Thank you all for your prayers this past weekend as we went and ministered in a Filipino church. It went amazingly well, and we are thankful for the opportunity to minister there.
I could not believe I was able to continue preaching in Tagalog for a full hour! The Lord helped me, of course, and that whole time was not spontaneous – it was a prepared message that I had written, and received help in preparing from one of my old language teachers. Nevertheless, I was continuously interrupted with choruses of “Amen!” during the sermon, and several people asked us to come back! So praise the Lord, I believe He was glorified, which is always our intent.
I spent some time talking to the family about the church and the work going on there, and we are pleased that the Lord has opened the door for me to do some part time ministry there. The church is a needy place, in need of some solid biblical teaching in their language, and it would honor the Lord as well as the memory of the Korean missionary who planted the church, who was murdered at random by a crime syndicate halfway across the city over a year ago. He moved his family to a country other than his own in order to serve God among a poor, needy, and unreached people, and there his blood was shed in the service of God. Now He serves God in heaven, where there are no tears or sorrow, awaiting the resurrection.
The main reason that his family is able to continue serving here in the Philippines among the poor is, of course, because God has called them to remain here. However, another reason is that they made a very important decision early on in their family. They told me that when their kids were little, their father decided to put them in Filipino school instead of an international school, because they were in the Philippines and wanted to become like the people (which is such a very Christ-like motivation). As a result, I believe the family is well integrated into the Philippine system, and their kids feel comfortable here. That would be a very hard thing to do if you come here when your kids are older, because the culture strain would be excessive. However, starting your kids off and raising them in the local system has served this family very well. This again illustrates the positive side of the principle that you reap what you sow. The father sowed seeds of faith, and his wife and children continue on in joy because of their father's faith, which has become their own.
My work at this church will be part time, and will be fully integrated into my new duties of studying and learning the principles of CLA (Culture and Language Acquisition) in order to train to become one of our field's language consultants. It is amazing how the Lord has worked this out in His perfect timing for me to be able to accomplish exactly what I need to do for our mission, and also serve the needs of a local church at the same time. At the same time I will continue to be making trips back and forth into the Palawano tribe. So life is about to get very busy!
Oh, and by the way, they didn't ask us to get up and sing, thankfully! That would have been a total disaster! We did enjoy singing along with the congregation the various hymns in English, Tagalog, and Korean, but no “special number” was required of the Olsons, and we are especially thankful for that!
Here are some pictures - click on the link below each picture to view a larger image:
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| the church choir |
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| George preaching |
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| My family with the Korean missionary family |
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| Picture of all of us with the choir after the service |
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