"I Was About to Take My Life Until I Met You"

This evening, Netty and I visited the University Belt church planting team in their home base in Paco and we heard this testimony from one of the volunteers. Today, a Mapuan student in Intramuros was about to take her life that same night if someone hadn't shared to her the gospel. In tears she tells her contact worker that for two weeks she's been praying that someone would talk to her. Plagued by family crises, she decided tonight is the night that she would buy a sodium-based poison and that she'll drink it when she gets home and never wake up again. She was approached by one of the volunteers in the field who's roughly same age as her, she heard the gospel, gave her life to Christ with a new sense of hope and tomorrow, she's getting water baptized! Words cannot describe my amazement and overwhelming awe of God's move in that student's life. Hallelujah!

Prayer of Francis

In the wake of the recent Virginia Tech shootings, let us pray that His comfort will meet grieving families and that through this many would come to know Jesus. Let us be reminded one of Bible's many promises: "[They] intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:19); "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.