South Africa

To the Eleventh Avenue Church, Mineral Wells, Texas:

We always check your website especially the Prayer Requests section and help you in praying.

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www.committed.to/gbcsa - www.trax.to/deansheba

January, 2008

Dear Fellow-Laborers,

May this mail finds you in good health and comforted by God’s grace and love. Like the Apostle Paul, we pray that “…He (the Lord) will strengthen and protect you from evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3). As of us here, we are doing great. The Lord has been very faithful in providing us comfort in times of loneliness, joy in times of sadness, wisdom in times of uncertainties, grace in times of weakness and His love always compels us to continue performing the ministry He entrusted to us.

On this news, we would like to share to you some of our victories, ministry plans and needs. We have been praying to God for more open doors to spread out the gospel of Grace. Aside from Sunday teaching and preaching, we also have Bible Study Classes on Fridays and Saturdays, Ministerial Advancement Program (Turning Members into Ministers), music and computer trainings, visitations and counseling. What a glorious opportunity God has given to us! But God wants us to do more. Recently, He opened a door for us to minister at Oxford College every other Monday. Some of our members and Bible Study attendees are teachers of this school. The owner, Mr. Moyo, wants us to visit the school more often. Please pray for the conviction and conversion of the teachers and students as we continue to share the wonderful message of God’s grace. Pray also for our schedule to train the Students Organization on leadership.

One of the greatest needs of our Association here is training. No one in-charge of training and producing more workers. And so we have churches run by untrained leaders and women. This need made us step forward and volunteer to lead the national training program. Aside from training our people in our church, we also include some of the members in other grace churches. The goal of Ministerial Advancement Program (MAP) is to provide fundamental, biblical, ministerial education, and training to men and women for Christian service. Currently, we have 35 students from grace churches aside from non-grace students. Night and day, we are busy making lessons for these people. Pray that these students will develop more love and passion for ministry and step forward in faith to lead and start churches.

We are still busy looking for a new place for our church. Our current location is now in between two liquor stores. It’s getting noisy and people are afraid to come. The residents are moving out of the area and most of the houses are for sale. Many are rented by temporary residents, mostly those who are working in the airport. We have church attendees that we can only see once every two months due to their work shift. There is a need to change the community and our contacts. We need people who are stable, steady and excited in the ministry to help sustain the church. We praise the Lord though for our small group of grace members who are hungry for God’s Word. Most of them are teachers, nurses, accountants and young professionals. Pray that they will commit to the leadership of the ministry. Pray for our safety and of our people.

This last one is a special prayer request. Our South African driver’s license will expire soon. We got this when we still had “work permit” 5 years ago. Unfortunately, it cannot be renewed now due to our “visitor’s visa”. The public transport here is very poor and dangerous for foreigners like us. Recently, the war between taxi organizations is causing fear on the commuters. Most of our schedules are during the night, so we need to drive. Because of this, we are planning to go home to Philippines in April. We’ll apply for a Philippine driver’s license and then convert it to an international one. It is usually valid for a year. So, we can drive for a year until our visitor’s visa expires in 2009. April is a good timing also because TCM Philippines will celebrate & hold its 50th Anniversary National Conference. And so then we can attend. We already got our one-way tickets to Philippines. From there, we’ll buy round-trip tickets (Philippines to South Africa then to Philippines in 2009). Hope this return ticket will keep us away from immigration problems. We can get a one year validity tickets through SIAMA Mission Travel agency. We hope to raise $2000 until the end of March 2008. Please send your gifts and help through Things to Come Mission and designate it to our trip. TCM will send you a receipt.

Our car registration will expire in May this year. We could not renew it, too, but we have a plan to register it in the name of one of our Association leaders.

Again, thank you for your partnership in prayer and financial support. We are always praying for you.

Dean and Sheba Padayhag
For the sake of the Call...Serving God together in Love!
www.committed.to/gbcsa
www.trax.to/deansheba