Greetings in the precious Name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

It is with joy in our hearts to send this report of the recent YF Event we held January 3, 2015. While the world welcomes the New Year 2015 in revelry and fireworks, the Message Youths in Metro Manila ushered in the New Year in a more blessed and unique way. It was the first time ever that over 260 young people, from 18 Message churches in Metro Manila, gathered together for fellowship around the prophet's Voice and to enjoy each other's company in one whole blessed day of worship, Bible and Message quizzes, games and other fun activities.

As early as 7:00am of Saturday (January 3), a number of young people from various churches started to come at the College of Human Kinetics Gym of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Quezon City. A feeling of excitement and anticipation has been among the young people since a week before the event, even with the short notice we gave to their pastors and their churches. There never was such a Young people activity like it before where all churches even of different views on the Message come and have fellowship with one another. A blessed opportunity indeed for them to meet and know other young people who they had not met before. It was also a sort of a reunion for some pastors who came and had the opportunity to meet other pastors who they had not seen for many long years already.

The activity started at about 8:30 in the morning and as we welcomed all the youth, we told them of our motives and objectives of gathering them together to this Young Foundations event, a VGR ministry for the young people that was originally a burden in the heart of Bro. Joseph of providing an avenue for all the young people in the Message of drawing strength from one another. A ministry that's not bounded by doctrines or separated by churches but a focused effort of getting the youth to get much closer to the Lord as we encourage them to place God first in all things, stay away from the world, encourage each other, and to believe God's prophet.

The main part of the activity was to listen to God's prophet during the morning service, which was all led and handled by the young people. We knew it was an entirely new thing for most of the youth attendees except for those who had already been to our monthly Quiet Time service at the office, hence we had to introduce Bro. Branham in a way that they will understand why we have to listen to God's prophet, a tape recorded Message of God for our age spoken through the mouth of a prophet. A privilege that has never been to all people of all other ages before us of being able to listen to God's Voice and to feed on the “unfailing Body-Word of the Son of Man”. It was a blessing to see some young hands raised up to God after Bro. Branham preached on his Message, Be Certain Of God.

After the morning service, the young people were fed a sumptous meal of rice, cordon bleu, slice pork braised in pineapple, and a local dish called kaldereta, a beef stew made with tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and bell peppers.

In the afternoon, the young people returned to the gym for more activities. Videos from the Voice Of God Recordings website and Young Foundations website were played side by side with a quiz regarding the tape played in the morning. There was also a quiz on the life of Brother Branham taken from the YF website. It seemed that the young people knew the life of Brother Branham very well: his birthday, his occupation, and his family life! Also, a quiz on Tagalog translations of English sermon titles challenged the youth. But in the end, they did triumph, and it just showed that the young people were very keen on the Tagalog translations of Brother Branham's sermons sent to their churches. Other games in the afternoon included memory verses for the sisters on things pertaining to a Christian lady, like long hair.

Later in the afternoon, the young people enjoyed more games: this time, in sports. They played basketball, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, and dodgeball using very, very large gym balls! Refreshments and snacks were served to the young people in the games, as they strolled to the snacks area to get food, chukling and chatting with newly-found friends that they played with in the afternoon. After roughly two hours, the gym bell rang and it was time to go home. The young people gathered for a final group picture with the Young Foundations banner in the background. At the exchanges of goodbye, the young people were more enthusiastic as ever, just as they came in the morning. They were looking forward to another gathering such as this, filled with fun activities and games, and meeting new friends, but most importantly, listening to God's Message by the prophet, William Marrion Branham.

Truly, this young people's event was a beginning of quite a lot of different things. Young people from different churches meeting for the very first time and listening to God's prophet of the last days was a huge encouragement, and it makes them remember that there is indeed unity, unity in God's Word.

We wish to thank Bro. Joseph for his vision and love for the young people and his all-out support that allowed us to make this activity possible. We also appreciate all the VGR staff, the brothers and sisters in different churches and the young people who contributed to the success of this event.
God bless you all.

Bro. Jeremiah (VGR Offce Manager - Philippines)