TAN Mission Report November 2025 – The Philippines

The Philippines 2025

By Delron Shirley

 When he shuffled into the dirt-floored tabernacle, I immediately knew that God was about to do something miraculous in his life.  With his left hand clinched into a fist, his arm drawn close to his body, and his leg dragging as he walked, I was sure that the young man – likely in his twenties – was the victim of a stroke.  I mumbled prayers for him throughout the service, and, as soon as the prayer time began, I grabbed him and began to minister to him.  Within a few minutes, I was able to get him to open his fist, revealing overgrown fingernails that told me that he had not opened his hand for a very long time.  Soon, he was able to extend his arm from position which it had been locked into.  As the local pastor and my interpreter assisted me in ministering to him, we were able to help him lift his arm above his head.  About that time, Peggy interrupted our ministry as she brought over his mother who had been healed from a similar condition as she had ministered to her.  Ironically, four members of that same family were afflicted with the same paralysis – a diabolical attack that we prayed against, assuming that it was the result of some sort of demonic influence.  Although the boy was not totally healed by the time we had to leave, he had experienced a powerful touch from God, we had instructed the local pastor on how to take spiritual authority over the malady and the demonic forces behind it, and we are sure that we’ll hear follow-up reports of continued healing and a total deliverance.

But this dual mother-son miracle was just one of the many healings (including one man who was healed of heart palpitations), deliverances, and baptisms in the Holy Spirit that Peggy and I experienced during our mission to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.  We were surprised to discover that addiction to pornography was rampant – even among the leadership in the churches.  Praise God, we were able to address the issue and see several of the leaders totally delivered – including one worship leader who skipped his classes at the university for two days to be in the meetings as he pursued gaining his total victory over this vice.

 Working with Kurt and Isabel Minot, our ministry partners in the Philippines, our time was basically focused on two different areas of ministry – outreach to the Tiboli tribal people and connection with high school and college ministries.

The tribal outreach was especially interesting because we were invited to be the guest ministers at the annual thanksgiving service of Peace Mountain Tribal Ministries, a ministry that has planted about twenty churches among the Tiboli communities since it began five years ago.  The thanksgiving service has no connection to our Thanksgiving holiday but is a special day they set aside each year to celebrate all that the Lord has done within their ministry during the year.  This year’s celebration was actually rescheduled so that they could include Peggy and me in the program.  But rescheduling the date was not all they did to include us – they even built a special Western-style toilet for us so we wouldn’t have to use their Asian “squatty potty.”  The event included a celebration of their traditional culture with dressing in their traditional attire and performances of their cultural dances.  I commended them on their effort to preserve their uniqueness in this ever-advancing age, citing the biblical prophecy that every tribe and culture would have its unique place before the throne of God.  They ceremonially presented us with their traditional attire, showing that we were “adopted” into their tribe.

As we arrived at the compound, a dump truck pulled in, loaded with about forty members from a community that had hired the vehicle to transport them to the event.  They had ridden in the back of the truck for four hours to attend the event and would be returning the same night after the all-day celebration.  In addition, a pastor from another ministry that I had previously met over ZOOM drove three hours each way to attend just one session in order to meet me in person.

Knowing that the celebration was a thanksgiving service, I had intended to minister on the topic of thankfulness; however, I could never settle on a message along that theme.  Instead, I continually came back to a message on doing the impossible through God.  It was only after finishing the message that I looked up at the back of the church to see that the church’s slogan – written in bold letters that covered the entire back of the sanctuary – was the verse I had ministered on, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. (Luke 18:27)  After a delicious lunch of their traditional dishes – including lechon, Philippine roasted pig – Peggy and I were asked to assist in an ordination service for the local pastors.

On the two following days, Peggy and I were guest teachers at the Bible school where the pastors and leaders for the tribal churches are trained.  Peggy taught on pulling down strongholds from her book No Longer Bound, and I shared from my Maximum Impact book.  We saw many of the students set free from bondages and equipped to set others free as well.  One student was so inspired by the possibility of having an impact for the kingdom that she came back the following morning with the report that she had won nine people to the Lord after leaving the class the previous day.  After completing our teaching assignments, we spent a day traveling through the surrounding mountain communities to visit four of the churches that the ministry had established to minister to the local members who had not been able to take the time away from their work to attend the thanksgiving celebration.  They were excited to meet us, eager to hear the messages that we shared, and receptive when we prayed for them.

We had a one-day break before moving to our next assignment; so, we decided to relax at a nearby beach, only to find out that a businessman who had been following our ministry on the internet was scheduled to join us.  We had the opportunity to spend most of the day personally mentoring him – reminiscent of our first mission to Nepal in which I spent my one free day sitting on top of a stack of Tibetan rugs, ministering to the leader of the Christian movement in the country who had found me in the marketplace where I was shopping for souvenirs.

We rounded out our ministry in the Philippines with three days at a church that had grown out of a ministry to high school and college students – a real treat for me since my first ministry was among college and university students during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s.  For the first two days, we held a leadership conference for the pastors in the region and the leaders of the ministries on the local campuses.  Since the focus was on students and teachers, I focused on the discovery method of Bible study and teaching.  The follow-up reports that we received after leaving the Philippines confirmed that the students were excited about the Bible study technique, had been employing it in their personal devotions and Bible study groups, and were asking our ministry partners to give them further instruction so they can use it more effectively.  We concluded by speaking in the Sunday service at the church that hosted the conference with Peggy ministering on “What to do while waiting for the Lord’s answer to your prayers.”  Many of the people testified that the message was just what they needed to hear at this particular time in their lives.