Final leg of 3 tribe tour

December 7, 2011

Pearl Harbor day. I am in the Philippines, back in Manila now. It is amazing to think about the history here – 70 years ago today was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was actually December 8 that they invaded the Philippines, but it was simultaneous to the attacks on Pearl Harbor due to the international date line. That is something I did not learn until we moved here.

What a whirlwind trip! I am glad to be back home with Ginny and the kids. They are not so much little kids anymore, with one going to college next year, one in high school, and one in middle school. Hard to believe. But it still is just as hard to be separated from them, and it is especially hard to be apart from Ginny.

Highlights of the last leg of our trip – We flew into Maitem ne Egis, where our friends the Epps are ministering to the Agta people. Again, it is a mixed language situation, in which many Ilocano families have moved into the area for the fishing and other business opportunities there. It is still an isolated place not connected to by any major roads, but apparently the business opportunities are good enough to make some people want to move there. Naturally the Ilocanos also plant and grow their gardens to supplement their food when they move there. However, the majority of the people there are Agta, and since they are basically an unreached people group, they are the ones to whom the missionaries are focusing their efforts in church planting.

Our purpose in being in Maitem ne Egis was to assist the missionaries in their becoming fluent in the Agta language. It is always nice to report that they are doing a great job! A missionary living in an isolated situation like this has to know how to run his own language learning program. It is like everything else that we do as missionaries living in isolated situations. We have to be our own carpenters to build and repair our houses. We have to be our own plumbers, and build and maintain our own water systems, along with building and maintaining our own sewage and septic systems. We also have to be our own power company, and build and maintain our own solar electric systems. We need power for lights at night, and to have power for a computer where all of one's language and culture data is kept.

In the same way, we have to be our own language school, and run our own language learning program. There are no classes in the Agta language – it can only be learned by someone who runs their own language course. Let us not forget culture – we don't want to speak the Agta language and not know the deeper meanings of what they are trying to say. In order to have good relationships, necessary for ministry, one must speak the language well and fully understand the culture. Quite a challenge!

The missionaries that live amongst the Agta have dedicated their lives to bringing the Gospel to this unreached people group. We enjoyed spending time with them. It is hard living out there isolated from civilization. But there is no greater joy than seeing the unreached come to know Christ, and these missionaries are fulfilling the command of our Lord. How I miss being among the Palawanos! Yet I am thankful that we are still able to serve in this way.

The Agta are a different race from the more common Malay race of Filipinos – they are more commonly referred to as one of the Negrito races – kin to the Australoid populations of New Guinea. Their black skin and “natural afro-hair texture” makes them look African in nature. However, DNA research has indicated that they are actually the most genetically distant group of people from Africans (see the Wikipedia article on Negritos here). I would be interested to know how committed evolutionists explain that one – it is evidence to me that the genetic makeup for all races originated in the first 2 humans that God created – Adam and Eve. The genetic code for having what we would call African features actually existed in all of the earliest humans, and these features have become dominant features of people in 2 different parts of the world, not just Africa, which does not seem to follow the accepted progression of thought for an evolutionist.

We had one very sad incident happen while we were there, which still pains me to repeat, but I will do so for the sake of asking for your prayers. The day before we left an Agta family came by with their 2 or 3 year old kid. He had accidentally tipped over the pot of boiling rice and it had spilled over most of his back, buttocks, and lower legs. We all gave them some first aid, but the poor child was too damaged and he died during the night. If he had been able to live through the night, we might have been able to take him out by helicopter the next day, but it was not possible. Please pray for this family that lost their dear son in a sudden tragic accident.

The area of Maitem ne Egis, like so many other areas in the Philippines, is a mixed language area now. In the past you would have only found Agta people there, but today there are Agta, Ilocano, probably some Itawis and Ibanag, as well as Tagalog speakers, being the trade language. Like other locations in the Philippines, the missionaries must have a very broad base of vocabulary in order to minister to the needs of multi-lingual people.

For example, take the word blood. In English we basically have just that one word, although old English might have used the word humour in a generic sense. In Tagalog and Palawano, they use the word dugo for blood. In Ilocano, the word is dawa. In Cebuano, the on-line dictionary lists dugo and gawi, along with several other options that in some way might have some referred meaning relating to blood. In order to communicate the truth of the Gospel to as many people as possible in a mixed language group, one would need to know how to say blood in more than just one language.

There are very few places left in the Philippines where there almost purely monolingual. The place where we ministered among the Palawano was unusual in that regard. Because we were up in the mountains, the people there still maintain a somewhat pure Palawano language. This is in contrast to most Palawano areas that are near roads – they are often able to speak Tagalog. It is still better to minister to them in their heart language of Palawano, but to go into an area like that, the missionary would really need to know both.

Up among the Agta, the trade language is actually Ilocano, not Tagalog. However, most people know enough Tagalog from having gone to school for some time, and so when a new person moves in from another area that doesn't know Ilocano, they communicate in Tagalog. Also when government officials come into the area to promote health programs or such, they communicate also in Tagalog. So Tagalog is widely used and understood (though it would not be effective to minister in up in that area).

This is an interesting aspect of life here in the Philippines. In the past, if you traveled all over the Philippines, people that lived in an area where Tagalog was not the trade language did not speak Tagalog. Many of the missionaries in the past that went to tribal areas in Northern Luzon communicated in English to tribal people, because that was what they learned in school. Not so today – now the trade language is Tagalog. People still want to learn English and try and learn to speak it, but Tagalog is now much more prevalent. That is also why the official name of the language is Filipino, and it is considered only to be based on Tagalog.

By the way, when you say Tagalog, it is pronounced like this: tah-GAH-log. Most English speakers will say TAG-a-log when they first read that word, but that is incorrect.

Enough for now. I hope to put this in an email update by the time my birthday rolls around. Don't know if I can get there that quickly, though.

Ok, here are the pictures. More to come on another post. Click on any picture below to enlarge.

getting the chopper ready for the next flight

heading towards the mountains away from civilization

a washed out bridge along the way

river coming down from the mountains

break through past the jungle to the coastal area

black sand beach with missionary house prominent

the isolated coast

chopper on the ground, people waiting for us

inside the missionaries' home

view from the back porch

rainy weather most of the time we were there

home looking up from the garden

people coming by to get help with their tools as kids look on

houses in the Agta village

reviewing some CLA principles on the computer

unload and reload the helicopter while the engine is still running

storms the last couple of days made the seawater muddy

on the way out, a waterfall coming down the mountains from the rain

2 of the missionaries' tribal language helpers.

A bat cave we flew by on the way in.

Agta kids playing

One of the Agta villages.

Agta kids in a native Agta house.

A beautiful waterfall that we flew by on our way out.

The 2 on the left and me on the right make up our consultant team. The other 2 are the missionaries in the area.