tribal trekker

tie him up by his feet

2012-02-12T03:12:00.000-08:00

We are so thankful for all that the Lord has done and is continuing to do in the Philippines! Please know as you read the following narrative that even though we have had some difficult things happen the last few weeks, we are full of thankfulness, hope, and joy in the Lord! Not that any of it has been easy, but it draws us to Himself, and we are learning to rejoice in the trials.

“Cousin, let's tie him up by his feet and hang him upside down from a tree!”

This is one of the many solutions offered by the Palawanos to me this past week as I was able to return to the tribe for a visit and to pack up our house. You see, right at the beginning of January I received a text message from one of the tribal guys saying there were a bunch of guys inside our house with flashlights making all kinds of noise. (The guy who texted me is one of the few mountain Palawanos that can read, and he also happens to have a cell phone.) So, I called a Filipino pastor I know that lives downriver from us, and he got the police from town to come up and inspect our house.

Two weeks after that, the same guy texted me with more bad news. Our dog had been found dead on the trail with a big wound to the side of her head. Nobody knows who did it. So it was a difficult week this time, going back in to pack up our house, and also to have to confront the thieves and see where they buried our dog.

When the plane landed, the village grandmother, who we call Minan (Aunty) came up to me and gave me a big hug and was crying really hard. “I am so sad about what happened to your dog, and your house. We are all so sad. And we are so sad that you are leaving.” There were many tearful conversations like this over the whole week, and over all it was quite a difficult time for me.

Right after talking to Minan, a guy from downriver came up with a sliced knuckle on his left forefinger. Now is the time the Palawanos are chopping a section of the jungle with their machetes in order to prepare to plant rice. He had been holding some weeds in one hand and his machete slipped, chopping the knuckle and almost completely severing the tendon. We were able to stitch the tendon back together and then also stitch the wound closed. Now his task is to keep the splint on and keep his hand from getting dirty over the next 2 weeks.

So many memories of our time with the tribal people kept coming back to me, and it felt so strange to be packing up what remained in our house (that wasn't stolen). The familiarity of the beautiful place we lived – it just didn't seem real that we were really leaving without knowing if or when we might return.

Thankfully, I had a fellow missionary come with me to help pack the house. He is our Palawan region supply buyer, and without him there I would not have been able to complete the job. It would have been too emotionally and physically draining. He did a tremendous amount of work and I was very thankful to have him alongside for the week.

The Gospel Teaching
The Gospel teaching was temporarily halted while all of us were out over Christmas break. Our partners are returning this week and will resume the Gospel teaching once they get settled. Please continue to pray for the Palawanos as this goes on, that they would come to know Christ our blessed Lord.

Discussions about the theft
The big news in the village this week, since I was there, was that everyone knew who had robbed our house. He is a guy that lives across the mountains from us. We have helped him in many ways with medicine and trade items, but he has continually responded with ingratitude and selfishness, and has also regularly stolen from many of the other Palawanos. In the Palawano culture, it is difficult to get all the Palawanos mad at you at the same time. In fact, you have to be a pretty bad guy to do that, because they are generally pretty non-aggressive people. Well in this case, Maylum has succeeded in getting practically the entire Palawano valley irritated at him, for robbing the missionary's house. Not only that, he brought his 12 year old son along to teach him how to do the job.

So the way the Palawanos reacted to this with us was to begin discussing various possible punishments. Hence the call to hang the offender upside down by his feet. “They do that on Sulu!” they said.

Here are some other statements by various people we talked to.
“We should just kill him.”
“Let's beat him real good.”
“Hey, let's bait him with more of your food! We will put poison in it and let him eat it! Then he'll die – that will teach him!”

We were sitting in a big group when someone suggested that they chop off one of his fingers, which is a real punishment practiced in the area. Several people responded, “Yes! Yes! We should do that. The people upriver from us do that, and that is why nobody up there steals anymore! We should chop off one of his fingers! Then if he steals again, we will chop off his whole hand!”

At this point, I asked the question I was most curious about. “If you decide to chop off his finger, who will be the one to chop it off?”

They all paused and there was a silence for a moment as they stared at me. Finally someone spoke up, saying to me, “Cousin, you're the one he stole from. Of course you are the one who will chop off his finger!”

Right, as if I am going to chop off anyone's finger. Of course I refused, telling them that I couldn't do that. So in the end nothing was decided yet, but that is ok, because there is going to be a big tribal council about this guy and that is where it will be decided what to do. Most likely it will be a huge fine along with a return of the items. There are other possibilities as well, like requiring some work without pay, or even possible jail time for the main offender. All of these things will eventually be decided by the tribal council and the local civil government.

Another interesting thing to note about the incident. We now have many reports from eyewitnesses of people who have our things, how they have bragged about robbing the missionary's house, and testified that Maylum was the one to lead the break-in. So there is no doubt at all that Maylum is the one. However, when we asked the village chief how they knew it was Maylum was the one who robbed our house, he gave us this story. He said they were all gathered around and they cut a length of bamboo to exactly the length of his arms out-stretched, finger-tip to finger-tip. Then they gave some kind of chant and called out to Empu (God) the names of various suspects. When they called out Maylum's name, they said the bamboo grew about 4 inches longer past the tips of his fingers.

One day Maylum's 12 year old son came to me to confess and ask forgiveness. Of course I told him I forgave him, but that his offense was very serious and that the tribal chieftain was still planning to decide on a punishment. We talked about how he felt when it was his own father influencing him to do bad, and this poor kid is in a difficult situation. We also talked about God, how we came to teach them God's Word, and how God's Word could deliver him from his desire to do bad things from time to time. He was receptive and humble, but he is still having to go back and live with his father.

In that regard, please pray for the father, the son, and the other 3 people that committed the crime. We estimated they took around $1000 worth of things, which is far more than any of them would be able to pay back in a lifetime, even if they pooled all their resources together. I did tell the son that we have no bad feelings toward him or his father, and we hope that they will come and listen to the teaching of the Gospel. However, I told him that they must know that they committed a crime and that there was going to be some punishment coming to each of them, as directed by the tribal authorities.

Over all, this incident gave a great opportunity to be able to openly share with many people once again why we came, and how important the Gospel teaching is. I believe they understood our love for them by our actions. We hope and pray that this will result ultimately in the Gospel triumphing over the lives of the people, and that they will be able to live in hope and love, free from fear and despair.

Return to work and continuing on...
So I am back now in Manila, and very glad to be back with Ginny and the kids, although I miss the tribe. We have a lot of work to do over the next few months, with my new assignment in the mission and getting Isaac prepared for graduation and going to college. By the way, please pray for that also – he has applied for a 4 year ROTC scholarship, but as of this writing we have not heard any results. He wants to go into the service after college anyway, but the scholarship would be a huge help in paying for his continuing education.

My current assignment as a language consultant and helping direct the national language program for new missionaries is very important to the work we are doing in New Tribes. There are still many, many unreached areas of the Philippines, and there are still not enough workers to bring the Gospel to all those places. When a new missionary comes to the field, it is important for them to not only do well in the national language, but to truly enjoy and become part of the Filipino culture. This will help in the long term health of our mission, will keep missionaries here for longer, and will have long term results of strengthening tribal churches. We earnestly desire your prayers for this new ministry, that it will bear much fruit and result in a harvest of souls in all the indigenous tribes of the Philippines. Pray for more missionaries to come here, and for us all to grow stronger in our walks with the Lord, strengthening each other and bringing glory to God.

As a final note, we are so thankful for all of your prayers and support for the continuing work in the Philippines! God is amazing, and we are so glad to be part of His service. We can't wait for His return!

Blessings in Christ to you all,
George for all of us
George, Ginny, Isaac, Sarah, and Abby

Click here to see more of our pictures

returning to the tribe to pack up

saying good-bye to friends

stitching up a wounded man's finger

the burial site of our dog

my office in the tribe after being trashed by the robbers

One of the new tribal houses on the hill across the river

Ginny teaching at Faith Academy

Abby and Isaac on an outdoor adventure together with the school

Abby took a picture of this tiger on top of one of the jeeps in the Zoobic Safari during her school field trip.

I thought it was funny what was placed in the "historical fiction" rack in the bookstore

Final leg of 3 tribe tour

2011-12-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

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.

The Language Barrier - the Ga-dang (and peanut coffee)

2011-12-02T06:10:00.000-08:00

12/1/2011

It was time for role-play. This was our communication task. Having arrived the day before by helicopter, now we had 2 Ga-dang native speakers, both of whom were also pretty good in Tagalog (at least enough to communicate what we wanted to do). At first we had the missionary pretend he was visiting one of the Ga-dang men in his home, and then properly excuse himself to go home and help his wife. The idea is that we are looking to see how well the missionary speaks and acts according to the customs of the native people he is working with. They played the role just fine. (click on any picture below to enlarge)

Checking communication tasks with native speakers

Life among the Ga-dang - pounding rice

Arrival by helicopter

Then, for comparison, we had one of the Ga-dang men pretend that he was married and visiting in the other man's house. He also was supposed to excuse himself and go home to his wife. The roles were understood. The 2 men thought it was really funny that they were “actors” (artista). We set up the scene, and the young man said, “Ok, I have to go home now to my wife.” Instead of the proper Ga-dang response, the older man forgot he was doing a role play, looked at him and said, “What? I didn't know you were married!” Of course, then the younger man broke down laughing!

Time for take 2! Artista we are not. :)

Maybe it would be good here to write up a description of how we do a language and culture check. First of all, we are moving into places where the language barrier is a significant barrier to people understanding the Gospel. There in the Ga-dang village where I was this morning, I went outside the house we were staying in and walked up to talk to a neighbor. In this “tribal” area, the people are not really tribal like the Palawanos were, but are more just like Filipino farmers who have a different language. At least, that is what one might think when one first goes in.

However, even after a few minutes of conversing with my neighbor in Tagalog, which he speaks pretty well from having gone to school, it was pretty clear that there was a lot he would not get in Tagalog. Use of Tagalog is increasing in the population for sure, especially because of television shows that are broadcast nation-wide, but for the most part explaining the deep truths of God's Word clearly is still going to have to be accomplished in the local language in the Ga-dang area.

The only person available now to take God's Word to the Ga-dang are these missionaries. This can be a sensitive issue. Us missionaries have sometimes made the mistake that it will always be necessary for foreign missionaries to take the Gospel to these remote places. That is changing rapidly – there are increasing numbers of Filipino Christians who have a vision to take the Gospel back into the remote towns and villages and finish getting the message to all these areas. But that is all for another discussion. The point of this discussion is how a cross-cultural missionary is able to move into a new area, learn the language and culture, preach the Gospel so that it is clearly understood, and establish a church.

Why language and culture? Why not just language? It is because culture and language are inseparable. Here is a simple illustration. Three tribal bible teachers are going to hike to a neighboring village to teach the Gospel there. The new missionary wants to accompany the tribal men, so he goes along. However he wants the tribal men to walk in front of him, so that he will not feel that he is imposing upon them. When they arrive in the village, the village people are cold with them and do not receive the teaching, and really are not interested in listening at all. Why? Because in this tribal culture, the order in which outsiders approach a village is of supreme importance. By not having the white missionary in front as a person of perceived higher status, the bible teachers communicated to the new village that they did not respect people of higher status. They were thought of as people that do not show respect, and therefore their message had no credibility.

That is culture. Culture and language are inseparable. When a tribal woman in a certain tribe sitting on her porch says “come in and visit” it is different from saying “come up and visit”. One is a proposition of an illicit affair, the other is a polite way of acknowledging a visitor. The missionary would want to respond appropriately. There are so many things in a culture that are intertwined with the language. Our job as Culture and Language Consultants is to help the new missionaries in tribal areas to learn to recognize these things. Also, since there are no language schools in these areas in order to teach the new missionary how to speak and act in a given area, he or she has to figure it out for himself. Our job is to help coach them through setting up their own learning program so that they can get to the point where they can teach the Gospel clearly.

Of course, there are always going to be mistakes that are made, especially at the beginning stages. However, the missionary who has been somewhere for several years and still has not learned that “come in” means “let's sleep together” and “come up” means “let's visit” will not be very effective in preaching the Gospel. He will not have good relationships with the people he is trying to reach if he doesn't understand the little nuances of the culture. The people make great allowances for mistakes when he first moves in. After several years, a missionary is expected to know these things. If he learns them quickly, within the first couple of years, then he establishes a pattern of excellence and respect among the people, which will make his message more credible.

It was a good visit to the Ga-dang village. They gave us peanut coffee (roast peanuts pounded and then mixed into hot water), and I liked it better than real coffee! No caffeine rush, which is preferable to me. Also we locked the keys to the missionary house inside the house once! I had to ask one of the men to borrow a stick to mash open the window - they were a bit concerned about that! They gave me an axe, and we got in. Ha! So now I have broken into someone's house with an axe! Well, at least it was supervised.

We have now finished with the 2^nd tribal visit, and one more to go. The weather is not cooperating right now, and we are waiting for it to clear so that we can fly in by helicopter and assist the missionaries in another tribal area.

tying the generator to a water buffalo cart for transport

the Ga-dang village from the air

pointing out the area we will fly through

some houses still have thatch roofs, though most do not

village kids

tasting peanut coffee (no coffee grounds were available, so fried peanuts were mashed and made into coffee instead)

a village house on the left with its corresponding rice house on the right

Island travel, on to another jungle for Christ

2011-11-29T04:25:00.001-08:00

11/28/2011

“We need to be at the boat at 7am in order to make it to El Nido in time to catch the shuttle going to Puerto.” sabi ng host missionary.

We just finished a language assessment with a friend of ours on another island. He is working in an area where the Gospel has not reached yet, and is doing well in his progress for learning the local language of the island! That means another unreached tribal area of the Philippines will soon have the Gospel!

So there we were, ready to go at 7 am, and our guide didn't show up! We waited, and waited, and finally decided to walk across the island to the boat by ourselves, pulling all our bags in a hand cart. When we got to the beach, we saw why our guide didn't show up – low tide! Our guide, or boat captain, had been drinking the night before, so he didn't pull the boat out past the tidal area. There was our boat, sitting on the sand! And we had to get to town that day...

Well, in a situation where time is of the essence, and you are on an island waiting for the tide to come in so that you can leave, what do you do? Nothing, of course! All we could do was sit and wait for the tide to come in. Well, we could have tried to swim across the open ocean... No, probably not a good idea.

While waiting for the tide to come in, we looked at squid eggs in the water, and talked about different things. Finally the tide has risen by about 6 inches, and so we called some other people over and we began pushing the boat towards the deeper water. It took about 10 of us, but we made it! We were off the island by 9 am, and our host called the shuttle van and asked them to hold the van for us. I don't know how the other passengers took it, waiting for 2 extra hours, but they didn't say anything to us. Once we were on the road, fantastic...

And of course, at Roxas we stopped at the Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. Wow. The most amazing food ever, and all for only 100 pesos. I always get the “beef stew with noodles”, and I never get tired of it!

Back in Puerto Princesa, we settled down and got ready for the next leg of our trip, which began this morning!

So, yesterday morning I was on a small island in the middle of the ocean, and today I am up in the northern part of the country, getting ready to go by helicopter into another tribe tomorrow!

We are in Tuguegarao, and have looked at our flight base up here. The base actually belongs to another mission, and they have shared the use of it with us. Their ministry is doing really awesome things for god – they record Gospel lessons in 4 or 5 of the major dialects of this area, and then broadcast them on different radio stations at designated times so that people can hear, come to know Christ, and be encouraged.

I was talking to the missionary in charge of this ministry, and he had some very keen insights into the world around us today. He said, “Why do you think that we have all this technology, the ability to travel, and the ability to send radio messages and internet email and all those things?” He believes that God restrained us from acquiring this knowledge until recent times.

Think about it from this perspective – the ancient kingdoms could build pyramids and giant statues, navigate by the stars and do all kinds of amazing things, but they couldn't look at a duck taking off from the water and figure out the simple mathematics of flight? It is not that complicated – wind speed over a wing, increase the lift over the drag, and you get something airborne. Leonardo Da Vinci may have been ahead of his time, but perhaps it was because God was only just beginning to allow man's mind to be opened up to this technology. And why would He do that now? So that we could use this technology to finish getting the Gospel out to all ends of the earth. That is what God is all about – the completion of taking His Gospel message to every people, tongue, tribe, and nation!

So while he broadcasts Gospel messages, we send people out into the hills. And with all these different means of taking the Gospel to the nations, soon every tribe will have been reached! This is what we hope for and pray for, and what we labor for!

Tomorrow we will be going into another tribal area, to a location off on a remote hilltop, where the Gospel has never penetrated. The people there are not really “tribal” like the Palawanos we served with, but they are still unreached with the Gospel and greatly in need of the message being preached there.

Click on any picture below to enlarge.

getting on the boat to go to the island

a view of Palawan as we jut out to sea

view from the boat as we head out to the island in the distance

a sleeping house in the lagoon on the island

after crossing the island through a coconut grove, the missionary houses emerge in the clearing

there are lots of pigs on this island

view of the beach on the side away from the boats

preparing one of our meals

a German-Romanian salad served on an island in the Pacific

private beach area

nice white sand beach

Konrad and I at the beach in between sessions


our boat was stranded waiting for the tide to come in


at low tide the people gather fish and clams from the reef

view of the one really nice house in the village from the reef at low tide

squid eggs


Once the tide started to roll in we were able push the boat out towards deeper water.


on our way back to the Palawan main island


view of the shore


fishing boat based on the main island


view of the El Nido cliffs from the bus terminal

The Menti Palawano are now hearing Bible lessons!

2011-11-17T18:09:00.001-08:00

The Menti Palawano are now hearing Bible lessons!
Praise the Lord, for the first time in history, the Brooks Point Palawano in Menti are now hearing Bible lessons in their own language! Our partners have started teaching, and below is a copy of the email we received to describe how things are going.

We appreciate your prayers for us, our partners, and the Palawano as they continue to teach the lessons. This is why we labored in the tribe for so long, and why we are continuing to work here in the Philippines!

Here is the email from our tribal co-worker Elise:

Dear Partners in the Gospel,

On Monday morning, I said to my literacy class, "This is a day we've been waiting for. This is the reason God sent us here. Today, Dave will start telling God's story to all who want to listen. We have lots of fun in our literacy class, but it's a really serious and important thing that you are learning to read. Yes, anyone can listen to the teaching of God's Word, but you will be able to read it for yourselves. For others, they have to wait to be given God's Word like a child being given a drink from the hand of their mother. But you are like one who has his own cup, and can drink from it whenever you want. The ability to read is like having that cup".

So on Monday afternoon, the public teaching of God's Word finally began. In all 22 adults gathered, and some children, in various different family groups. They listened intently.

Dave began by telling the people that in the beginning, there was no one and nothing, only God, and that God was always there. As he described the character of God, eveyone was listening intently and heads began to nod in agreement.

"God had no source, and will have no end. He didn't suddenly appear. He always was. He needs nothing- not food, or air, or water. He is Spirit. In the beginning, there were no stars, no sun, no moon, no earth. There were no trees, no ocean, no rivers, no animals, no air, no people. Only God. And He was always there."

Pilno said, "Banar! That's true!"

Showing them a jar of rice, Dave said, "How many grains of rice do you think are in this jar? That's right, you don't know unless you count them. God doesn't have to count them. He knows how many grains of rice there are in every legkew (rice storage house) on Palawan! He knows how many hairs there are on every head! He doesn't even need to count them! He knows everything! Wherever you go, He is there. He is with our family in Australia. He is in every cave, and in the sky. You couldn't hide from Him. He knows everything, even what you are thinking."

"Banar!" said Pilno again.

As the people left to go home, we encouraged them to come to each teaching time, so when we got ready for them again on Wednesday, we were discouraged that of the first group of eight, only Pilno and Mulok came. Another eight came in the next group, with a couple of new listeners. So they heard the second lesson, and were amazed that God's Word was written by so many people over such a length of time.

It turns out that this week, the lowland town leaders have called various meetings that some of the Palawanos are expected to attend. And not only that, but many of them are preparing for a rice festival at the chief's village, and so when he says it's time to pound rice, then that's what you have to do.

Pilno, and also Tossito, one of Dave's language helpers said, "We are going to tell people they need to come! This is really important!"

Over lunch today, Tossito and Lito, one of the other language helpers, said to another guy, Pitio, "We all need to know what God says. Palawanos and white people. We all have the same original grandparents, and because of their sin, we are all separated from God. We are like the Israelites trapped at the Sea that's Red. Only God can make a way for us to be saved. It's very dangerous if people don't listen! They need to know the way back to God or they are lost!"

The two of them went over to Dave and Julie's place after that, where Mulita, a lady, was telling Dave she didn't want to listen to the teaching. Dave said, "Cousin, we aren't going to force anyone to listen." Tossito promplty said to Mulita, "You know, you really should listen! There is a second death and only God can save us." She looked right at him..."Oh?!" she said. "Hmmm. I'm going to think about it."

We talked with Pilno and Mulok, and decided to wait to carry on the teaching till next Wednesday when some of the distractions are out of the way. Meanwhile, we are taking every opportunity, over meals, sitting on the porch, hanging out at people's houses, to talk over what the people have heard. Some seem like they couldn't care less, while others are gripped by the truth. Tossito and Pilno said they are going to be telling people they need to listen. Pilno said, "We need to listen together, so that we can be of one mind. This is truth!"

Pray that the spark will become a flame, and will fan to life and sweep through this place!

Thank you for praying for Lupis! The tribal leaders met about his divorce, and told his wife she has to stay with him. So they are both here now, and both listening to the teaching. Praise the Lord!

Thank you for praying for the literacy teachers! The are doing REALLY well, and we are planning to buy a computer for them and Ludi to learn how to type. They are very excited! Today they went down to the market place, where just a couple of months ago, they would go to get drunk almost every week. They said, "We don't want to do that now. We have changed." Please pray for a total heart change, not just a change of behaviour! Tabung says that he prays to God every night, and hasn't had one of his "seizures" (or possible demonic attacks) since. He said after the first lesson that he was turning over the new thoughts about God in his mind all night!

In a week or so, I have to go to Manila for an immigration interview, and as I explained to the class this morning that I'd be away, Nurnito said, "Egsa (cousin), you just show us what to teach, and Tabung and I will keep teaching while you are away!" I was so encouraged!

I'm writing this from Philippino pastor's house down river. He and his wife minister to a mixture of lowland Palawanos and other lowlanders on the edge of the jungle. As I passed by one of the homesteads on the way here, I talked to a Palawano family who just lost their 17yo daughter, 7 months pregnant, to leukemia. She left behind a young husband and a 3 yo boy.We talked about why there is death and suffering, and about God, about how He loves the people He made, and wants them to be restored to Him. The mother said, "Egsa, you can come and tell us when my husband gets back from the next valley!" Pray for this hurting family!

Please go to battle on your knees for all these precious souls! Please ask God to give them a desire to listen to His Word that is stronger than the desire to make money downriver, stronger than the excitement about feasts and festivals. May the rice festival they are preparing for be the last one in this place where the spirits are thanked for the rice, instead of the true God.

May He soon receive the reward of His suffering (Isa. 53), the souls and worship of a people Christ died to save.

Please pray for Dave as he prepares and teaches the lessons to many groups. Pray for his health especially.

Please pray for the NTM UK Bible School graduates, Denis and Ella, who are proving to be a GREAT help here. They have both been battling sickness, but have done so much to help with repairs and producing literacy materials.Please pray for Pastor Job and Anna as they preach the Gospel in the lowlands.

Please pray for a solution for our communication issues, that somehow, we can get internet again in the village. We are greatly hampered without it.Please pray that an upcoming Immigration interview will go well so that my visa can be renewed. I have to go to Manila in a couple of weeks to do that.Please pray for the literacy curriculum I am preparing for teaching in the UK next March, God willing.

Again, thank you so much for standing with us. You are a vital part of the team!

Trusting Christ for a harvest of Palawano souls in His time!
Elise

end of our co-worker's email

Keep in mind, that because we have lost internet connection in our village, Elise has to hike downriver 2 hours to get to a location where she can connect by her cell phone to the internet. We hear from her about once every 2 or 3 weeks. Thank you for your continued prayers for the teaching!

Please pray for my upcoming trip next week! I am going to be traveling to 3 other new tribal areas to help the new missionaries with their language and culture studies. One of these already has a small group of believers, but the other 2 have not started the teaching yet because they are still working up to the language level! My job, in company with our consultant coming from the States, will be to coach and assess the progress of the missionaries in their tribal language studies, so that those areas also will soon be able to hear the Gospel!

Pray also for Ginny and the kids at home while I am gone!

We are thankful that God allows us to be involved with what He is doing in the Philippines!

George for all of us
George, Ginny, Isaac, Sarah, & Abby

getting to the airport and flying through a typhoon

2011-09-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

Today was a crazy day. We have a typhoon barelling down on the Philippines – typhoon Pedring. It is supposed to be one of the most massive storms to hit the Philippines in years. They closed all the schools in Manila for the afternoon.

I flew to Palawan today, right across the southeast edge of the typhoon and through the rain bands that have been drawn up due to the low pressure area at the center of the storm. It was a bit of a scary flight. The plane made a hard heavy noise on takeoff, and then we had a lot of turbulence the whole flight down. The pilot announced that we were at 36,000 feet, but looking out the window we were inside clouds the whole time. There was no blue sky visible even at that height, so you can see how big this storm must be.

To get to the airport from our place, I had called for a taxi to come pick me up the night before. I gave the taxi company my cell phone number and they said that they would text me at 9 am to let me know the status of the vehicle. 9 am came and went, and no word from the taxi company. I figured, ok, sometimes they forget and don't call. So I waited. And waited. At 5 minutes to ten I called them, and they said sorry, they didn't have any taxi that could come here because of the rain (whatever!). So I asked why they didn't call and let me know, and they said they sent a text message. They read out the number they sent it to, and it was the wrong number! They had mixed up the last digit of my cell phone number, so I didn't know that I had no taxi.

Fortunately I had planned for this sort of contingency by planning to leave early. I headed out the door with my small backpack stuffed inside my large hiker's backpack and started walking down the road towards the place where I could catch a taxi. It is about a half hour walk along that road, and sometimes there are pubic jeeps that come there, but only about once every hour. I didn't really feel like walking because it was raining, but I did anyway. As I left the house, I whispered a prayer which was half thanks for knowing that He would grant my request and half “Lord please get me to the airport.”

Last month when I took a taxi to the airport, it took about 4 hours to get there because of heavy traffic. So I was expecting it to take about that long also today. After walking for only about 15 minutes, a utility vehicle came by, which I thought was the public transportation service, so I flagged it down. They stopped, but when I got there, it turned out they were just private citizens driving the same kind of vehicle that the multi-cabs often are made from! I think they felt bad for me, a white guy carrying a large heavy pack, walking alone on the road in the middle of a rainstorm. So they picked me up and gave me a ride down to Ortigas where I was able to get in a public multi-party taxi called an FX.

From there I told the guy that I needed to go to the airport. He said he wasn't going to the airport, but he would take me somewhere where I would be able to pick up a regular taxi more easily. So we headed down the road and picked up the passengers he needed to pick up, and kept on going. When we got to the semi-highway, he saw an empty taxi and started honking at him and flashing his lights at him. The taxi pulled over and we pulled over, and I got out and got in the taxi. Then that taxi took me to the rest of the way to the airport. A very creative way to get there, no doubt! God is good!

I was a little wet and very early, so I waited in the waiting area for about an hour and a half before they opened the line to process the tickets going to Palawan.

I started off this blog entry by talking about the plane, so I will finish it there also. As I mentioned, we were 36,000 feet, with tons of turbulence, and no blue sky. When we landed at the airport, I didn't feel the usual feel of the tires hitting the runway. I realized after-wards that was because the tires were hydro-planing. I also noticed that we just weren't hardly slowing down at all as we skidded along the runway. I prayed, Lord, please let this plane stop and let us not go sliding off the end of the runway! Finally after a long time, we came to a stop. It seems the other end of the runway had better drainage than the end we landed on. There were heavy rains and a fairly decent wind going across the tarmac as we got out of the plane. My compliments to the Zest Air pilots who made sure that we landed safely.

And all praise to the Lord, who has preserved my life once again for the completion of His work.

And one bit of cultural insight. On the way to the airport, we passed a very large Catholic church. My taxi driver made the sign of the cross as we went by. I asked him what you call that, and he said “sign of the cross.” So I asked him what they said in Tagalog, and he said “Antangan” ( I think – can't remember for sure). But he said that is a deep Tagalog word. I asked him what he would say if he was instructing his children to do the sign of the cross and he said he would say “sign of the cross ka” or something like that. He indicated he would not use the word “Antangan” because it is a deep Tagalog word.

Then I asked him why he makes the sign of the cross, and he said “Para sa pagpuri kay Cristo.” That was an answer that I did not expect! For the praise of Jesus! I thought that was cool.

When examining sociological constructs from a Christian point of view, it is always encouraging to see elements of Biblical Christianity coming out unexpectedly like this in the beliefs of the common people. This led to a short conversation on how you please God and on how the scriptures say that we please God by faith, by trusting in Him. Unfortunately, my taxi driver wasn't really interested in pursuing the conversation any further than that.

Now it is time to get ready to head into the tribe once again! It will be supply buying for the next few days before heading down.

George

ministering in a Filipino church

2011-09-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

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:

the church choir

George preaching

My family with the Korean missionary family

Picture of all of us with the choir after the service

On the bridge going to the church there are men with guns - fishing guns! They fire a little harpoon with a .22 caliber or other small cartridge into the fish in the river about 35 feet below and then haul the fish up by a line tied to the harpoon.

a week in the tribe by myself

2011-08-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

8/20/2011 Journal entry

Wow, what an amazing and crazy week I have had. Being in the tribe by myself is a lot of work, and there are good and bad elements to it. To recap –

I had a great visit with the downriver pastor and his wife about the school they have set up for their area. It is really doing a great service for the tribal people there in that area. They are receiving a Christian education, which enhances and strengthens the church, as well as helping to break the cycle of animism that keeps them in bondage.
A guy way up river fell out of a tree, broke his femur, broke an arm, and his lower back. This was about 10 days before I arrived. They said that his lower abdomen had already started to smell bad (indicating gangrene, I suppose). I asked them why they didn’t take him to the hospital in Brooke’s Point, which is only about a 2 or 3 hour walk for them, and the messenger didn’t know.They said that they don’t have any money, but the interesting thing is, they can get money when they really want it. They typically only are willing to do that for themselves. They can haul begtik, or go into debt with someone, or sell land, or something. But they typically don’t do that for their neighbor, only for their own children or spouse.
A kid dumped a pot of boiling hot rice over his leg, causing 2nd degree burns. I gave first aid, and then the next day when the blisters came out I treated it with burn cream and the gauze banadages.
Another guy who fell out of a tree 2 years ago, and is now crippled, moved into the tribal house next to us. He is having to live under someone else’s roof, which is a bit of a burden for them, so he is trying to build his own house just a few feet down the trail. However, he is crippled and cannot walk without crutches, so he cannot build himself. The other Palawanos, who build houses all the time, won’t help him or build a house for him unless he pays them. He cannot get money, because he cannot work, so that is also a problem.

Since our partners will be preaching the Gospel soon, hopefully this guy will be someone who will be available to listen to all the messages. After all, he is not going anywhere.

I had one good language session with my helpers. I got lots and lots of recordings, more than I usually do, knowing that I would have time to process the recordings once I returned to Manila. They are having to split time with their families also, by putting their kids in a downriver school, and hiking back up to the tribe once or twice a week to take care of weeding their rice fields and other work at home.

When I flew back to Manila on Saturday, Sarah was having a soccer game at the international school. I took the taxi there first, dropped off my heavy bag with Ginny, and then took the taxi to the place where I received my motorcycle I had shipped (yong pinagkuhaan ng ipinadala kong motor - that is easier to say in Tagalog). Then I rode my motorcycle back to the game, and after that back home to our apartment.

Now that the Lord has moved us out of being full time in the tribe and up to Manila for the time being (with regular short term returns to the tribe), we are settled in an apartment. It is such a totally different life here in Manila. I am thankful for the Lord working things out for us to be able to take care of some family needs at this time. He is good.

Keislaman

2011-07-09T05:37:00.001-07:00

Also this morning at the bed next to us the ward was new patient – a very old man. They said he was 110 years old! His sons were attending to him. All 3 of them impressed me as very nice, with good manners, and well educated. Then all of a sudden one of them turned to me and started speaking in fluent Palawano! Totally unexpected – why would any educated Filipino take the time to learn Palawano, the language of the native people, especially since knowing that language doesn’t help anyone further their business or anything like that!

Well, it turned out that they were from one of the neighboring people groups that live down river referred to as “Keislaman” by the mountain people. These are people who had common ancestors with the Palawanos, but they broke away when they became Muslim. Now, many of them are educated, but they speak the same language as the Palawanos in their homes.

According to Palawano legend, they separated back in the days of the ancestors when an old man came down from the hills to visit a young man and his wife, who had just prepared dark sticky rice to eat. According to custom, they fed the old man and visited for some time before he left. When he left, he travelled by a path where the young man had set his pig traps. A few hours after the old man left, the young man went out to check his pig traps, and he had caught a pig in one of his traps. So he brought the pig home, where he and his wife butchered it and ate the initial cut of meat. After eating, they argued about who would take the remains of the pig down to the creek to clean out the intestines (which they would have use for later). The wife won the argument and took the remains down to the creek. When she was cleaning out the intestines, she noticed their contents – dark sticky rice! So she realized that this pig was actually the man who had visited them that morning, and he had turned into a pig and been killed in the pig trap. She got violently ill and threw up, but managed to make it home. She told her husband she could never eat pig again because of what happened, but the husband didn’t agree with that idea, so they separated. She went down to the ocean and re-married, while he went up to the hills and got remarried. Her descendants became the “Keislaman” and his descendants became the Palawano. According to the legend, that is why the Muslims don’t eat pork, but they speak the same language as the Palawano.

I was able to share this Palawano legend with our neighbors in the ward, but I have not confirmed if they share the same story in their culture. They acted a bit surprised at the story, so I have a feeling they might not have heard it before.

Ama, mulit ne!

2011-07-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

“Ama! Mulit ne!”

Over the last week, I have heard this phrase over and over again. It means, “Dad, I want to go home.” I am in Puerto Princesa right now with Burut, a 7 year old Palawano kid that we brought to the hospital. They showed up at our place over a week ago, and the child was swollen up like a marshmallow. Our medical team members were pretty sure the problem was kidney disease, but in our place there is nothing we can do about that. So we gave them some money in order to take a bus to the hospital in town. The next day another man came by our house with a message from the doctor at the hospital. They said they were pretty sure it was kidney disease, but they did not have the facilities to test to find out the extent of the disease. So we needed to send him to Puerto Princesa.

I was on top of the mountain about 5 hours up river when they called me in the morning to tell me I needed to take the kid to the hospital. My son and I were doing an overnight hike up there (more about that later). We were planning to stay 1 more night, but the medical emergency pre-empted our trip and so we came home that day. The next day I went to Quezon and met the kid with his dad, and together we proceeded to the hospital in Puerto Princesa. That was last Saturday, and we are still here a week later. The prognosis looks good for a release this weekend or early in the week. However, the young boy still has to wait.

It has been hard on the family for multiple reasons. First of all, they have not had any contact with their family that they left up in the mountains, so they are probably wondering what has happened. Secondly, the hospital is not an ideal place for people that are used to living in a free and open place, where they get up in the morning or at night and can look out to see as far as the eye can see. Also, they were embarrassed to bathe and/or use the restroom at first, but eventually they got over that and had to use it.

On the good side, the other Filipinos that are in the hospital have been very nice to the patients. We are in a ward with 5 beds, and all the families of the other people there have been very courteous and pleasant towards the dad and his kid. They have not made them feel embarrassed at all about being “natibos”, but instead have included them in discussions and talks, making them feel welcome.

So with regard to this, we ask for your prayers for little Burut’s completed healing! As of this morning, his swelling had been reduced significantly, and if the urine tests in the morning show the disease to be in remission, then he will be allowed to leave the hospital.

Grandfather of the skunk and snake jokes

2011-05-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

I think I need to write a few light-hearted things down so that if you read this, you will know that things are not all serious and terrible and desperate. We actually have even a somewhat “normal” life here at times. We get up in the morning, cook, eat, do our work (which is a lot of language study for me), homeschool, and often have a lot of fun with the tribal people. We go swimming in the river with them and visit at their houses or at ours. They will always have some kind of interesting story to tell, either about spirits, ancestors, or a simple walk through the jungle. Animism penetrates everything about the way they think here.

The tribal people love to have fun and make jokes. A lot of times their jokes are very integrated with their culture, so you have to understand their culture to understand their humor. For example, one time I was talking to someone about the mythical ancestors of the different animals of the forest. Every animal has some kind of mythical ancestor, which they say is its grandfather. So they told me some stories about the grandfather of the monkey, and the grandfather of the python, and others. The grandfather of the python is who they say went through the land and carved out all the hills and valleys.

So I was asking about the different grandfathers of the different animals and listening to the stories. I was sitting in one of the tribal people’s homes as we were talking, and I asked who the grandfather of the skunk was. This lady looked at me, and said, “Egsa (that means cousin), he’s sitting right there,” and she pointed at her husband sitting next to me! Well, everyone laughed at that, including the one being pointed at, because they all knew what that meant!

That is just one of the ways we have fun with the tribal people.

Even in somewhat scary situations, we can often find something to laugh about. Consider the following. Yesterday morning I woke up to find a snake in the middle of the kitchen. Don’t worry, it was not one of the very poisonous kinds. Yet nevertheless, it was a snake, first thing in the morning. I held the dog and sat there staring at it. For some reason I couldn’t think of what to do. Probably because I had just woken up and was still a bit sleepy. Remember that time when I had to pour boiling water on the snake that was hiding in a crack in the wall? Well, that was the only thing I could think of. But I figured the snake wouldn’t wait around for me to boil water to pour it over him! Hmm.

Suddenly like a light shining in the darkness came a voice out of the silence, breaking through with magnificent thought and reason. It was Ginny. “Would you like me to hand you your machete?” Wow! I wonder how long I would have sat there staring at the snake if she hadn’t prompted me! So I took the machete, chopped off the snake’s head, and end of snake!

The tribal people never chop off a snake’s head. They think that if you chop it off and throw it out into the jungle, the next time you cook rice, the snake’s head will magically appear in your rice pot, jump out, and bite you on the neck! So naturally I want to challenge this assumption (gently of course), and so I took the snake with the severed head over to the tribal people’s home next door and showed it to them. I asked them what kind of snake it was. “Sawa manok,” they said (which means chicken snake). Later I came by and I told them I had thrown the snake and its head out into the jungle. There was a pause as they stared at me uncomfortably. So I asked, “Do you think the head will appear in my rice pot and jump out and bite me on the neck?” That broke the tension, and they all fell over laughing!

The reason they laugh at that is because they know it is a silly idea, but they still believe it enough to not chop off a snake’s head. They have no basis for thinking that the snake’s head might not reappear, but they are still scared that it might.

So, score 1 for the challenge, done gently and in love.

It happened again

2011-05-02T01:52:00.000-07:00

"I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles..." Isaiah 42:6

Making God central to our ministry
I have been reading a lot lately from scripture and in other places about making God completely and totally central to our ministry. As I look back and reflect on our time in ministry from when I first left my engineering job in New Mexico, there have been times I have totally focused on God, and other times that I have been a whole lot more focused on myself. During those times that God has been central and we were walking by faith, stepping out and trusting Him to go before us, our fellowship with the Father has been the sweetest. This work that we are doing, to bring the Gospel to people who not only don’t know God, but who regularly serve demonic forces, cannot be done in our power. Other times when I served my own ideas (instead of the Lord’s) stand out as times of spiritual failure.

I will recount the great things God has done in our lives. He sold our house in a miraculous way, provided for the funds to get us through our training, found my lost keys just off the highway in Utah :), guided us to an interest in the Philippines, and led us to a tribal location that did not yet have the Gospel. Here we are now, and we are pressing forward, guided by His Spirit, and your prayers. I am convinced that nothing in this world happens that is not somehow connected to God’s greater plan for the world.

What I am about to write may be a little disturbing to some who read this, and completely unbelievable to others (also it is probably not suitable to be read to children). Be that as it may – I write about what we see and pray that God gets the glory. The Palawano here do not know Christ yet and have centuries of animistic darkness holding them down. We believe that by your prayers and ours God will soon lead them out of that darkness into His glorious light…

It happened again

We heard that the young girl was getting married, and finally figured out that was the reason so many people were around. Every day for the past week there were kids out in front of our house playing soccer, volleyball, and badminton. Our porch was always full of people wanting to look at pictures. They especially like looking at pictures of themselves. :)

So then last night, they all started to go to bed in the house right next door feeling happy and contented. All was right with the world. It was dark with no moon, so people would be asleep early. Then it happened. All of a sudden there were screams, yelling, banging, crashing around. Screams of terror. “Keep him away!” “Help!” “Hold him down!” People jumping out of the windows of the house, off the porch, escaping through holes in the floor, and running in every direction just to get away. Some came running up to our house, holding especially their little kids.

Egsa, it’s Tabung again! He’s nemulpug! The bad spirit has him! He is trying to kill the children! Many of us were bitten by him!

I looked and there was his little brother, a boy of about 13 years old. He showed me his arm where he was bitten hard. There was a huge bruise.

So then the conversation follows as I try and find out more information.
Where is he now – did he run off into the jungle?
No, he is still in the house.
Is someone holding him?
Yes, there are 2 or 3 guys holding him, but they are not strong enough to hold him down. There are still children in the house in the room on the side, but they can’t get out. Can we stay in your storage shed, Egsa? He can’t get us there.
Well there is gasoline in there. I will have to move it. Let me go check on Tabung first.

I walked over to the house and went up on the porch, and there I saw him. He looked similar to the last time he had this affliction, only a bit worse this time. His eyes were wide open, and he was making a growling sound. He was crouched like a tiger ready to spring, facing the door of the room where the remaining children were being held for their protection. There were about 3 guys holding him down. I called his name. “Tabung!” No response – he was totally focused on the door. As he started to make a move for the door, the guys holding him held harder and called for one of the adults to start moving the children out of the room and out of the house. I looked at his face – it was the face of someone being controlled by something more powerful than himself. It was the face of evil. This is not the Tabung that I know and talk with every day.

Some of the men from the other side of the village came to help hold him down. By this time I had moved the gasoline out of our storage shed so the mothers could hide their children in there. We got everyone settled. I went back to our house to pray. Ginny and Abby had been praying already. So we all 3 prayed together. “Lord, we pray that you protect the people here from evil. We trust in your protection over our house and our family. We pray for the children here to be kept safe and the people to be delivered from fear. We pray especially for Tabung, that you will deliver him from this demonic presence that seems to affect him from time to time.”

Things were now settled for a bit – there were men guarding Tabung and holding him down during his fits, and the women and children were all hidden in various places in the village. Then suddenly we heard more commotion from the house. Shouts. The men running out of the house with their flashlights. I went out to talk with them. Sure enough, it turned out, he had broken their hold (7 of them holding him down) and had run off into the jungle. Nobody had any idea where he had gone. When he has this madness come upon him, he seems to have multiple times the normal strength of a man.

Well, as it turned out, he did come back in his right mind an hour or so later in the evening and went to his grandparents’ house. He told the people there to make sure that they kept the children away from him in case his malady returned. He didn’t know what had happened, but he had some idea. The children were taken away, but the men stayed with him all night. In the morning, he was physically fine, though emotionally spent.

The difference between this time that Tabung was sick and the first time, when we treated him for cerebral malaria, is that this time he has not been sick or physically weak during the day. In fact, he has been one of my main guys for a particular project I have been working on at our clinic, and has been able to work hard every day without a problem. During the day he is a perfectly normal guy. However on some nights he seems to have this type of madness come upon him. Before, he showed definite symptoms of another sickness in addition to the madness. This time, there is only the sporadic madness with no accompanying symptoms. When I talked to him the morning after, he said that he did not remember anything, but that he is beginning to feel separated from his own people now (as in they are scared of him and want to make sure they are sleeping somewhere far away).

As we thought and prayed about it, several things came to mind. First, we know there is an Enemy that wants to keep these people from hearing the Gospel. If we fail to recognize evil, we are sure to be defeated by it. We know that the teaching of the Gospel is coming soon, so this is an attempt by that enemy to keep the people in darkness, where they have remained for hundreds of years. Secondly, it seems that part of the strategy of the enemy may be to bring out the Gospel teaching prematurely, before the people are ready. If we bring out the Gospel teaching before the people have an understanding of sin, this gives an opportunity for cults to come in and usurp the authority over new life in the church. This has happened in many places, and we seek to avoid it by wisdom.

So instead of attempting to exorcise the demonic spirit right now, we ask for your prayers over him, us, and our families. God is doing a work in the hearts of the Palawanos right now, but they are not ready yet. We are plowing the ground, preparing the field for planting the seed. There is more than just this one incident affecting them. 3 weeks ago there were multiple people who were affected by this same type of spirit in one night, and they all had to be held down to keep from going after the children. Though this has not been a common type of malady in the past, it now seems to be increasing in frequency.

There are other things happening as well right now. The government program of financial assistance to the Palawanos for putting their kids in school has people concerned. They were very happy to get the money when it was offered. Now that the start of school is getting closer, they are realizing that putting their kids in a school 3 hours away is not going to be easy, and they are constantly talking about what they are going to do when school begins again in a couple of weeks.

So again, we are making a call to prayer. Prayer for the Palawanos to be drawn to Christ, drawn away from the darkness that has enveloped them for centuries. Prayer that they will question the teachings of the ancestors, understand their sinfulness before God, and look for a way of deliverance. We also call you to pray for us and our families. Pray for our team to be united in our work and fellowship. Pray that us and our kids will be protected from the attacks of the enemy, will be kept safe, and will remain faithful in trusting our loving Father.

Update May 2, 2011
Last night everyone in the village tried to sneak off to the houses up on the mountain so that they wouldn’t have to sleep near him. I talked to one of the dads, and he was very concerned that Tabung would kill one of his children. When they were out on the airstrip trying to sneak off, Tabung saw them all and went to join them. These are, after all, all his extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins. He is 18 years old and naturally feels a need to be with the people he knows and loves. So they ended up sleeping in the houses near us again, with several men sleeping close to Tabung to guard him in case he woke up in a fit of madness. Thankfully, nothing happened.

This is the spot where they told us someone fought with a spirit, killed it with a machete, and it fell down knocking a hole in the bushes.

Replacing the clinic wall

Repainting the wall on the other side.

The young man and his new bride.

adjustments to change

2011-04-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2011

We have only been back a few days. 3 people have showed symptoms of cerebral malaria. Only 1 of them has come to ask for medicine, and he is better now, though I don’t know yet if he is fully recovered. The people here still believe it is caused by a bad spirit. The human mind gravitates towards searching for a reason, and in the absence of a foundation in the truths of scientific observation, their minds will naturally tend towards the spirit world.

Nuutnuut said he saw a huge person big and dark (meitem, which means black or brown) and hairy. The creature looked at him, and his mind started getting dizzy. Then he started reaching towards people and grabbing them to bite them. This seems to be the common manifestation among the people here. The same thing happened to Selem. We gave them both medicine. Nuutnuut took his, but Selem threw hers up and asked for a different kind. There aren’t any other kinds that we have here. We will see if she gets better or progressively worse. Because they think it is a spirit, they don’t always come get medicine until it is really serious.

At least with Nuutnuut, his mother is wise enough to pursue getting medicine early on. That is what happened, and probably the reason he is well now. Selem is considered intelligent in her culture, as is her husband, as they know the jungle very well. They also do well with relationships with other people, and they do pretty well with us. However, they are not town savvy at all. Once we sent them to town to the dentist’s office, which we have done with many other people, and they couldn’t find it. They sat at the dentist’s house for hours waiting for her to come home, which she never did. They finally left, and he walked around with a toothache for a month or so. I hope that one day I can learn to pull teeth, as this would give them a relief from time to time from the incessant toothaches.

It will be interesting to see how this government program works out. They were told that they all have to build outhouses. They will not use outhouses – they move around too much. Well, Ipaya’s family does have one, and he already uses it because he is from another culture. Also, they don’t move around so much, but stay in the same house year after year. The others, though, they will not use them. They said they are supposed to build them for “visitors” when they come. I wonder who the government plans to send up here to visit on a regular basis.

Giving away handfuls of money has implications in many areas. It is not free money – the people are required to send their kids to school. This is good, because Palawanos are routinely taken advantage of by townspeople. Not all townspeople, of course, as there are plenty of nice people in town. Nevertheless, if they can speak Tagalog and do math, then it will be much easier for them to get along in the downriver culture.

However, giving out handfuls of money, especially in the quantities they are receiving, will require some adjustment in the thinking of those who receive it. Yesterday I was talking to a family who had received some 8500 pesos. They showed me a receipt they had for 200 pesos of goods they bought in town, and they showed me that they only had 1100 pesos left of the 8500. I asked where the other money went, and they said that they had bought 1 sack of rice for 1800 pesos, and some other dry goods for 1400 pesos. The man at the store where they purchased the dry goods, they said, refused to give change or a receipt for the 1400 pesos. Where is the rest of it, I asked. There should be around 5100 pesos remaining. They didn’t know. I wonder what they will do when the government overseer of the program calls them to give an account of the money (they are supposed to have receipts for everything).

The Lord calls us to do this work for His glory and for His sake. Today I will push to try and get some more direct language study in, on top of all my other duties. I look forward to the day when I can communicate clearly.

2011-04-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake... Philippians 1:29

Egsa! Nuutnuut is shaking and he is stiff! He is trying to eat us! He just returned from the downriver market and he is really sick! Quick we need medicine! He saw the giant bad person and it is trying to steal his soul! So we heard his mom frantically shouting outside our window last night. We asked if he has a fever, but they forgot to feel his forehead as they were holding him down. It is possible it is an effect of drinking from downriver, or also it could be another case of cerebral malaria. There are many cases of malaria right now because of the incessant rain bringing lots of mosquitoes. This is life among the mountain Palawano. We gave him some medicine for malaria and will continue to monitor things to see how they go.

We live in an area where time might seem like it stands still, yet if you observe carefully you can see how things change and people adjust, albeit at a slower pace than the outside world. We just returned from seeing our kids during their March break from school. In one of our first visits with people here in the tribe, I asked them if they had heard of the major Tsunami in Japan. No, they had not heard about it. I had to describe it to them – an earthquake that caused a really big wave, which wiped out several towns and killed many thousands of people.

Then we talked about the radiation spill in Japan. They have no idea what radiation is, and instead of trying to describe what radiation is and all about atoms and energy, I just told them that a giant machine was damaged by the waves, and it spilled poison out into the ground so that the people cannot return yet.

They have not yet heard about the continuous unrest in the Middle East. Even the one Muslim who lives in our village is only vaguely aware of those problems.

There are a few people from time to time who have radios. If they have a battery so that they can listen to the news in Tagalog, and there happens to be someone there who understands Tagalog, then they can sometimes get an idea of what is going on. Then the news spreads along the jungle grapevine, with quite a number of interesting variations!

To the Palawanos, the biggest thing that is happening right now is that it is raining during dry season. This means that the field that they just cut down in order to plant will not burn. The smart ones will not plant rice this year, because they know that without a burn there will be too many weeds and they will not get any kind of decent harvest. However, there are some who will try to plant rice anyway. For those who do this, they will end up wasting their seed rice. Those who don’t plant rice will clear an area and plant more cassava and sweet potato. Too much cassava over the long term, however, has some negative health effects. So we are thinking about how we are going to help the people through this.

The reason for the rain during the dry season, according to the teachings of the ancestors, is that somebody has committed incest. Incest to the Palawanos means more than just brother-sister or parent-child. It can also mean uncle-niece, or certain kinds of first and second cousins (this is what it usually means) involved together. Some first or second cousin marriages are permitted, and others are strictly forbidden, especially if the fathers are of the same bloodline. When a man is joking around too much with a first or second cousin of the same bloodline, an evil spirit might cause him and the girl to start having feelings for each other. So they try to generally avoid being too much of a jokester with the opposite sex. However, it can and does happen, and when it does the gods bring chastisement in the form of rain during the dry season. Right now people are looking around for who committed incest. If they find the guilty parties, the tribal elders will first talk to them to convince them to split up. If the offenders commit the sin again a second time, they are both killed and their bodies split in half and left to dry in the sun to appease the wrath of the gods. However, it has been a long time, they say, since someone has had to be killed because of this particular sin.

Culture change
There are 2 big things happening among the Palawanos right now which have the potential to significantly impact their culture. The first is the intervention of a government welfare program to help the poorest of the poor. The Palawano families who want to participate have to leave their children downriver at school every week, so that they only come home on the weekends, and then they receive government grants of cash. In fact, some people have been given significant amounts of cash – more than they have ever seen. They have been told this will be given out every 3 months or so.

One of the benefits of this program is help for the Palawanos to be able to buy food. This will be especially helpful this year since their rice harvest will be poor on account of too much rain during dry season. Another benefit is that many Palawano children will be attending school downriver, which will help them in the future to be able to communicate in Tagalog. This will enable them to trade more effectively, and help them know how to protect their ancestral homeland.

At the same time, however, we don’t know yet the many other ways this will impact the culture. Will they stop looking for food in the jungle because it is easier to go downriver and buy it? We will have to wait and see. What about the people who chose not to participate because they didn’t want to be separated from their kids? What will they think when their friends come back with loads of cash and always have food? Already there are rumors of one of the government workers that was carrying the cash to a distribution station downriver being murdered and the cash taken. The lessons of history make it easy to imagine the different kinds of things that can happen. This is a big prayer concern we have right now. Some men told me this morning that on account of the murder, they are all preparing their blowguns to be able to defend their homes if some of the bandits try to come up into this area.

The biggest thing up and coming for the mountain Palawanos is the teaching of the Gospel in their language! Our partners have been working on lessons, and we are continuing to study language and culture. Please pray that our minds will continue to be open to learning this language well so that we can communicate the Gospel to them. Please pray also that the Palawanos will soon see that even large grants of money to make their lives easier will not truly meet all their needs. Pray that we will be able to communicate these things in the lessons that we teach.

There are changes from time to time in every culture, because all cultures are in a state of flux. The main challenge we have is to be a witness for Christ in the midst of the change that is happening, and to share truth with the people about God, Christ, and their eternal condition.

Thank you all so much for your prayers for us and the Palawanos as we prepare for teaching the Gospel!

click here to see some more pictures

a type of jungle dove, shot for dinner

young father who recently went blind in one eye

kissed by a goat!

monitor lizard for dinner!

what its like when you return to the tribe from a long break

2011-02-03T01:18:00.000-08:00

post20110203

Here is my journal entry from yesterday and today, after seeing family in Texas over the holidays and having just returned to the tribe. I have changed the names of people and places from my actual journal entry.

2/2/11

Day 1 , Tuesday, 1 week before today - The first day back we entered into our house and the whole thing was covered in mold, from floor to ceiling all over. Every place we stepped there would be mold residue on our feet. We immediately set to work with a mop, filling a bucket with bleach and water and cleaning everything up. It took several hours to mop up the floors, and the bleach water was nasty. While I was mopping, Ginny and Abby were bleaching the walls and cabinets. Raji brought our dog back and told us she was a good dog while we were gone but didn’t eat much dog food. He said she prefers cassava.

A family from downriver brought one of the ladies to us this evening, by the name of Lani. She has been throwing up and cannot eat or drink anything, and is showing signs of cerebral malaria. They also told us that it hurt her really bad to urinate. We started her on a course of chloroquine for malaria and paracetamol to knock the fever down. She was able to swallow the medicine without throwing up, and we also gave her some oral rehydration drink to keep her hydrated.

Day 2 – Wednesday – Ginny opened the clinic and spent the morning there, while I continued to straighten and clean things up. The boxes of supplies for the next few months were mostly emptied. After Ginny returned from the clinic, she spent the afternoon cleaning out the main cupboard – emptying everything and removing all the residue of bugs and things that nested in there while we were gone. It was a tremendous amount of work. Ginny also started homeschool with Abby today.

We checked on Lani in the evening, and even though she was able to take her medicine last night, from about mid-day on today she has not been able to keep anything down. The slightest bit of drink was causing her to throw up, so she has not been able to follow up on her 2nd course of treatment for malaria. We sent word out that we may need to have her flown to the hospital. She also has continued to be in pain while urinating, but has not shown signs of dehydration yet. She has not been able to keep down the antibiotics for a possible UTI.

Day 3 – Thursday – In the morning, we checked on Lani again and her condition did not improve overnight, and is now showing signs of dehydration. We called in the airplane to take her to the hospital in Puerto Princesa. Fortunately one of our co-workers is there now and will be able to attend to her needs. We sent her out with her husband and mother. It was a challenge getting them into the airplane, and this took up all morning.

Got a text from the internet technician that he would be flying into Puerto Princesa on Friday. I told him to make sure and take the early 5 am bus from Puerto Princesa because it is a 3 hour walk to our place once the bus drops him off in Egnew.

I hiked down to Dihuba for the afternoon and talked with Pibak and the other folks there about things. I arranged for Dakisiyo to come with me to town on Saturday to pick up the internet tech. I asked about getting wood cut with a chainsaw and he told me that we needed to go to the Baranggay and get a permit, but that it would not be a problem. He said to let him know before I go so that he can come with me.

Day 4 – Friday – I continued working on straightening my office, and Ginny worked on finishing up the last of the boxes and had ladies come in and help bleach the walls and remaining cabinets. It has taken a tremendous amount of work to clean up from the mold.

The word from our partner is that Lani had both malaria and a kidney infection. They put her on an IV and gave her antibiotics as well as malaria medicine. They are saying she will need at least 2 days in the hospital.

In my office I needed to install a new wire for a 110V connection so that I could run off the small 110V inverter instead of the large 220V inverter when I don’t need a lot of power. This took some time to measure and install. I did a small engineering calculation, and plotted the balance current as a function of light bulb wattage on a double power supply system to determine the correct size light bulb to use as a current limiter. That was fun, reminded me of the old days. I also straightened my office here to be able to be ready for when I can start full time language again, even though I know that won’t be for awhile yet.

Day 5 – Saturday – I hiked down with 3 guys from here to meet the internet technician coming off the bus. When we got to Egnew, because the bus was not going to arrive for another hour and a half, we went to Pibak’s house in town, where Dakisiyo and Tibak’s kids stay and go to school. It is a decent little house with a nice arrangement and a large porch. We talked to the neighbors a bit also, and she had me look at her solar panels and batteries to see if I could fix them. Then she told me the batteries were 8 years old, and I told her that is why they don’t work anymore. Batteries never last that long.

The internet technician arrived by bus, and we were able to hike back up to our place. He spent all afternoon and evening troubleshooting the satellite dish, and could not get it to connect at all. He decided the problem must be the modem, and he called his boss and asked them to send another modem. I stayed with him the whole time just in case he needed anything.

Day 6 – Sunday – the internet technician hiked out in the morning to take the early bus back to Puerto Princesa to pick up the new modem. It is Sunday, and normally we would have had a time of fellowship, but we were arranging things at the last minute because the final decision on whether or not the tech was going to go out was not made until this morning. We had to see if leaving the power on the satellite overnight would make it connect, but it did not. The tech had his azimuth aligned correctly, but the satellite still would not connect.

Ginny and Abby and I were able to spend a lot of good time together today. We were able to go swimming at the swimming hole together where the last flood washed out 2 huge nice areas to swim in. It was glorious. After swimming there for some time, some of the tribal people came out with a net and their spear guns to fish. There were a lot of fish. We helped hold the net while they speared fish and caught lots. I was able to grab 2 fish that got caught in the net, and Ginny was able to grab one. It was a great time to be together and enjoy life here. After that fun afternoon, we went home, showered, and then went over to Elise’s for dinner and some singing. We had a very nice time.

We also got word today that the patient, Lani, was discharged from the hospital and would be coming home on the bus tomorrow. Maybe she will be on the same bus as the internet technician.

Day 7 – Monday – I hike out again in the morning to meet the internet technician at the bus again and bring him back. When we arrived at our place, we ate, and then he immediately went to work again. While he was testing things through the afternoon, Elise screamed as she was cleaning out one of her cabinets. There was a big brown snake curled up in it when she opened it. She called Ikli over (he lives right next door), and he and I helped push the snake out to a position where he could kill it with his machete. After he stuck it in the head with the machete, I told him to cut the head completely off. He didn’t want to, because he said that if you cut off a snake’s head, that will make more snakes come to that same area. That is an interesting superstition that I had not heard before. I made a mental note to explore that particular belief more at a later date.

The new modem didn’t work, just like the old one, so we had to lower the satellite dish to the ground and run tests on it down there. The tech decided he wanted to work late into the night, and we didn’t want him working on the roof at night, as it would be dangerous and slippery, so having the dish on the ground would make for much easier troubleshooting. I stayed with him most of the time to be able to help if necessary, although he pretty much did all the work. After about 8 pm, he told me he would just keep on working that night until he got it going, and so I could go home. At about 9:30 Elise called over to us to tell us that he had managed to finally connect to the satellite. It turned out that in our location, there happens to be some other satellite at the exact same azimuth, although a slightly different elevation, and he had been homing in on that one instead of the correct one. Once he and his home office were able to get that cleared up, we were able to get the internet back up and running.

We did not see Lani or her companions on the bus or on the hike, but that was because they took a different bus than the one the tech was on. We probably just missed them.

Day 8 – Tuesday – The tech was up early and re-installing the satellite dish on Elise’s roof so that he could have it all set up and hike out in time to catch the last bus going to Puerto Princesa. He got the connection going, and everything looked good. It took all morning, but he finally managed to be able to leave at about 10:15 am. He had a lot of walking – 4 days in a row walking to or from our place to town, about 3 hours, along with a 7 hour bus ride! He must have been exhausted.

I was finally able to download the 250 emails or so that I had received in the last 2 weeks, and Ginny was able to do the same. We are still sorting through them all.

This afternoon I went up to Ehud for the first time since I had been back. Raji had said he was going to be there, but apparently he was fishing the whole time. I spent a lot of time talking to 3 of the tribal ladies and one of the tribal men in the village before coming home.

Day 9 – Wednesday – today – my first “free” day since we have been back. When I say “free”, I only mean that I didn’t have anything that was pressing with an immediate need today. My plan was to do 2 hours of language review this morning and then press on with my other work, like writing this journal. I have several high priority projects that I have to focus on before I will be able to get back into full time language, but just being here and being around the tribal people gives some good exposure. We had a ton of weeds around the house, way too much for me to be able to clear on my own, so some of the tribal ladies came by to help (for pay of course, which they like). It is important to keep the weeds down around the house in order to prevent snakes from coming into the house.

We received a text message from Sarah’s dorm parents this morning that said Sarah was throwing up and was sick. This is always something that challenges our faith – to be able to know that our kids are being well taken care of while we are away. We do believe they are and are thankful for the dorm parents taking care of their needs. However, it is still a challenge of faith to not be able to be there when your own child is sick. This is one of the sacrifices we make for the Gospel, and so we give it to the Lord.

We have had some time in between the busy-ness to reflect on our future and the things going on here in the tribe. We pray for the continued efforts our partner is making in writing the Gospel lessons, as this is an enormous task and a tremendous responsibility. I have many projects to do in the next few weeks, and I hope I can push through them all quickly in order to be able to get back into language study sooner rather than later. Lord willing, when the time comes to teach the Gospel, my language will be high enough to help communicate understanding to the Palawanos, even if I am not the one doing the actual teaching.

In the afternoon, I dug up some cassava to cook for the dog, and dried out my peanuts that I harvested the first day. I will re-plant the peanuts soon. Then I sat down to write this journal. Wow, now I am finished. It has been a long week. Praise God for his goodness, and may He make Sarah better, and may He still my heart with peace about that.

2/3/2011
Last night after dinner, Ikli came by and invited me to go out and see a palumak. This is when the river fish are schooling to spawn in a certain shallow area of the river, and the tribal folks take advantage of this by catching lots of them in their nets. So we hiked down to the river. When we got close to the area, we turned off our flashlights and got very quiet. It was a bit precarious, wading through the river in the dark, with only starlight to see by, and trying not to slip on the slippery rocks underneath. We managed to make it there, and Ikli pointed out to me the area where the fish had schooled. There was a lot of thrashing about in the water, so we sat down quietly and he got his net ready. Then, quick as a flash, he jumped into the middle of the school and scooped up a ton of fish! He did this 4 times in order to fill his carrying pouch with fish.

In between scooping fish, we were sitting there on a rock in the middle of the river looking up at the stars. This gave us a chance to talk about the Creator God, and how great and mighty He is to make all those stars, as well as everything else. I asked him what he thought about the lessons he was going through with our partner, and he said he was enjoying them. He asked about why there are so many different languages in the world, and we talked about that some as well. On the way back home he said he had heard about tigers, and he was glad there are no tigers in the jungles here in Palawan. I told him that there probably were in the past, but people probably killed them off. He thought that was a good idea, to kill off all the tigers so that they wouldn’t eat children as well as the other animals that people need to eat. I told him that some people think it is bad to kill tigers, and he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to have living tigers.

Update on Tabung's sickness

2010-11-19T01:48:00.001-08:00

Now that I have been with the tribal people one night when the patient is having one of his episodes of sickness, I understand more about why they describe it the way they do.

Night before last, about 7 pm (already dark) they came to our house and asked if I could help attend to young Tabung (he is about 20 years old), as he was beginning to have one of his fits of madness. So I went over there, and at first the young man was huddled with his head down, people around him on all sides. He was coherent for the time being. I put my hand on his forehead, and then I noticed – he was burning up.

The funny thing is we had asked them before if he had a fever, and they said no. At first I didn’t understand why they didn’t notice that he was burning up, but now after having watched one of the fits I do. When the fit of madness begins, they are so focused on holding him down they don’t pay much attention to anything else.

Here is what happened. He started to tense up and his eyes got real big and wide. Everyone jumped on him, with 2 or 3 people holding each limb and one person holding his head from behind. He would try and grab and bite at people but was restrained. While people were holding him down, the one who was holding him by the head from behind would yell and spit at what he believed was the spirit affecting the patient. In the corner the older shaman was continuously talking and commanding the spirit affecting the patient to leave.

As I watched, it occurred to me that a high fever with fits of madness in a malaria prone area most likely equals cerebral malaria. So I went back to our house and we looked it up in the book. Sure enough, most of the symptoms matched. So we brought him chloroquine to take. In between his fits of madness he would be coherent enough to talk and take the medicine, so he was able to swallow it down.

As I write this, the chloroquine seems to have had the desired effect, though he is not completely well yet. All the people in the village believe he is better because the shaman chased the bad spirit away with a machete. Please continue to pray for Tabung and the others, because there is a spiritual battle going on for the hearts and minds of the Palawanos.

Blessings in Christ to you all

“My nephew tried to eat my kid last night, we were really scared…”

2010-11-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. ~John 10:27-28

In times of uncertainty, fear of the future about the economy, and a concern for the direction the world is growing, there is one thing that we who believe have as a constant source of hope. The Word of God is certain, and God’s promises are sure – a promise of eternal life, joy, and fellowship with Him for those who believe. We also have a promise of protection from evil (as quoted above), though we may go through trials. We can hold to these promises, even if the economy turns sour, or conflict in this world runs its course, or trials come upon us in this life.

The Palawano that are around us do not have any such hope or certainty of eternal life, or protection from evil. This is a short story of an incident that happened in our village last week.

We were just getting ready to settle down for the night when we heard shouting and banging coming from the tribal house on the other side of the path.
Screams. Bang, smash. Yelling. Someone running through the grass. Shouting. Quiet for awhile. Someone leaving the house with a flashlight, heading down the path. 10 minutes later 2 people coming back toward the house with flashlights. More yelling. Shouts. Someone running up and down the hill behind our house with a flashlight, shouting, looking for something. More banging. Then quiet.

So the next morning I got up to investigate. I went over there. Before I had a chance to ask anything, they told me all about it, in very excited voices –
Egsa nemulpug si Tabung kegabi! Megkabi kenye meyaát teaw. Kimputan ye si Lirin, kinaget ye ne tuldo, empeda inagew ko kenye. Ba kaya pe pinegewidan dye kemenaken ko, esta ba embe surungan ye et lumpád beke melegiu! Kela takut kay kegabi.

Roughly translated, that means–
Egsa, Tabung was demonized last night! A bad spirit got close to him. He grabbed Lirin and bit her finger, but I quickly grabbed her back and pulled away. If they hadn’t held down my nephew, I don’t know where he would have gone flying off and running away! We were really scared last night.

As I investigated more of the story, it became clear they were thinking there was some kind of demonic possession involved here. The same thing actually happened to another girl about a week before, but with less violent activity. The symptoms are that at night the person wakes up, but his or her mind is gone. Sometimes a person with this kind of sickness will go around trying to grab people and eat them, and sometimes they will just run away. Sometimes they will do both. They said that the young man this time had seen a giant spirit called a Lenggam, and it took his mind away and was making him attack people. Then he would try to run off into the forest. I talked to the young man in the morning and he was sitting there feeling ok, but he seemed a bit embarrassed because he knew this was happening to him. I asked him if he remembered anything and he said no.

They say that with this kind of sickness if the person is not treated real soon, they will be carried off by the bad spirit into the jungle and nobody will ever see them again. They actually believe the afflicted person will be picked up like an eagle picks up a snake and carried over the mountains somewhere where he will be eaten. The solution is to get a powerful shaman to remove the sickness. There is a shaman who lives a 2 day hike away, and they say he can see the bad spirits, so he knows how to get exorcise them.

Well, this wasn’t the end. The next night there was a wedding at the village downriver from us. Lots and lots of people went there. The next day when everyone came back, I asked around to find out if anything happened. Sure enough, Tabung had been afflicted again the same way. Only this time it was more powerful. He had grabbed one of the strongest guys in the village and bitten down hard on his hand. Several people grabbed him and forced his jaws open so the other guy could pull his hand out (I saw the bruises later, and he said it hurts). Lots of people were there and witnessed the event. They all said it took about 14 people to hold him down until the sickness passed. When there were only 10 people holding him down, he was too strong for them and got away and ran off into the jungle, but he came back, because the sickness had not yet fully overpowered him. More people grabbed him and held him down until the sickness passed.

So the next day the father took the young man to an albolariyo in town (an albolariyo is a folk healer and is not a tribal person). The father is not Palawano, but is married to one, so I assume that is the reason he went to an albolaryo instead of taking the 2 day trip to another village where the powerful shaman lives. The albolariyo did some kind of rituals to cast away the demon, and afterwards they brought the boy back home. I asked him, and he said he felt the spirit leave when the albolariyo was doing chants over him. As soon as they came back they prepared a pasasalamat, a feast as a thank offering to Empu, which is their name for God. The local shaman explained to me that in a pasasalamat they are only calling on Empu, but in other ceremonies like an umanat, they call on multiple different spirits.

I talked to Tabung after the feast and he said he felt better, but his eyes told me he was still scared. He has bruises and scabs all over his neck from where they had to hold him down.

This boy, or young man, Tabung, is very vulnerable right now. His father practices a religion that teaches that they have a right to abuse Christians, animists, or anyone else who is not of the same religion. His father has also murdered people in the past, but has in the last few years seemingly tried to start living a life settled down and raising his family in peace. Yet there is no peace in that family. Tabung is the 3^rd oldest, and both the older 2 siblings have had this same kind of sickness/ spiritual attack on them in the past. We will be teaching the Gospel soon to these people, but we expect the father will forbid anyone in his family from listening to the teaching because it is not of his “superior” religion. Yet the only thing that will deliver them from the darkness they are in is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Please pray for the Palawanos as God prepares their hearts to hear the Gospel for the first time soon. Pray also for our partners as they prepare the Gospel lessons, that they will be clear. Pray that Tabung and their family will be allowed to hear the teaching one day. Pray for protection for Tabung from the evil spirits that seek to do him harm. Pray that the Palawanos will soon be delivered from darkness into the glorious light of Christ. Pray that our language and culture studies will be effective so that we can communicate clearly with the Palawano people.

That is the biggest event from Palawano land recently. We are so thankful for your prayers and support as we continue to look to the Lord and study the Palawano language and culture! May God bless each and every one of you!

Blessings in Christ

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At the pasasalamat feast to give thanks for deliverance from the demonic spirit (faces are obscured for posting)

Tribal kids are fascinated by my drill press

Raji

2010-10-30T00:40:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a little about Raji and his life, so you can pray for him. He is one of the middle sons of the main clan that lives in our area. When he was a kid, he told me, he chopped down a tree near a river, and the tree fell on the knee of a marunding spirit that lived there. The marunding spirit got angry and afflicted Raji’s knees in revenge. They both got infected, and one swelled up to the size of a watermelon. He was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, I think. Everyone remembers Raji’s swollen knees. The infection caused some permanent damage to his knees, so that he is not able to carry anything heavy very far. Most of the Palawanos head up to the high mountains several times a year to harvest the tree sap called begtik, but Raji is unable to go with them. When you look at his legs, they are considerably smaller and weaker than other men his age, but as long as he doesn’t carry lots of heavy loads, he seems to get around ok now.

About 5 years ago, a lady in one of the 2 clans living here (we’ll call her Rumita) lost her husband. It was a very unexpected death, apparently. He had been sick, but had just recovered and decided to work hard in his field all day. A hard day of work, with little water, combined with a liver that had frequently fought off malaria and a weekly bout of drunkenness is what did him in. All of a sudden he just keeled over. He was a fairly young man, too, late 30s or early 40s. They buried him right away (as is their custom), and the main witch doctor told his spirit not to come back to the village, that they were going to take care of his wife and kids. Nobody else could see his spirit except the witch doctor, and so afterwards they all asked, “What was he (his spirit) wearing when you talked to him?”

The witch doctor turned to one of the men who helped bury the dead man and asked, “What was he wearing when we buried him?”

The helper replied, “A striped t-shirt.”

So the witch doctor turned to the other Palawanos and said, “He was wearing a striped t-shirt.”

Apparently they all wailed at the truth of this, that the witch doctor really could see and had talked to the dead man’s spirit.

Over the next year, several men came and begged for Rumita to become their 2^nd wife. She was apparently a very hard worker. One of the men, Panin, was said to have gotten up and walked around his house at night several nights in a row wailing for the desire of taking Rumita as a 2^nd wife. He was unsuccessful, and later he claimed that a bad spirit had affected him and made him do that. Other men were responding similarly, although perhaps not as dramatic as Panin.

However, there was 1 young man, Raji, who knew the right cards to play. He did not have a wife yet, and he knew that Rumita was a hard worker. He actually was good friends with her oldest son, as there were probably less than 10 years difference between them. He knew that with her already having 4 kids of her own that were still alive (she had 6 or 7 others that died), he would not be able to have lots of his own offspring. However, he had grown fond of the 3 youngest kids of Rumita, so he started secretly making arrangements to be the one that would be allowed to marry her. They were first cousins, but it is not forbidden to marry first cousins of this kind. (The kind of first cousins that are forbidden to marry are the kind where the 2 fathers are brothers – then they are said to have the same blood. Anyone who marries like this will be executed and cut in half, laid out without burial, to appease the anger of Empu.) In this case, however, Raji’s father was the older brother of Rumita’s mother, so they did not have the same blood and it was acceptable to marry.

They still had to make arrangements in secret, though, as is custom with all the mountain Palawanos. Whenever someone wants to marry, they are only supposed to tell their parents and their local chieftains, who will approve or disapprove the marriages. If they tell anyone else, word will get around and someone will try and make a stink about it so as to stop the marriage (usually out of jealousy or some similar reason). Eventually, they do let people know, usually about a week or so before the wedding. So the arrangements were made, and Raji married Rumita. They eventually had 1 son, and have decided to stop having children after that.

When we joined the team, Raji seemed like a diligent guy who could speak a little Tagalog, so I asked him to be my language helper. That is where we are now. I know a lot about his family and we are pretty good friends. He is my main source of information about the spirit world, as both he and his wife are full believers in Palawano animism.

Please pray for Raji, Rumita, her son Runiliyo and their other children that their hearts will be open to hearing and understanding the Gospel of Christ when we get to the point that we are able to teach them.

They have 3 of the fat guy that lives downriver…

2010-10-30T00:39:00.001-07:00

Now that we are back in the tribe and things are starting to settle down a bit, I am going to make the effort to start regularly updating this thing. Right now I am fighting off a case of amoeba or giardia – wow, the medicine really saps your energy when you are taking it. The first 2 days of metronidazole, well, I will just say I was in a lot of pain. I am on the 3^rd day now, and the book says my body should start getting used to the medicine. I think it is, because I have enough energy today to get up and walk around a bit.

When the evaluator came in, I had to do what are called “communication tasks.” One of these was to describe in the Palawano language a place that my language helper had never seen before. I tried to describe the airfield we lease across the mountains. As part of it, I wanted to say that the caretakers there have 3 dogs. The Palawano word for dog is ideng. The correct way to say this would be tege ideng dye talo. I knew enough not to say tege adung dye talo, because that would be saying they have 3 noses. But I did slip up and say tege idung dye talo. The problem is, I said idung instead of ideng. Well, idung doesn’t mean anything, except that it is the name of a fat guy that lives downriver. So in effect, I said, They have 3 of the fat guy that lives downriver.

This set them off in quite a laugh. I had my language helper there, Raji, and another helper, Tabung. They couldn’t stop laughing at my mistake! Well, we all had a good laugh about it.

2010-10-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

A storm for every season…
The most powerful storm in a decade, in terms of wind speed, just passed through Northern Luzon, very far from us here in Palawan, causing a lot of damage. The season right now in the Philippines is tag-bagyo, which means typhoon season. Here is an interesting little word study. In the USA, our word for typhoon is hurricane. So when we arrived in the Philippines we had to start getting used to the word typhoon. Then as we started learning Tagalog, we found out that the word for typhoon in Tagalog was bagyo. As we got a little deeper in the language, we found out that the word bagyo doesn’t exactly mean the same as typhoon, because some people in Manila would call it a bagyo whenever there was any kind of heavy storm, whether or not there was a typhoon looming out there in the Pacific ready to come down on us. If there was no actual typhoon out there, sometimes people would say “It’s not a real bagyo. It’s just strong enough to be like a bagyo.”

When we arrived in the tribe, whenever there was a heavy rain storm, the people would say barat. So I asked my friend what is Tagalog for barat, and he said that it was bagyo. Ok, I thought, either a typhoon or a heavy storm. However, then when I asked how many barat hit this area over the year, they started naming them. Storm of the hen, storm of the chick, storm of the sky-fish, storm of the coconut, storm of the dead tree, crumbling of the pangi leaves. You could almost call a barat a “season” in the English sense because sometimes one may last one and off for up to 3 weeks or longer, but it depends more on the characteristics of the storm than on a particular time of year.

Right now is the barat et buntél, storm of the sky-fish, or season of the sky-fish. The god Asok is chasing a buntél fish up around the river in the sky, and as he tries to spear it, the fish flaps and brings intermittent bursts of rain and wind down on us. He is currently out over the ocean, which means the rains come from that direction, and therefore the river will not flood to any great extent. (If the rains came from up in the mountains instead of down towards the ocean, we would get big floods along with the rain, because the rain in the mountains fills up all the tributaries which then pour into the main river that runs by our place.) As the fish flaps around, it also causes the wind to blow intermittently with the bursts of rain. In the mind of the mountain-dwelling Palawano, this is why the rains are acting like they are right now.

In the outside world, there is a super-typhoon that just passed over the northern end of the country. The Philippines named it “typhoon Juan”, but internationally it had the name “typhoon Megi.” The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, & Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) correctly predicted the landfall in Isabela province (the other international agencies had projected a more northerly course). Authorities evacuated the predicted landfall area, and there were only about 13 fatalities, which is pretty amazing for such a powerful storm (well done to the PAGASA people for their correct assessment). There was however massive damage, with the storm destroying a significant portion of the country’s rice harvest for the year and flattening at least 3 towns up in that area. Down here in Palawan, the storm way up north drew moisture off the South China Sea, blew it over the Palawano territories, giving us intermittent bursts of rain and wind coming in off the ocean. Hence, Asok is chasing his fish.

And all this ties into the use of the word barat. If you ask a Palawano what barat means in Tagalog, he will say bagyo. If you ask a Filipino what bagyo means in English, he will say a typhoon. However, as you can now see, without understanding the cultural implications of the meaning of that word, there can be a lot of misunderstanding on both sides of the conversation. For example, if someone is trying to talk to Palawanos about the impact of a typhoon on northern Luzon through a translator, the Palawanos are thinking about which barat (if it is Asok chasing his fish or the mother hen flapping her wings to bring rain down, etc.), and what the characteristics of it are, while the person talking goes on about a typhoon coming in from the Pacific and slamming into the mountains. The communicator is talking wind and rain, evacuations and damage, while the listeners are wondering if Asok was chasing his fish or the mother hen was flapping her wings to knock heavy rain on the people. So the attempt to communicate misses the mark, because the communicator did not understand how his listeners would interpret what he was saying. That is just another example of why it is important to study the language and the culture when attempting to communicate the Gospel of Christ to a group of people that have not heard before.

Consultant visits, travels, seeing our kids
The last few weeks have been very busy as always. Our consultant came in and gave us some help on language learning. After observing and watching me for a few days, he observed that while my understanding is very high, I am making a lot of mistakes in my speech. So I am tasked to focus on correctness of speech over the next few months. It was really good to get his help.

When the consultant visit for us was over, I accompanied him to another island where some friends of ours are missionaries to a different language group. Together we assisted them in their language studies. Afterwards our kids came in from Manila and we were able to spend a week with them here in the tribe. The tribal people were mostly gone for the week, because many of them had gone upriver for the rice offering of the village there.

It was really good to have our kids here and spend a week with them! We visited with Maman and Minan (Uncle and Aunty), and some of the other folks that didn’t go upriver. Maman told the kids stories about the cannibals that used to live in this area, how they had yellow blood and vertical eyes, and how they were chased away by American soldiers with machine guns after World War 2. It was nice to be together, play games, swim in the river, and let the kids relax from school for their October break. We will see them again in December – please be praying that they will continue to work hard and grow in faith, and that we will be able to have good communication with them while we are apart.

We have some prayer requests that we would like to put before you all. One of us took the kids out to Puerto Princesa to put them on the plane back to Manila. She also took Maman out because he has had a problem in the back of his knee, with some kind of swelling making it difficult for him to walk. In this place, if someone cannot walk, they cannot really live because the environment here is so rugged. So here are our prayer requests:
-         That the doctor would be able to quickly determine what is wrong with Maman’s knee, and if it is surgery to be able to take care of the problem quickly so they can come home.
-         That as our partners write the Gospel lessons, the message will be clear and the hearts and minds of the Palawano will be prepared to hear, understand, and believe.
-         That our language study will progress smoothly and quickly, and we will learn to speak more clearly and effectively, as well as deepen our understanding of the language and culture.
-         That our kids in Manila will have a good semester and have happy hearts, pressing on in good faith. Pray that they will both stay safe in their sporting endeavors, especially our oldest as he plays rugby.
-         That our youngest here in the tribe with us will be able to make deeper friendships with some of the tribal kids, and that the tribal kids, in particular girls her age, will come around more often so that she has the opportunity to make friends with them. Also pray that she will pick up more of the language.
-         Our next door neighbor friend when we lived in Manila just passed away very suddenly from a stroke. Please pray for his family. He was not very old, so this was very unexpected. He was always a help to us when we lived in Manila and we are very sad to see him go.

flooded river

worms to eat

family swim

visitation from space aliens

The millipede stone makes you look like lots of people...

2010-09-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Magic stones abound here. I suppose they should really be called pebbles, because they are mostly small items. And they abound only in the sense that they are a big part of the culture in the minds of the people. There are not necessarily that many magic stones. You are not supposed to go out looking for them. You basically just have to happen to find them. A few people have them around here, probably like around 1 out of 10 people. If you happen to find one, put it away and take good care of it, because they are very valuable.

Usually they are found in different kinds of food. The taro stone, for example, was found by a shaman who was eating his taro root, and there happened to be a small smooth black stone inside one of the roots. This stone gave him the power to reduce or remove someone’s anger. Just like when you cook the leaves of this plant – you fill up your pot with the leaves, but when you cook them the visible amount in the pot shrinks down to much less than what you filled it to. So it is with the taro stone – if you have it, and someone is angry and comes looking for you, when they start to get near you, their anger will slowly be reduced. That way, by the time they arrive where you are, their anger will have gone away completely. That is the power of the taro stone.

The centipede stone is another one. If you see a centipede carrying a small rock, you pin it down until it drops the rock, and then you take the stone. This gives you the power to win at gambling, because a centipede is aggressive and hurts anything that bothers it. So you will most likely win, and when you win, whoever you beat will be afraid to hurt you in their anger because of the aggressiveness of the centipede. Note that gambling is not actually part of Palawano culture, but it has been introduced by the lowland people, and this stone specifically applies to relationships Palawanos have with lowlanders who gamble.

One of the guys here was eating monkey one time, and he found a stone in the monkey. So he kept it as his monkey stone. The monkey stone made him especially adept at climbing trees, they say. I asked if he was better than other people at climbing trees, and they said, “about the same.” But the monkey stone makes him really good at climbing trees, and he is not afraid when he gets up high. Also if there is a tree all by itself, with no other trees next to it, he will still be able to climb it easily.

The thunder stone is in a class all by itself and has multiple special powers. It was found when lightning hit a tree (which they said was “bit by thunder”) next to someone’s house, and the stone came out. It gives someone the power to call down thunder and heavy rain on a person who has been threatening someone else.

The coconut stone is really special. It makes a person handsome! Ah, so that is why his wife married him… :) If you find this stone and put it in a jar with oil in it, and then put the coconut oil in your hair, you look especially good. It also makes people think you are a good person, as in, not someone who would start a fight. Like a peacemaker of sorts. For that reason, people won’t want to start a fight with you.

The millipede stone is the one that I found the most intriguing. It makes you look like you are lots of people! If you see a millipede carrying a stone, take it, because it will afford you some special protection. As long as you have your millipede stone, when you go into town or to the market alone, the people there will see lots of people coming, not just you by yourself. Because of this, they will not mess with you – you know, safety in numbers.

I had heard before about the very important rock that the chief found a long time ago, but I didn’t know there were multiple classes of magic rocks before all this came out a few days ago. It is interesting how all this came about. I was asking questions about what someone should do if they find different things walking through the forest. I was asking about items of different value in order to compare the pattern of speech regarding finding things of great value (like lots of money) to finding things of basically no value. Since rocks are very common, I figured they had no value, so I asked my language helper what he would do if he found a box with a rock in it in the forest. Well, ironically there was a treasure trove of information in asking about finding a rock!

Life in the jungle continues…

why there are so few fish in the river today

2010-09-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my language helper the other day, asking if he knew how to swim as a kid. He said no, because there were no deep pools in the river when he was a kid. I was wondering about this, because the river is full of deep pools all up and down the river, and people talk about how in the past the pools were much deeper. So I asked him to explain.

It’s like this, egsa. When I was a baby there were many many deep pools in the river. There were also many many fish. In all the deep pools of the river you could just go and fish whenever you wanted and catch lots of fish. I don’t remember it because I was only a baby, but my parents and my older siblings told me about it. One day one of our friends went down river to town and bought some poison over the counter. He had decided to use it to catch fish. He went to one of the big pools in the river and threw out the poison. He caught lots and lots of fish. Way more fish than he could eat – there were a lot that were wasted. They had to bury the extra fish by the side of the river.

The river god saw this and was angry so he sent a big flood. The big flood washed all the fish away and filled in all the deep pools with rocks so that they were shallow now. So when I was old enough to start swimming, there weren’t any deep pools for me to swim in. Later when I was older, there were other floods that washed out some of the deep pools, so I was able to learn to swim. But they have never gotten as deep as before the big flood.

We knew about the big flood – everyone talks about it. It happened about 4 or 5 years before the first missionaries arrived here. It actually filled in the area where our airstrip is now with lots of rocks and mud – giving it a good foundation.

If there is some kind of disaster, like a big flood, or a drought, or the crops are all eaten by bugs, these are considered a judgment by the gods because of a particular sin that someone has committed. When we were back in the States for the summer, 2 young couples got married here. However, they did it the wrong way – they just got together without involving the chief or anyone from their respective families. They were both fined a very high fine – 1000 pesos each. That is about 25 dollars. They also had to give the chief a white chicken and a ceramic plate to appease the wrath of their deity, so that he will not bring upon them another crop failure, landslides, big flood, or whatever he chooses to punish them with. He cut the chicken in half, threw half in the river and half in the air (that should stop the flood and make sure everyone gets enough rain for their crops). Then he smashed the ceramic plate, symbolizing that their sin was broken.

We have several prayer requests right now for things coming up, so we would appreciate if you would lift these things up!

I have a language evaluation coming up in a week and a half. Please pray for my mind to be clear during the process so that the consultant will be able to accurately determine where I really stand in the language!
Our partners are preparing the Gospel lessons for the beginning of teaching the Gospel to the Palawanos! Please pray for wisdom and guidance as the lessons are written, and that the hearts of the Palawanos will be prepared to listen to the message and receive it with joy! The process of writing lessons will take a few months, so please pray also that they are able to take the time to make things clear and easy to understand.
After my language evaluation, I will be flying out with the consultant to visit some of the other tribes and assist in their language evaluations. Please pray for safe travels!
There have been a number of problems between Palawanos and Visayan people that live down river. These have mostly been problems because they sell alcohol every Thursday at the market there, and men get drunk, and then they haul off and start hitting each other. Things have recently escalated into threats of more extreme violence, with some men down river threatening to come up here and kill the Palawano men they got in a fight with. Please pray that peace will rule and people will calm down and get their heads on straight about this.
One of our son’s teachers at the missionary kids’ school, who also happens to be his rugby coach, has been very low on support and has not yet returned to the Philippines. (In fact, many teachers have been so low on support that they could not come to the school this year, and some important classes have been cancelled). We would ask you all to pray that the Lord would raise up more support for this man’s ministry. We feel that he in particular is a strong benefit to the school and our kids, and is also supposed to be Isaac’s bible teacher next semester. In particular, if you know of anyone that is looking to support a missionary but doesn’t know where to give, we have the information on how to support this individual, and you can email us.

After our language evaluation and my assistance to the other tribes, our kids will have their October break from school, and will fly into the tribe to be with us. We are looking forward to that!

Blessings to you all in Christ for the Gospel

Fishing is a regular source of protein for the people.There used to be many more fish in the river before the big flood, according to what people say.

someone from downriver cut up this tree for wood, but before it was all used up the remainder was washed away in a flood last week

rattan vines from the jungle cut up and sold by the bulk to furniture makers is a source of income for the Palawanos


This young man needed stitches. He said the reason he cut himself was that he was working on a Friday, his holy day, and so he was punished for that by the spirits, his god, or bad luck when he accidentally sliced himself.		.

cooking rice over an open fire in a grass house

Runiliyu

2010-08-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

One of the kids here in Palawano land is called Runiliyu (not his real name). He is one of the first kids that was open and friendly to us. He is about 10 years old (we think – nobody really knows how old anybody is). When we first moved in, he showed our kids where the swimming hole was and how to jump off the rocks into the deep part of the water so they wouldn’t get hurt. He is always helpful, and is one of the few people that seems to give to others without expecting anything in return. He seems to have some kind of natural noble character.

One of the early incidents with him was when our kids were all swimming together and he slipped on a rock by the swimming hole and hit his head, causing a big gash. All the other tribal kids looked at him and pointed and laughed, calling him “stupid” for falling and hitting his head. That is what they do when other kids get hurt. Our son gave him a piggy back ride up from the swimming hole back to the medical clinic where we stitched him up.

Even though there was that one incident, the other tribal kids do respect him. There are not really a lot of kids around, because the Palawanos live in such a scattered lifestyle. Each family lives out at their own farm, although sometimes 2 or 3 extended families choose to live close to each other, making what seems to be almost a small village. Runiliyu lives in a family of 7. Several of his brothers and sisters died when they were babies, before the missionaries came here and started giving out malaria medicine. His father died about 4 years ago due to complications from malaria and a liver destroyed by alcohol. Since then his mother re-married and added one baby to the family. His older brother is deaf and has a hard time getting along with people, so Runiliyu has sort of taken over the role of being the respectable oldest son of the family.

The other day I went with him to the jungle where he climbed up a 50+ foot tall tree to get some natural fruit, which he later shared with our family. It was amazing to see him scale up this vertical tree with ease to get the fruit up at the top of the tree.

This morning I needed someone light to climb up on my solar panels and clean them off. I am heavy enough to possibly cause damage to the panels or the supports if I try and clean them off myself (and I am pretty light by American standards). Runiliyu is a very diligent kid, and since I have seen him climb those very tall trees without a problem, he is perfect for helping me out with this job. He was more than willing to do it, so we went up to the roof and he cleaned the panels while I stood by holding the safety rope. He is probably pretty excited about this too, because he can now brag to his friends that the missionary chose him to climb on the roof and clean the solar panels. He is not a bragging type, but if he wanted to brag about this particular incident nobody would fault him for it. Besides that, he was happy to earn a little extra money, and I was happy to pay him, since I am not able to do the job alone.

We interact with the Palawanos like this all the time. We go to their houses and visit; they come to our house and visit. We help them with medicine, and they help us get things done that we cannot do by ourselves. With this type of interaction, we have developed a closeness with the people around us, and our relationships are growing. And since they don’t know English or Tagalog, we have to use the Palawano language to communicate with them.

This kid is someone we would really like prayer for. We see in him, and in other Palawano kids like him, the future leaders of the church. As we talk with people during this time of pre-evangelism, please pray that the Lord will open the heart of Runiliyu and his family to the Gospel.

Runiliyo 2 years ago with a big catch of river fish

climbing to the top of the tree to harvest the fruit

Back in the tribe

2010-08-23T02:51:00.000-07:00

Yea, back to the tribe! Home at last!

We arrived home last Wednesday, and as usual, had an incredible amount of cleaning to do. There were very few people around – mostly because (as we found out later) they are all at their farms. It is the middle of harvest time, and they do all their harvesting by hand, so they are pretty busy. There were, however, about 3 guys here, which was enough to help carry our cargo up from the airplane to the house. It is always nice to have that, seeing as how I have a bad back and it is difficult to do a lot of lifting and carrying.

The few people that were here wanted to visit, and of course we want to visit too. However, we had to set up the beds, turn on the freezer, unpack, wipe off all the counters and do all kinds of things to make the house ready to live in again. So our visiting was minimal as we were working. The weeds around our house were totally overgrown – hence many people coming by and asking if they can pull weeds for us (for pay, of course). So we set up a time to do that, which makes them very happy, because they get some work, which results in some pay, and then they can go downriver and buy things they need at the market.

One of the first things in the house I noticed was that the water level in our batteries was very low – below the plates. I had about 9 liters remaining from the last time I filled the batteries, and I knew that would not be enough water to fill the batteries up all the way. However, I thought it might be enough water to fill up to just above the plates, but I would have to refill the batteries in a few days. I prayed the water would be enough and started filling. When I was done – I had just about ½ a cup of water left! Wow! Thank you, Lord, for your provision of allowing the water to be just enough!

rain catcher

So that meant I would have to build a rain-catcher. I had been meaning to do that for some time. We can’t use water off the roof because of the metal screws in the roof – it would add enough metal ions in the water to destroy the batteries. And the water in the pipes also goes next to metal, so it won’t work either. It was the next day that I was able to build the rain catcher, and day before yesterday I was able to finally finish filling the batteries! Our batteries used up 18 liters of water while we were gone!

It has been really good to see people! We are so glad to be back. I haven’t had time to do any updates until just now. My bride spent the last 5 days preparing the house for living,preparing home-school lessons, and getting the clinic ready for today. I spent the last 3 days preparing my office to be used again – man it was a mess! The others in the house said they don’t recognize my office anymore because it is clean!

What other things did we do? Oh yes, I installed the cell phone signal repeater. That was great! Now whenever we turn it on, we have a strong enough cell phone signal in the house to actually call on our cell phones! Before, it was just good enough to send text messages, and we had to keep the phone leaning sideways on the radio on top of the dresser next to the freezer. If I wanted to have a sure call, I had to hike up the mountain on the other side of the river where the signal is strong. Now we are in a place where we can make or receive an emergency call. I leave the amplifier off normally so as not to use up a lot of solar power.

The other big thing is that I was able to purchase and install a floor covering for the kids room. They said that they didn’t like to play with their legos because they always fell through the cracks in the bamboo floor, so we purchased a plastic/rubber covering for the floor. It is quite nice now!

And my last task before beginning study preparations again is to set up this blog! Hopefully this will give a means for people that regularly pray for us a means of having more timely information.

And as far as the tribal people, they are all up in their fields harvesting rice! Here are some highlights:
•    One lady came by this morning and had some river crabs she had caught and killed. They always kill them right away, but they wait several hours before cooking them. Her husband told me about the wild pigs he shot while we were gone. He said he is out of shotgun shells.
•    Many folks asked if they could buy batteries for their flashlights.
•    There was a kid who had tons of warts covering both of his feet before we left. We gave him medicine to put on the warts every day while we were gone. He came by yesterday and showed us his foot – no warts! Amazing!
•    We gave away a lot of malaria medication the last 3 days even before we opened the clinic, and gave away a lot again today at the clinic.
•    The village chief (I say “village” loosely because they don’t really live in villages) showed me a new kind of pig trap he is making that will not accidentally snare dogs or other animals – only pigs!

And, as always, it is time to get used to the constant attacks of biting bugs!

no more warts!

a new kind of pig trap that only catches pigs

river crab