Jenny and Gordon Barlow and I completed a home school week in December 2018 at the HQ of OMF in Singapore. I taught the primary group and then Jenny and Gordon the older ones. There were about 16 children in all.

We thoroughly enjoyed the H.S.W. and appreciated the participation of all the children; their willingness to join in and take part in all the activities. We had no children saying they were bored or having a sulk or 'doing their own thing'.  It was a pleasure to be with them all.

We took age appropriate topics-light/stars/electricity with the older ones and animals with the younger ones. We all did a lot of craft, music and drama and the younger ones went to the zoo one day. The parents were most appreciative.

We were blessed by the children's faith, their knowledge of the Bible, their willingness to pray with us and share their experiences. Gordon is a trained presenter for “Walk through the bible” and in the five days we covered the entire Old Testament in drama, storytelling and hand actions.

The time we spent with some of the parents was an inspiration to us and we have been praying for them since hearing some of their stories. We were told early on never to mention the word ‘missionary’ to the children due to the security implications in their field of work and for the same reason sadly had to promise not to put any photos online either on SVN website or Facebook.

John Perkins

The visit to Manila and Coron in the Philippines from 18th May to 2nd June was a blessing to us as a team, to our host, Lynette, and to the schools. These schools have been set up by Christians to give those in poverty an education. They do not have the finance to buy in training for the teachers.
The Lord enabled us be an encouragement to those to whom we ministered by overcoming our difficulties:-
1. One of our team, at the last minute, was not able to come, but another member was able to prepare the missing seminar whilst on the flight.
2. One member of the team had difficulty finding meals as vegetarianism isn’t really understood in the Philippines, but she always found something.
3. The week before we travelled, the regional Director of Education arranged a visit to Coron on the same 2 days as our conference. At first it was thought that the conference would have to be cancelled. In the end we shortened it to a day and a half on the Saturday and Sunday and moved the church service to the afternoon.
4. The teachers on Coron, though teaching in English, were much more fluent in Tagalog. It was a great help on this visit that Lynette came with us and was able to translate when the teachers looked puzzled.
5. Two of us discovered by the last day why we had had slightly upset stomachs and proved the cause by abstaining from drinking filtered water and only drinking bottled water.
We had many encouraging comments at the end of our conferences, e.g:-