Happy New Year! One nice thing about working with Chinese in the Philippines is that we get to celebrate two new years. With our Filipino and foreign friends we celebrated the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005 last December 31 and January 1. With our Chinese friends we look forward to celebrating what is traditionally their biggest holiday of the year, the end of the Year of the Monkey and the beginning of the Year of the Rooster on February 9. So, we'll say it again: “Happy New Year!”

We thought that teaching and mentoring students in seminary would be a comfortable, routine, sometimes boring ministry. Frankly, not being as young as we were once, we were rather looking forward to a more boring pace. However, even when teaching the same course several times, new students bring new situations, personalities, and questions to class, making each class fresh. As professors, we never stop reading, listening, observing, and serving, all of which, with the students' input, lead to constant revision of our courses. Life and ministry never get boring! Inside we have a short story about Lee, one of Jay's Chinese students at the Biblical Seminary of the Philippines (BSOP).

Amor, having graduated with her master's degree in April, 2004 and begun a doctoral study program, was invited to teach in the Christian Education department at the Asian Theological Seminary (ATS), which focuses on Filipino and Asian students. Amor has done much teaching in her ministry, but none in a formal educational institution like ATS. She writes about her students and this new ministry inside.

While teaching and mentoring seminary students at BSOP and ATS are our main ministries, God continues to bring evangelistic opportunities. Jay continues to lead students on mission trips to squatter areas, prostitutes, and tribal peoples. We continue to get opportunities to share the gospel casually, as well as through Bible studies and messages. Jay's biggest group in 2004 was preaching the gospel to 1,385 people on July 31, 121 of whom signed a card indicating they accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

We are delighted to be teaching and mentoring Chinese students at the Biblical Seminary of the Philippines. Fortunately, BSOP is not the only seminary in the Philippines. Asian Theological Seminary (ATS) focuses on Filipino students, while also accepting a variety of students from other countries, mostly in Asia. ATS is where Jay graduated in 1986 and Amor in 2004. Being short on faculty, ATS invited Amor to teach a class in the Christian Education department last year. The second semester at ATS began in November 2004 and ends in March 2005. So, each Wednesday afternoon Amor is teaching "Teaching Clinic". Let's let Amor tell us more about this new ministry.

It is a privilege to be involved in equipping part of God's Church in Asia! It is a humbling experience to coach Christian men and women to sharpen their teaching skills. Let me share encouraging testimonies from some of my students:

"I realize that much of my teaching preparation would go only into biblical content and this is an error I desire to rectify. My knowledge now of my students' different learning styles would greatly help me in employing appropriate teaching methods…"

"May the Holy Spirit guide and enable me as I work hard at studying God' Word faithfully and at the same time teach it by using appropriate methods that are relevant to the needs and learning styles of my students. May God use my teaching to bring about life transformation in my students…" (AL, 31, a youth worker from Indonesia)

"My desire is to be like the Lord Jesus, the Master-Teacher who lived out His teachings and taught by example. May I be like Him as I teach, and model Christ's love to my own children at home, to my colleagues at work, and to many others.

"As a Christian educator, it has been helpful to apply principles and methods of teaching I am learning from my classes. Most of all, may I not forget to depend on the Holy Spirit's guidance and power in His work of transforming the lives of those I am teaching."

Some of my students have also come to me after class hours to share and pray about their problems and challenges in relation to their teaching ministries as well as about their personal lives and concerns. It is humbling to be able to minister to my students. It is encouraging to learn from them too as well as to develop friendships with some of them!

The mother of Lee, one of Jay's BSOP students, died a few months ago. She was a Buddhist. It has been a hard time for his family, of course. They miss their mother. And, like all of us, they are expected to show their grief and to support one another in the ways their culture expects.

One way their culture expects grief and family unity to be shown is that a few weeks after the funeral the surviving relatives meet together in a Buddhist temple and eat a meal together. The food served would have been offered to Buddha.

Lee, along with his wife, has been supportive of their extended family as much as possible in this time of grief. But, he refused to eat the food offered to Buddha at the Buddhist temple with his brothers and sisters and their families. He and his wife are the only Christians in their family, having accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior four years ago as a direct result of the painful death of, at that time, their only son. His refusal to eat in the temple has been interpreted by the family as a rejection of the family and worst of all, inadequate filial piety and lack of respect to his dead mother. Family tensions were running high.

Now, Jay was aware of the death of Lee's mother and had prayed for him and his family and sent his condolences. But, teaching a class on 1 Corinthians last December Jay ran into a surprise. One of the longer sections of 1 Corinthians, chapters 8-10, deals with the question of meat offered to idols. As we were studying that section, Lee began to share. What should he do? He has been trying to follow Paul's guidelines from this passage and yet it has caused problems. Did he understand the passage correctly? Did he do the right thing? What can he do not only to make things right with his family but to be a witness to them about Jesus? This class period quickly became a fascinating and intensely relevant discussion that went overtime. Of course, it wasn't the brilliance of the teacher that made it so, but the power of God through His timely and relevant word!

Lion dancers and firecrackers help bring in the Chinese New Year in an area of Manila where many Chinese live. Please continue to ask God reach the Chinese and all the other people groups in the Philippines.