It is hard to believe that it has now been a year since our family arrived back in the Philippines! This also means that our visas are expiring. Please pray, as we have processed Czarinna’s dual citizenship, and we are now waiting on Immigration to give Czarinna an appointment so that she can take the Oath of Allegiance to the Philippines. After Czarinna is officially a dual citizen, then we can process our two boys to get their dual citizenship as well. I am unable to get dual citizenship; however, I can get permanent residence status because of Czarinna’s dual citizenship. Not only was our one-year anniversary of moving back to the Philippines cause for celebration, but we also celebrated Czarinna’s birthday on February 27; then on March 2, we celebrated six years of marriage!
March 10-12, we were privileged to host my parents, sister, and their church group of 6 to help us in our annual Tent Revival. This year’s Tent Revival would have not been possible without the help and support of my father, Dan Vincent, and his pastor, Greg Dowdy, of Harvest Baptist Temple of Owensboro, Kentucky. Without a doubt, this year’s Tent Revival and the connected Pastors’ and Workers’ Conference were the best we have ever had. All 9 of our special visitors have said that this missions trip to the Philippines was life-changing! It was truly a wonderful experience for them to see with their own eyes thousands of people get saved! At the junior high school, we preached the Gospel, and 65 students got saved! Not only that, we went to our town’s prison and preached the Gospel, and over 50 of the inmates got saved! And, of course, our main event, the evangelistic preaching services of the Tent Revival, produced the largest results of all that we did in those 3 short days. For several years in a row now, including this year yet again, we have broken our Tent Revival attendance record with nearly 2,800 recorded visitors attending on the third and final night. With our church and several other local churches, we had well over 3,000 people in attendance! Of those 2,800 recorded visitors, we had at least 2,000 people get saved! All in all, for the 3 days, we estimate that over 4,000 people got saved! It was so amazing to see kids, teenagers, adults, fathers, mothers, grandparents, and even some of our town’s local politicians move forward to the altar to receive Christ as their Saviour! I watched as most of our American visitors cried tears of joy and praise as they witnessed the powerful moving of the Holy Spirit and God working among the people as they got saved. I cried a few tears myself as I saw God answer my prayers for the salvation of the people God has sent my family and me to reach with the Gospel.
The first day of the Tent Revival was an incredibly busy day because we held three different church services in three different locations! The first church service was in our old building, which is a house that we had been renting for the past eight years. It was a farewell service, as it was to be our last and final service in that house. We were notified that the owner of the house had sold it, and we had to vacate the property. Many of us were sad and emotional about leaving the building where God did great things for us, but we were also excited to be able to have our very first service in our new church building. We are so grateful for you all, our prayer partners who have been supporting and praying for us. We are so amazed at how God worked that we were able to move in the new church building just in time. Of course, it is not finished yet, and it is still very much a construction site, but we have no choice but to already have our church services there in the new building. Then, of course, we had our third service that Sunday at the tent.
Please do pray with us that we can finish our church building as soon as possible. We estimate that we need $78,000 to get the job done. God is already answering this prayer because Pastor Dowdy and Harvest Baptist have committed to give us $20,000! On top of that, a Christian businessman contacted me about our financial needs, and he is willing to match donations totaling up to $20,000! That is already $40,000 raised, and we just need $38,000 more! Pray with us that God can meet this great need for our church.
My God is so big, so strong, and so mighty; there’s nothing my God cannot do,
Ian and Czarinna Vincent
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- Church dedication video
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- View from the back of the tent of all of the hands being raised for salvation
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- Our new church building
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- Aerial view of our tent
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- Dedication of our new church auditorium
