Young church serves Winnipeg’s Filipino community
WINNIPEG, MB—The leaders of the first Filipino church established in the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC) have a simple mission: serve Winnipeg's Filipino community.
"We want the church to minister especially to Filipinos who are new to Winnipeg, and we want to help them," says Eduardo Capillar, who pastors the Filipino Presbyterian Church in Winnipeg along with Mario Gundayao.
"We want the congregation to grow," Gundayao adds.
Started on Mother's Day 2009 as a mission of the PCC, the Filipino Presbyterian Church was constituted and became an independent congregation during a special service this past May. In four years, the congregation has grown to include more than 65 adults and children.
Services are in English and Tagalog, a language spoken by a quarter of the population of the Philippines, and the congregation meets at Calvin Presbyterian Church on Keewatin Street.
Glenn Ball, regional staff for the PCC's Synod of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, says the PCC wanted to establish the church in order to accommodate Winnipeg's Filipino community, which includes more than 60,000 people and is growing each day.
Ball describes working with Capillar and Gundayao as a blessing.
"I find their excitement and enthusiasm very contagious," he says. "We're at that wonderful stage where we have the freedom to try and see what will work and what won't."
In addition to caring for the spiritual needs of the church's members, Capillar and Gundayao serve their congregation by helping members who are sponsoring family to come to Winnipeg with the necessary paperwork, as well as helping newcomers adjust to life in the city.
One member of the church is considering full-time ministry, and another member spent this past summer with a travelling Vacation Bible School that visited eight communities throughout Manitoba.
"He wants to do it again next year," Ball says. "It was his first time working with young kids, and he's sensing a call to … do more than just simply be in a church, but to participate in a ministry and share the faith."
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