PAMI has over 20 paid pastors and church workers, locted throughout the Sorsogon province of the Philippines. PAMI field ministry is divided into three partitions: Bulan and Its Daughter Churches, Emmaus/Mabini, and The Other Churches. The ministry leads of each of these partitions are as follows:
PAMI Overall Field Director (and President of the Local PAMI Board), Supervisor of Bulan and Its Daughter Churches Partition, and Senior Pastor of Bulan Christian Church
Ptr. Virgilio Fulo has been the local field director of the PAMI mission since Ptr. Chito Mendizabal passed away in June 2012.
Ptr. Virgilio Fulo is also the senior pastor of the PAMI church in Bulan, the first PAMI church started in Sorsogon Province, and today the largest PAMI church. He also oversees Bulan’s four daughter churches (Fabrica, MonteCalvario, Lapinig, and Abad-Santos). Ptr. Virgilio has a vision for even further growth of the Christian church in Bulan, in both numbers and in maturity.
Ptr. Virgilio was part of the first EBI class that started in 1984 and graduated in 1988. One of his teachers was Letty Duque, who came from the Bethany Fellowship Bible School on Mindoro Island.
Ptr. Virgilio and Letty eventually married in 1990, and today they have three sons: Melvin, Alvin, and Nathaniel.
Supervisor of the Emmaus/Mabini Partition and Director of Emmaus Bible Institute
Ofel Mendizabal took over as the director of Emmaus Bible Institute when her husband Ptr. Chito Mendizabal passed away in June 2012. Besides supervising, Ofel teaches EBI and Compassion classes, does speaking, and actively participates with the Sosogon Pastors Association. Ofel also serves as PAMI’s field Treasurer, and her son Paul-Jethro does the accounting.
Prior to June 2012, Ptr Chito had served as both the local field director of the PAMI mission and the director of Emmaus Bible Institute. Since his graduation from EBI in1989, Chito had worked with the Korean Presbyterian Church in Albay Province and PAMI in Sorsogon Province, before becoming the EBI director in 1994 and PAMI field director in 2004.
Ptr Chito and Ofel have five children: Paul-Jethro, Kevin, Matthew, Nicolle, and Shelly Pauline. Paul-Jethro, Nicolle, and Shelly Pauline still live with Ofel, and actively help with ministry.
Supervisor of The Other Churches Partition and Senior Pastor of Irosin Christian Church
Ptr. Gumer shepherds the growing PAMI church in Irosin. His warm handshake, friendly smile, and outgoing personality demonstrate to those he meets that he genuinely cares. He might remind you of the Apostle Paul, with how he’s always on the go, doing evangelism near and far, and gets outreaches going in places for others to later develop. When he visits other pastors within the partition that he supervises, he often pitches in with assistance. He goes to EBI once a week to help teach classes, and mentors younger pastors as they start their own ministries. He has also been involved with the Church Planting Institute and Vernacular Video Ministry’s Church Mobilization Initiative. He embraces evangelism tools like Evangecube and Faith Comes By Hearing’s Tagalog or Bicolano dramatic audio Bibles. He also emphasizes discipleship, and trains church members and youth to do evangelism and discipling too.
Ptr. Gumer graduated from EBI in 2002, and took over the ministry in Irosin (including church, outreaches, and radio program) in 2005 when Ptr. Randy moved to Northern Samar. After the church rented in a couple locations, Jing Fortes Danielson let them start using the house/compound of her deceased parent’s located in the Somal-ot Bacolod neighborhood of south-central downtown Irosin in 2015. They also hope to eventually construct a church building in the San Agustin/Tabon-tabon neighborhood on the northeast side of town, since that’s were a lot of members live.
Ptr. Gumer and his wife Ofie have an adopted son named Moses that plays a lot of different instruments during worship times and tags along as his dad travels about. They also took in another boy off the streets named Jason for a few years, who became active in discipling other young people, and became a student at EBI.
The PAMI ministry has both a Philippine local board and a U.S. board of directors. The U.S. Board is located in Bloomington, Minnesota (suburb of Minneapolis) and handles administration, fundraising, and promotion of of the ministry.