Over the past years MMP has been able to partner with Azusa Pacific University’s Global Studies department. Azusa Pacific University (APU) is located in Southern California, USA. This Christian university offers a unique major that encourages students to be involved in community, immerse in cross-cultural settings, and to live transformed lives within the contexts they serve. The Global Studies major is multidisciplinary and requires participation in domestic and international settings. For their international work the students will spend an extended period of time to a developing country for their Global Learning Term (GLT). GLT requires students to live with nationals, intern with a non-governmental organization, and complete field study projects.

Missionary In Training (MIT) is designed to prepare missionaries to enter the field of church planting among the urban poor. MIT consists of two types of training, field work and classroom. Both classroom and hands-on training allows the missionary to adequately serve the community.  The goals of MIT are …

1.  To understand  and comprehend the  theology of poverty
2.  To be equipped with information and experience to plant holistic churches in the slums according to MMP’s distinctives
3.  To acquire skills such as community organizing, project planning, etc.
4. To work in unity in teams 
5. To journey with MMP as a community

“It started with a heavy downpour”, recalls one of the MMP staff.  The MMP team that goes to Wawa can testify to the heavy typhoon rains that morning of June twenty-third; the weather was not in their favor and the day was reserved for the much needed medical and dental service to be given to the depressed area of Wawa, Cavite.  MMP partnered with the Sagip Kalinga Foundation, who is responsible for sending a team of volunteer doctors on a mission to give assistance. The heavy typhoon rains sent showers all morning and this was not the only challenge the MMP team faced in preparation for this outreach.

OAK HALL (an organization that sends people for missions- exposure all over the world) sent 16 people from UK on an expedition to the slums in Manila for a week. This exposure has been going on for the last three years, and it is dubbed as A Taste Of Mission, or ATOM. Gareth and Malou Bolton, both veterans in intercultural missions through Operation Mobilisation, led this group. Gareth is British and Malou is Filipina. Letty Domingo, Malou’s mom, who is 76 years old also was part of this team. Our guests who came from Wales, Scotland and England stayed with our missionaries in the depressed areas and wholeheartedly participated in the work of the Lord there.

Perhaps the days on August 16 - 22, 2011, were the most unforgettable and challenging days for all of them—for those days really were a taste of living with the dispossessed and of totally depending on God. Having lived all their lives with all the amenities of modern living around them, they now have learned to live with only the most basic of necessities. They may not have realized it initially, but they were in for a good surprise from God. A couple and their teenage twin children embarked on this journey with much prayer. They were prepared to take whatever it was that the Lord wanted to show and teach them through the ministry of MMP among the poorest of the poor. This whole journey could be God’s invitation for them all to align every atom in their body with the heartbeat of God for the poor.