Since Leaving Manila and What I am doing now!

Thank you so much for your time and the answers you gave me. I will be praying for everyone mentioned. I am grateful to know about you and your family's ministry activities. Would love to get email addresses of any of these folks that wouldn't mind corresponding with me. I will be praying for you and with you in the days ahead and would love to hear from you concerning national issues and church issues.

Are you aware of any VCF or Every Nation outreach to Muslims? If so, would it be possible for me to correspond with the people leading those efforts? If not, would anyone there be interested in talking about the need to have one?

I am asking you so many questions, that you may be sorry you contacted me. Ha! I'm not sorry! I'm thrilled and ready to pray in earnest for your continued blessing and success.

I live in West Columbia, TX, and I drive 60 miles to work and 60 miles home every day. It's a wonderful extra two hours a day for prayer, worship and fellowship with Jesus. I am working with the Dow Chemical Company in Texas City, Texas. It is a suburb of Houston, and is the last spot on the mainland before the highway crosses Galveston Bay going to Galveston Island. I am an OSHA compliance Technician. That means I help keep Dow's work practices in maintenance and construction in compliance with US Federal Requirements for Environmental, Health, and Safety laws. I work as an inspector of work practices and conditions, and I get invited out to do motivational speeches to large projects, business groups/associations and businesses who are trying to improve their safety performance.
Every company in the US is required to track the work related injuries that happen in the course of each year and report it to the government. Insurance companies use these rates to set your company's insurance bill, etc. One other aspect of my business life that has crossed over with my ministry, is that I have pastored many, many people in the corporate community and related contractor communities, who do not have a church or minister of their own. I have married them and buried their children. As a result, some of these have given their lives to Christ and are planted/flourishing in productive local churches.

I am writing several books right now, and progress on this has been slow, because of the requirements of my job and ministry. More on that later.

My ministry license is maintained with a group called "The Fellowship" out of the Dallas/Fort Worth area and we found a great Spirit-filled church in the Brazoria, Texas area, that is impacting the whole region. Beth and I have been there for 6 years. Before that, I pastored an Assembly of God church in Freeport, Texas. In the years, I traveled to preach in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, England, Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico and others. My job is keeping me closer to home these days, and I guess that is ok, cause many Muslims are moving to America. They are here in great numbers in Houston and the surrounding communities, and we are researching ways to build bridges of relationship to them.

American Churches have basically ignored them and I am praying, writing, and organizing prayer efforts to change that. At least they ignored them until 9/11. Now, the church people are struggling with feelings of anger and fear toward them, just like the general population. That is not right, but it is how things are now. Politically, the US is divided between wanting to fight the radicals who have declared war on us (Republicans) and ignore them and hope they go away (Democrats). The business people want to sell stuff to them and the Christians want to ignore them. With God's help, we won't stay that way. I am not a peacenik that says we can ignore the unlawful activities of rogues in and out of the United States. But as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I am under a mandate to bless and pray for those who hate me, curse me, and say all manner of evil against me falsely, because of Jesus. I am not given the right to hate, or to ignore "the lost" of any group. I feel like the Muslims are a great frontier of evangelism, a new "treasure hid in a field," and that it would be worth selling out to claim a portion of this great treasure. 1.4 billion people claim to be Muslim... and a lot of them will come to Jesus if they are given a chance.

Thanks again, Emil, for making my day and letting me know how you are doing. I bless you and your wife and kids. I speak God's blessings on your business interests(I would like to more about what you do, also!). I bless your church and the churches associated with it. I am thrilled that you and many others who we are friends with, were wise enough to "jump" when Christian Life made the turn that they did. I could not have stayed for those changes.

With love and blessings,

Phil and Beth