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This was the day before we had the rice give away! One day we went and bought 50 kilo bags of rice the next day we spent 10 hours bagging the rice into 10 kilo bags to give to 100 families of a village not too far from us. |
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A Bad Case of Cabin Fever! |
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| We are ok, just cabin fever! The lockdown was extended another 30 days as of today. There’s not much telling when this lockdown will be over. Unfortunately, the powers that be are wealthy and cannot relate to the lower income classes that are suffering such grave loss in not being able to work. The powers don’t see how difficult their restrictions make life for the poor here. Calli and I may be inconvenienced but are not hurt nor are we starving like the poor. I wish I had more income to buy rice for the people. The government is giving some rice, but it’s not near enough to sustain the average family. My gardener is able to work here, as is my care taker, so they have an income, but all the construction workers were shut out with the lockdown. That means they went home weeks ago and have been unable to work. Can you imagine, they have families of 5 to 7 people and no work? They are confined in their poor neighborhoods for all this time with very, I mean very little help from the government. When there is a calamity like huge typhoons that blow away villages there’s a mobilization going on that brings ample food, and people are able to move around and try to survive the calamity. In this mess, the people are locked in and some starvation is going on. Old people with no one helping them are in real jeopardy. That’s the best I can tell you, and it’s worse because I haven’t gone around to these places, but I hear from different sources what is happening and it’s not pretty. We have bought several bags of rice for people we know and given some money to people we know but you know that is a drop in the bucket. I thought we would open up again on May 15, but they didn’t. Anyway, we are ok! Just a little cabin fever! | ||
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Dunamis Sponsors First Rice Giveaway |
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| A friend and partner, sent us $500 (US) to buy rice for those that are poor and have families that are effected by the lockdown. There are millions of families. We can’t possibly impact all of them but we can touch those around us. We can no longer sit in the comfort of our new mission center in safety, knowing people are suffering all around us. So, we are going to do what we can as long as we can. These villages around here will be suffering for some time with lack of food and many are still not working. They want to, but cannot find jobs because many businesses are still closed and I fear many have closed for good that couldn’t make it 2 months with no income. We just did this rice give away in a village maybe 5 minutes from the center. We first gave a message with scriptures and prayed with them. Probably more than a 100 were saved. Then we gave each family a 10 kilo (about 20 lb.) bag of premium rice. They were so over joyed and relieved for the food, but they were even more excited about receiving Jesus as their savior! So, it was wonderful day to say the least! | ||
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Fill the bucket with 20lbs Rice. Take the bucket and dump into double inner bags. Put bags into third bag! Repeat 99 more times! |
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First things first we gave the villagers a 5 minute message from the Lord and then we prayed a mass prayer with them and most all were born again including the man that helped us set it up who was a life-long member of a local cult here. He was born again also! He is below in other photos. |
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Left: Tony mixing with the crowd. Center right: Krystel and Teng (the ex-cult guy) giving away rice from our truck. Left: Levi helping with the food give-away! |
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First of all the people were so grateful for the spiritual gift of salvation and they kept coming up to me thanking me for sharing, and the rice was the icing on God’s wonderful cake for them. Some of these families are 7 to 10 people and they had only received a small amount of rice and a few cans of sardines and tuna during the lockdown! In some villages they received about 6,000 pesos for 2 months living, (about half a month’s pay for one person). 6,000 pesos is about $110 US. Even in the Philippines that’s below poverty and they have been in lockdown for about 2 months. I talked to some of my construction workers and they have not been able to go out and even find food let alone work! |
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We want to continue to do these give aways for the next few months. That particular give away cost about $800 to do even with all volunteers. We gave away 100 20 lb bags. My friends we can’t do it without you. We need supporters to help bring spiritual food and rice to people like these. |
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Left: Felicity Privado 1983-2016 Right: Pictures of Jesus that miraculously survived the 2016 tragic fire that destroyed our mission center and our precious daughter Felicity. |
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Miraculous Surviving Prints of Jesus! |
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| After the fire in 2016, these prints were left lying on the floor of our class room in a nice neat pile. There were a few completely burned on top and we gently removed them to find this pile of prints of a drawing that Felicity had done of Jesus in 2006. The original hung upstairs in my office and was completely consumed. Keep in mind these prints were inside a display case made of wood and glass. The whole room was incinerated by a ferocious fire that consumed the case they were in and everything else in the room. Melted glass and warped metal, there was nothing left of the case or the glass shelves and they were lying on top of a completely burned parquet floor. The wood ceiling in the room was gone. The room was destroyed and yet they were lying right where the wooden case used to be. There were a few burnt on top, and maybe on bottom, but the other 90 or so were just burned around the edges making a picture frame of ashes around Jesus. They were beautiful and so very special! Truly a miracle they survived. No other explanation for them still being there, because the case burned up around them, it made no sense in the natural that they were there. I said all that, to tell you the importance of those prints.
In 2016 we used a few of them to raise money for Felicity’s children’s education. But if you had known Felicity, she was the Princess of the down and outers and had a huge heart for the poor and elderly. So we know that it would please her all the way to heaven to know that her pictures went to raise money for the poor and suffering. We hope you can hear our heart’s on this! When I first thought about using those prints this way, I cried so much, because it’s one of the few things that survived that she had done, and it was like more of losing her. But y’all, even though it’s an eternal image, it’s a temporal thing that would be best enjoyed by whoever gets them here, Amen?! So we are going to send one of those prints to everyone who gives $500 or more to feed these people that are in such bad circumstances because of the lockdowns that have kept the very poor from working for the last 2 months. There are elderly citizens here that don’t have enough food and can’t get out to get any. We can’t get to all of them but we will buy as much rice and dried fish, sardines, etc. as we can and distribute it to as many of these villages as we can. Every dollar you send will be used to purchase food. Our school is on lockdown just as all schools are. We have the time to do this, so let’s get to it. I guess, we finally woke out of our corona virus stooper and heard the Lord about all the suffering going on over here. I couldn’t continue to sit by while these people are hurting so much. We’ve been doing what we could ourselves, but the need is greater than we can do financially by ourselves! If we raise enough money, we will join forces with our pastor here Pastor Paul Chase at New Life Church in Alabang Hills, it’s a church of 5,000 plus members with many satellite churches all over the Islands. Pastor Paul has connections with the local municipalities and mayors that will enable us to get into the villages that we want to impact. So please send whatever you can and designate it for Philippine food distribution. We will keep you posted. Folks, we are not changing our focus on ministry we are just trying to help! As you can see, we also will minister to their souls at the same time. We hope you will want to help these poor people with us. We can be a team! You can be a part of all this by financially doing what you can, just talk to the Lord and trust him to multiply your seed. We are going to also try to help during times of calamity in the future. We have over 30 typhoons every year and earthquakes, landslides, volcano’s, floods galore, etc. So, there is a lot we can do. We will incorporate some of this benevolence into the school by doing volunteer events during the seminars when we can. It’s a new day at Dunamis. Also, if you want to partner with Dunamis on a monthly basis just go on line to our Website: www.dunamisinternational.org. Love you, Tony! |
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| “Win the Philippines! Win the World!” Let’s do it together! |
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