True Love Waits Impacts the Philippines

This article caught my attention today. True Love Waits, an abstinence before marriage ministry is making significant impact to Filipino youth. They say the ministry have reached out to almost 2,000 Filipino students and have reported 432 profession of faith to Christ recently.

This is great news and a good reminder that we need more ministies like TLW in the Philippines (see Basta Love Life and Lambat) that knows the importance of teaching Filipinos develop a Christian worlview in all aspect of their lives.

A sobering report showed that of 1.7 million babies born in 2004, almost 8 percent were born to mothers aged 15-19 or almost 30% of Filipino women become mothers before reaching their 21st birthday. In 2000, young mothers gave birth to 818,000 babies a ratio of 1 of every 10 babies born to a teenage mother. The next census will be in 2010 and its not too late for ministries and the local church to step up its game to teach young Filipinos how to live their love lives according to God's principles and stop or at least slow down the growing number of teen pregnancies.

(Image from Children at Heart Ministries)

"True Love Waits" is Growing in the Philippines

The website wagmuna.com caught my attention the other day because of its catchy name. Composed of young adults committed in remaining pure before marriage, the site is dedicated to promote the value of waiting through the "True Love Waits" (TLW) program taught in many churches in the Philippines. My friend Kuya Kevin also made it a mission to bring the message of sexual integrity to young Filipinos through his blog, podcast and preaching.

As someone who dealt with sexual brokenness, I could have needed or used the message they bring when I was going through my own problems. But God had a different way of addressing this issue in my life. I couldn't be more proud of my kababayans and co-believers in Christ for their commitment and team work to bring the Biblical message of love and sex to many Pinoys. As I said on a blog post last March, I hope and pray more churches and Christian groups will not wait but rather act now to develop more programs like TLW in the Philippines.

Keep up the good work guys!

Christian Books by Local Filipino Authors

As a book and product marketer for BreakPoint and Chuck Colson, I get free books in the mail all the time either as a gift or for review. Some are worth reading but most sits on my desk collecting dust mainly because the theme doesn’t interest me – these books will end up in a balikbayan box to be sent to my pastor friend in Manila. The US has so many Christian resources for everyone, books, DVDs, curriculum, etc. and my hope is that Americans will not take these for granted and realize how blessed they are to have tons of choices on church and Christian resources.

One thing I don’t like living overseas is my limited access to books written and published by Filipino authors. Especially now that Christian book publishing by Filipinos has grown a lot since I left the Philippines many years ago. How I wish I can easily drive to a National Bookstore or Power Books and browse new titles from our very own authors. That’s why I am happy to see this list (thanks Kevin!) of the best selling Christian books of 2008 by CSM publishing. This is a good way to support our authors. Aside from purchasing their books we can help by spreading the word about their published work. I haven’t read any of the books on the list, but from the information I got from the website, one or two on the list interest me. Please just check the website for the description of each book I have no time write them all down:

Top 10 Best Sellers by CSM Publishing:
#1 A 2 Z Creative Teaching Methods, by Lizette Knight and Sonia Silbor
#2 Till Debt Do Us Part, by Chinkee Tan
#3 Called To Excel, by Rex Resurreccion
#4 Yes! I’m a Pastor’s Wife 2nd Edition, by Leah Marasigan Darwin
#5 Basta Lovelife, by Kevin Sanders
#6 Asian Adventure, by Various Authors
#7 Young Women on the Journey, by Various Authors
#8 Walking On: The Best of Women on the Journey, by Various Authors
#9 True Love Waits Student’s Workbook, by Various Authors
#10 A New Breed: Call for a New Generation of Pastoral Leaders by Philip Flores


By the way, if you have any book recommendation by local authors (Christian or non-Christian) or if you know other sources of Filipino books or local publishers that I can browse online, please let me know. I'll share my book recommendations next time.