Randy’s Story:

When I was about seven years old, my mom was diagnosed with a severe stomach ulcer. I can remember her crying night and day from the pain. Then one day, a lady invited her to a special service that was being held at a new church in our village in the Philippines. It was an Apostolic Faith Church, and my mom went to the meeting and was saved and healed that night! It was amazing. The rest of her life, she never had ulcers again, and she just passed away two years ago at age ninety-two.

After she was saved, my mom started reading the Bible and going to church regularly. When she would pray over our meals, sometimes my dad would make fun of her, and that made her sad. He wasn’t a bad person—he did not drink, or gamble, or anything like that. He had read the Bible because he wanted to know what it was about, and he thought he understood it. Some months after my mom was saved, my dad said he wanted to meet her pastor to find out if he really knew the Scriptures. He went to talk to the pastor, and he came home saved!

From then on, our family went to church together, and we had prayer time at home. I am the youngest of five children, and before long my older siblings were saved too. At age ten, I also prayed and asked Jesus into my heart. Sadly, though, in my late teen years I turned away from the Lord. I gave in to peer pressure and did things I knew were wrong. After that, I always worried about not being saved; I was terrified of missing the Rapture, and often would go check to make sure everyone was still around. God’s Spirit followed me everywhere and kept speaking to me, but I hardened my heart toward Him.

At the start of my second year in the university, I moved in with my pastor’s family, the Ruizes. Their family supported me to finish college.  Sister Aida, my pastor, would always tell me, “Randy, pray, consecrate, and say yes to God.”  I always went to church—never missed it. The conviction was there, but I was not willing to give my heart to the Lord.

About a year before my graduation, I was in a motorcycle accident that almost took my life. After laying in the hospital unconscious for three days, I woke up but had no memory of what had happened. I only knew that God had spared my life.

Just a few days after that, one of my brothers was murdered. I just cried when I heard the news. He had been a faithful Christian, and so were my parents. I wondered why God had let that happen. Between the accident and my brother’s death, I began to feel very disoriented in life. Though I did not give my heart to God at that time, He was still very merciful to me. There were infections in my body after my accident, and the church prayed for me and God healed me.

Sometime in my mid-twenties, the day finally came when I was ready to surrender to God and give my life to Him for good. I was still attending church every Sunday, and I arrived that time feeling so ashamed of the life I was leading. When I asked God to forgive me, He did not disappoint me. That day, He washed away all my sin and shame. I was so happy! Filipinos are not known for hugging, but I just wanted to hug everyone there, and I did.

I soon started working for Sister Aida’s family business, and they needed me to go work in Malaysia. That is a Muslim country and we had no branch church there, but God sustained me. I lived very carefully, reading the Bible and praying daily. I also found a group of born-again Christians and began worshiping with them. The saints in the Philippines would send me literature from the Portland headquarters church, and that was so encouraging to me. There was no live streaming of services back then, so I was excited to hear any sermon or message from any place that I could find it. God kept me on track the whole time.

In the early 2000s, I contacted a friend named Jean who had grown up going to the Apostolic Faith Church and also graduated from the same university as me. I found out that she had relocated to Canada and was living there alone. We started talking, and then in 2004 I visited her in Toronto, and we decided to get married that same year. Since she was in the middle of a work contract, I decided to stay in Toronto, and that started a whole new chapter in our lives.

The transition to Canada was challenging because I didn’t know anything about my new city, and we didn’t have a car. The closest branch church to us was about two hours away in Kitchener, and we didn’t know how we could get there without a car. Then in 2008, at a family birthday party, a friend from the Apostolic Faith in the Philippines who was new in Canada said, “I’m going to visit the Kitchener church. The Holy Spirit is flaming hot there.” My cousin, who wasn’t even saved at the time, said, “Why don’t we all go tomorrow? We’ll use my car.”

We went the next day, and as soon as I stepped inside the building, I started crying and couldn’t stop. The presence of the Holy Spirit was so strong that I wanted to kneel and pray right there at the entrance! At the altar call, I ran forward and all I could do was thank God over and over. As I prayed, I surrendered more to Him and felt His Spirit deeper and deeper in my soul. That day, the Lord sanctified me.

After that day, I felt so close to Heaven. Wanting to protect that experience, I became much more careful about my words and interactions with others. Anytime I would make a mistake and feel unsettled in my spirit, I wanted to make it right as soon as possible so I wouldn’t lose that closeness with the Lord.

Jean and I started visiting the Kitchener church as often as possible, and also prayed God would open a church in Toronto. I knew there would be a need for ministers in Toronto, but I did not want to have that type of responsibility myself. However, the Lord showed me that I could not avoid His call and that I should seek to receive my baptism so I could serve in the ministry. The Spirit of God had come down and blessed me many times, but I started praying that He would confirm the work was done by giving me the witness of speaking in tongues. He did that for me at a service in our new Toronto church in 2010.

I was asked to be a minister and supported the Toronto work in that way for several years. Then in 2016, I was asked to serve as the Toronto pastor. That seemed like too much for me, but I told God I would do my best. Most of the congregation were of Nigerian descent, with only a few Filipinos, and I was worried about how I could lead a group that was from a different cultural background than mine. But I found out that the love in the family of God is deeper than cultures, and the saints in Toronto became like my own family. That is what God’s love can do.

In 2022, Jean and I received another call, this time asking if we would be willing to move to the small, rural town of Bide Arm in Newfoundland, to serve God there. Again, we felt challenged—the entire population of Bide Arm was about 160 people. We knew it would be a big change from life in Toronto. But by that time, God had taught me that if He is calling me to do something, that is the very best thing I can do with my life.

Coming from the densely populated country of the Philippines, and then living for seventeen years in the big city of Toronto, to adapting to a place so remote that the nearest Walmart is a five-and-a-half hour drive away was a huge change for us. Yet, the Bide Arm congregation welcomed us warmly, and God has been with us.

The Lord is still taking care of Jean and me, and we are thankful. This journey with Him has been wonderful. My hope is to do my best to serve Him wherever He calls me, and to see Him in Heaven someday.

Jean’s Story:

When I was growing up, my grandparents would pick up my brother and me every week to take us to Sunday school. They had become Christians later in life, so they had not raised their children in the Gospel, but they brought us grandchildren to church. My brother and I loved Sunday school, and I have many good memories from those days.

In 1984, I graduated from high school at age seventeen. That year, the second Apostolic Faith camp meeting in the Philippines was held at a rented facility in Baguio. I decided to go, and there I was told, “If you want to be saved, just ask for forgiveness of your sins.” I wanted to be saved but didn’t know how to pray. Still, I decided to just believe God. I went to the altar and with tears asked the Lord to save me and forgive me of my sins. The feeling of salvation is too wonderful to explain; it was like peace and joy with no ending. Later that same year, God also sanctified me. 

Since then, God has always helped me. I never tried partying, smoking, drugs, or anything like that. Church became like my second home; during my university years, I was either at home, school, or church. I was invited to sing in the choir, and every year during summer break I loved helping with Vacation Bible School and visiting the other branch churches.

Our family was very poor, and because of that, life was extremely difficult for us. My whole life, my parents worked hard to give their children an education. They didn’t even finish elementary school, but they would wake at 3:00 in the morning every day to work at a farm so we could finish college. They said they wanted to do what they could to support us.

When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to help my family in return. Thankfully, in 1993 God opened a way for me to work abroad in Hong Kong as a caregiver, and that job allowed me to send money back home. I was placed with a family that had one daughter, and they were very nice to me. They treated me like a member of their family. I was so thankful for that because I had heard of others who were treated badly, and the company that set our contracts did not allow us to request a different family. If a girl was mistreated, her only choice was to accept it or return home. For the whole ten years that I lived in Hong Kong, I was able to stay with the same good family.

There were a lot of other girls from the Philippines who also worked as caregivers, so Sister Aida came to visit us there. Harold and Sally Barrett were missionaries living in South Korea then, and they also knew about our group in Hong Kong and came to visit us twice. They met with us in a park and really encouraged us. They advised us to meet there every week to support each other, so we started holding Bible studies in the park every Sunday. That was a real blessing.

After ten years in Hong Kong, one of my sisters asked if she could take over my position there. For that to happen, I needed to be placed with a family in a different country, so I applied for an opening in Canada. My sister and I prayed for God’s will, and my application was accepted, so I moved to Toronto in 2003 on a two-year contract. That was a trying time for me because I arrived all by myself, with no family or friends in the area. The family I lived with had a very restricted diet, so even though my meals were supposed to be included in my contract, there was almost nothing for me to eat and I began losing weight. I thought, At my parents’ house, we did not have much, but at least I could eat what I wanted. For the first three months in Toronto, I was telling the Lord, “I want to go back.”

Though I was isolated in Toronto, the Lord found ways to encourage me there. Back in Hong Kong, I had started corresponding with Sister Edna Janzen at the headquarters office in Portland, and we stayed in touch when I moved to Canada. She would send me tracts and the church magazine, and she helped me stay strong spiritually. I knew God had brought me to Toronto and that He had a plan for me there. He helped me survive.

In 2004, when I was half-way through my contract, Randy and I married. I was thirty-eight years old by then and had always been content being single, but having him with me made the challenges of life in Toronto a lot easier. We wanted to have children, but that was not the Father’s will for us. We suffered two miscarriages, and those were heartbreaking times, but even in that I can say that God was really good to us.

After I finished my contract as a caregiver, I got a good job working for the government. God helped us a lot, but Randy and I missed going to church every Sunday as we had in the Philippines. When we finally visited the church in Kitchener, that was a wonderful experience. I felt at home immediately and we knew we wanted to go back as often as possible, even if we had to rent a car to get there.

For many years I had been comfortable with salvation and sanctification, but after visiting the Kitchener church I realized I needed to be serving the Lord completely and started surrendering more of my will to Him. God is so good. My prayer became, “God, help us with whatever we do for You.” The Lord filled me with His Spirit, and He has been helping us to serve Him in every area that He calls us.

When I told my coworkers that I was leaving in order to move to Newfoundland, they were shocked that I would leave a steady job with good benefits in the city, to go live in the province. But I am happy that now I have a better job—working for God! Being a servant of God is a humbling experience and not anything that I deserve, but I am thankful for it.