FYI - Matt will be back in Richmond next Thursday (7/31)

Ok, folks, this is will be my last update before taking the long flight back across the Pacific to America. Things have been going great here these last few weeks. We have met some incredible people, and brought the Bible to places previously completely unreached by western missionaries. We also went through some pretty crazy and fun situations as well. We have taken class 2 rapids in a canoe with nothing but a 16-hp engine and a bamboo pole, we have dove for clams in the river (we fried them up for dinner with vegetables and they were very good), we taught the kids in one village the song “My God Is So Big” and all the hand motions that go with it (they have been singing it constantly), we have had the chance to minister to college students on campus in Can-Avid, we have hiked over a “paved road” (by this I mean it was packed dirt excet it had rained the night before which means it was ankle-deep mud) to a village to find that people had already started a house church there. I have rode three hours on top of a bus on our way back from mid-summer break. These are only a few of the experiences we have had here, and I look forward to sharing with you so much more when I get back.

Matthew Hirt sent another update this past Friday…

Hello to everyone….

I am beginning to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “The harvest is plenty, but the workers are few.”  It is so incredible how God is working here. We have met so many people, and led quite a few to Christ. We are meeting tomorrow morning for our first church service. I never would have thought that after only 3 days in a town that we would be able to have enough people to get together to form a fellowship and especially plant the beginnings of a house church.

I wanted to give you all a quick update on how God is working here. I am just truly amazed at His power, and how he has been working in people’s hearts here even before we arrived. We will be heading up-river on Monday now. I am very excited to see how God is working there.

I hope all is well with you, and that the Holy Spirit is with you in all things that you do.

Magindan Hapon (Good Afternoon)!!!
I am currently in Dolores in the province of East Samar. We spent the night in a church here before going to Can-Avid, the next village over, to set up a base camp there for a few days before going up river. We met with the mayor of Can-Avid yesterday and today to coordinate where we are going to be and when so that he can coordinate with the military to make sure that where we are going is safe. I say that to give comfort to some of you who may be worrying about where we are. It has been kind of chaotic since we left Tacloban yesterday trying to figure out what is going on and where we need to be.

As a team leader it has been even more difficult because that means I am not only the spiritual leader, it means I am handling the team budget, travel, and schedule also. Thankfully I have a great Filipina teammate who has worked with Nehemiah Teams in the past and has been helping with a lot of the logistics.

The weather here has been hot, but I’ll take hot over the flooding we had down in Davao any day. Wet clothes are not fun. I just wanted to let all of you know that everything is still going well.  We will be traveling to five, maybe six, baranguys (villages) that Nehemiah Teams has not been to in the past so I am very excited about that. I can’t wait to see how the Holy Spirit is working in these places.

I hope everything is going well there. The price of rice has gone up considerably to about 50 pesos per kilogram. That is a lot considering the average weekly wage is around 200 pesos which is just under $5 American. However, we have been able to make some good purchases on this, but it is definitely putting some things in perspective. Despite living in the west and pushing multiculturalism in schools, we still have a very narrow worldview.

Thank you all for the continued prayers. I am not sure when I will be able to email again, but feel free to send a reply. I’ll get it when I can. Talk to you later. Palaam.

I’m sure you have all been wondering about me and how everything is going so far.  I am currently in Ormoc City at a missionary family’s home who was kind enough to allow us to use the internet to send off a quick email before we continue on to Tacloban this evening.

I have spent the last week in Davao doing leadership training with the other team leaders, and then doing orientation with my team members when they arrived on Thursday.  Just to share a quick story with you, Friday night was our first night sleeping in tents at the camping area where we were doing orientation. It hadn’t rained really hard until Thursday, but Friday night it started to downpour at around 11:30 PM. This continued well into the next day.  Around 2:00 am, I woke up and felt like I was sleeping on a waterbed which typically isn’t a good feeling in a tent! A few items were even floating in the tents. The tents were flooded and we evacuated before the waters came up any higher. Several people were already awake, and pretty soon almost everyone was gathered under a large gazebo.

I just thank you for all of your prayers so far. The Holy Spirit really is working the Philippines, and I am looking forward to seeing where God is at work on the Umot River in Can-Avid in Eastern Samar where we will be spreading the Word of the Gospel and living among the Waray (pronounced Waa-rye) people. The people of the Philippines are incredibly friendly, and love talking to us where ever we go. Continue to pray for us as we travel up the river to visit people and places who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We will be going house to house and sharing the gospel through film and participatory bible studies, and doing public drama presentations as well as sharing our own testimonies through translators. I also ask that you pray for the other teams sharing the Gospel along the Dolores River near us, on Camotes Island, Dinagaat Island, Dapitan, Manilla, and several orphanages throughout the country.

If you are interested in keeping up with where we are and what we are doing, I encourage you to go to www.nehemiahteams.com and look for the blog link on the page probably under the heading of “What?” and then “American,” and then under Waray Riverboat teams or specifically Can-Avid. We have a media person traveling with us and the Dolores riverboat team to take pictures and update the journals and blogs once or twice a week.

This will probably be the last chance I have to get to email for a while, so I hope all is going well back on the other side of the world. As always, please forward this on to others who are not on the list, and please share this with your church congregations. I could not have done this without the support of everyone around. Thank you for responding to God’s calling.

I leave you with the farewell call of the Moravians: “May the Lamb who was slain receive the reward that He is worthy of.”

As many of you know, we volunteer once a month at a coffeehouse put on by area churches at Fort Lee.  The following progress report is from Steve Zachry, coordinator of the coffeehouse ministry.  I think you will find this encouraging.  Please pray for our soldiers, the volunteers, and consider coming out with us one Friday evening! 

“As many of you are aware the mission of the ‘At Ease’ Ministries is based on the Great Commision as given in Acts 1:8 and is ‘To reach Fort Lee, the military and the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ.’ It’s important from time to time to take a step back and see how far we’ve come and particularly to take a moment to reflect on how the Lord has provided. When I stop to think about it, I find it very difficult to get my mind around all He’s done. The following stats don’t begin to capture how He’s been transforming hearts and lives including our own! Since our inception on 4/22/06:
 
a. 13,231 soldiers have visited the Coffee House.
b. Over 4000 pieces of Gospel literature and Bibles have been distributed.
c. 1065 have attended Bible study.
d. 613 decisions have been made for Christ with about 50% 1st time commitments!
 
Additionally, the number of volunteers including Army personnel, musicians, bakers, administrative staff, purchasing and Friday night volunteers now exceeds 100 people. There were a total of 3,335 volunteers hours in the past year alone. We just added a new music group called ‘Loaves and Fishes’ and Dave Brown, who is the leader, served as a Marine in Afghanistan. There are 9 music groups that regularly give their time to help minister to the troops. With the recent addition of West Hopewell Presbyterian we now have 6 churches in addition to a number of generous individuals providing financial assistance to the ministry. The young adult groups from Iron Bridge Baptist, West End Assembly of God and a Bible study group from VCU have come to help out. The new Spiritual Fitness Center Senior Chaplain (Maj.) Dennis Krumlauf recently commented how ‘deeply impressed he was with the dedication and professionalism of the numerous Coffee House volunteers.’ Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides!
 
Also, we’ve seen God’s favor through the prayers of His people. There have been so many answers to prayer that it would be much too difficult to try to include them all in this short update. However, I’ll mention a few recent ones to give you an idea of what the Lord has been doing. As some of you know, attendance has been significantly down this year. This has been due primarily to the total turnover of Chaplains since December. Without Chaplain support we have no ministry. We are the only civilian ministry allowed on post and have been ‘grandfathered in’ since we have been active at Fort Lee for so long. Our attendance is contingent upon a full compliment of evangelical Chaplains supporting our efforts and getting the word out to all of the training brigades. We’ve been praying for the Lord’s favor during this time of transition. Attendance since January has been approximately 40% of last year. Even still, we’ve seen the decisions for Christ more than double over the same period from last year! The Lord has now filled all the vacancies with strong committed Christians who value and support our efforts. The e-mail I got last week from Gary Padgett who is a minister with Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry clearly shows the Lord has heard our prayers. Gary shared that he had just performed a wedding at General James Chambers house at Fort Eustis and had an opportunity to talk to him about the ministry at Fort Lee and our desire to start a second coffee house at the new Ordnance Campus now under construction. The General told Gary he would be taking over the Command of Fort Lee at the end of the summer and felt the Spiritual needs of the troops was of high importance. He asked Gary to let him know if we should ever need anything. Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides!
 
In addition to a second coffee house we’ve been asking the Lord to ‘enlarge our territory’ in whatever ways he sees fit. One of the AIT trainees who graduated in December shared with his Pastor about what was going on with the ministry at Fort Lee. As a result, his church has started a Christian Coffee House in a juvenile detention center in Ashville, North Carolina and they are now seeing numerous decisions for Christ. This soldier has completed seminary and will be attending Chaplains school in June. He’s requested his first assignment to be at Fort Lee. Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides!
 
A couple of months ago we were able to secure some Arabic Bibles. We’ve been distributing them to soldiers that have specifically felt led to have one. One particular soldier told me when requesting a Bible that he was in the process of learning Arabic in his free time so he could be a more effective witness for Christ. He was thrilled to get one and believed it was a ‘God send’ to get an Arabic/English New Testament. Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides!
 
Two weeks ago one of our more adventurous music groups requested that we look into the possibility of them going overseas to minister to our troops in Kuwait. Although this is a reasonably safe country it is still considered ‘in theater’ by the military since it’s where our forces are staged before going into and out of Iraq. Please be praying the Lord would open this door of opportunity if this be His will.

A heartfelt THANKS to all of you that make this ministry possible. We’re looking forward to seeing how the Lord is going to continue to provide to build and expand His Kingdom at Fort Lee. To God be the Glory for all He has done!!”