Health struggles, and the work continues on...

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." John 10:10

We have just completed our 6th move since being in the Philippines, and our 23rd move in our married lives! Not that we ever thought that we would move around like this in 20 happy years of marriage, but it is how the Lord has directed so far! And you can see from the picture, we have learned how to move in the Philippines!

We are beginning our 8th year here in the Philippines, and we have been through a lot. We are especially excited that our Palawano friends in Menti have heard the Gospel, we have new families learning tribal languages, and the Lord's work is continuing on here! We just had another missionary finish Tagalog studies, and they are beginning to make plans to move into a tribal area! We have 2 families that just returned from home assignment and they are also preparing to go back into their tribal areas and start studying the tribal language again!

Ginny just finished another year of teaching missionary kids at Faith Academy. It is now summer break for our kids, while the Filipino kids have just started their school year again! (The Filipino school year is June through March, while Faith Academy follows the American system and is August through May.)

So it is good for our girls to have time off for the summer. A well deserved break!


HEALTH STRUGGLES
We have had several people ask about my health condition, so I thought I would take this time to share a little about my experiences delving into the world of food in order to treat a bacterial imbalance in the digestive tract. While I have been busy with the mission work and language coaching, I have had to really grow in this new area of paying attention to my food. My GI condition requires me to eat a regulated, specialized diet. This pretty much leaves out any going out to eat at restaurants, and all my food is prepared from scratch, at home (not that we ate out very often before, but it also precludes ordering pizza or getting a quick Mcdonald's hamburger). All in all, of course, it is probably a healthy thing to eat most of your food prepared from scratch.

I am following the plan of the Specific Carbohydrates Diet (SCD), as outlined in the book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall. The most challenging thing about this diet, being a restricted diet, is that it also has to be individually tailored to meet the needs of each person that is on it. This tailoring process – a journey through food to discover what works and what doesn't – is what I am in the middle of now. It is also the reason why I cannot come home now and treat the problem – I have to finish the initial phase of this diet (about 1 year) here in the Philippines, without traveling home, or to any of the provinces. So I do my work for the mission mostly from home, and spend a lot of time on skype with the missionaries in various phases of language study.

Just to give some examples of how our lives have changed since I started treating this condition with diet. How did we used to make spaghetti sauce? Just grab a pack of Hunt's tomato sauce, add cooked ground beef and some spices. Can't do that anymore – Hunt's tomato sauce has sugar added as one of the ingredients, as does practically every other major brand of tomato sauce. Sugar becomes food for the bad bacteria causing my condition. So, I have to make my own tomato sauce from tomatoes, and boil it down to the desired thickness. Of course, I can't have spaghetti noodles at all (it is made from wheat flour, a complex carbohydrate which also feeds the bad bacteria). So we cut up thin slices of zucchini and roast them to act as a substitute for spaghetti. It actually is quite tasty. Fortunately, there are a couple of brands available here of Italian canned whole tomatoes which do not have any added sugar or other bad ingredients. When I am able to use those, it saves some time in the preparation.

I am glad I am not having to try and do this in the tribe. There we had to rely on the plane for groceries, and if our supply order was messed up, I would just have to do without. It is much easier when you can just get in the car and drive to the market or grocery store to pick up what you need. Even though my condition is not exceedingly serious, it is significant enough to make it impossible to accomplish successfully without regular access to a grocery store or the like.

Bread – can't eat bread of any kind, just like the gluten free people (my condition is not a gluten allergy). So I have bought almonds, blanched them, ground them up to make almond flour, and made almond flour muffins. They are really good, especially with raisins! I can eat lots of kinds of nuts – but only as long as they are not roasted and put in a can before hand. Why? Because every company that pre-packages nuts for sale in grocery stores adds rice flour to the package in order to make the salt stick onto the nuts they are selling. Rice flour is a big no-no and will quickly nullify all the hard work I have done so far to get my GI tract working properly again. In fact, any ingredient derived from any grain, even if it is whole grain, will cause more damage by becoming food for the bad bacteria. I can, however purchase raw almonds (a bit pricey) and raw cashews (much cheaper here).

For things like soy sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, salsa, and applesauce, no more of any of that from the store. A-1 Steak Sauce is out – sugar is one of the ingredients. If I want ketchup, I have to make it myself, without sugar or any other forbidden foods. It is not too difficult, but it does take time. Mayonnaise also – I finally started making our old family recipe. Now I wish I had done that years ago, as it is so much better than store bought mayonnaise! Homemade applesauce is delicious, but it is also a lot of work! I was not for working this hard at eating before – now I have to be.

Since everything is regulated and specialized as I slowly expand the diet to learn the kind of things I can and cannot eat, preparing meals for the whole family is a challenge. We eat together, but we do not all eat the same thing. I have my food, and Ginny and the girls have their food. After a few months as my list of edible food expands, we will be able to eat more of the same things. One thing we can share, though, is different kinds of grilled meat (as long as no sauce is put on while grilling, as most sauces you buy have sugar in them).

Fruit is an interesting journey. The sugar in fruit, fructose, is a single molecule sugar, so it should be able to be quickly absorbed in the bloodstream. However, when you have SIBO, the bad bacteria can use fructose as food before it has a chance to be absorbed (fructose malabsorption). So the bad bacteria has to be killed off first, by significantly cutting off even fruit and honey for a week or so. That is where I am now with fruit, and I hope to be able to add some fruit back into my diet within a week to 2 weeks. (see the bottom of this post for a more scientific discussion of sugars)

We have made our own homemade yogurt (fermented for at least 24 hours in order to make sure all the lactose is consumed by the probiotics). We have made homemade yogurt from cow's milk, goat's milk, water buffalo milk, and coconut milk. It is really good, and good for you. This is one of the things that has really helped start the healing process, as the good probiotics in yogurt tend to fight off the bad bacteria.

I will say that I have definitely seen some improvement. I have gained a little weight back, which is a good thing. Even though I have good days and bad days, I am able to keep up with my work for the mission. Also, we were able to move to another house (and there is another story as to why we had to move), without any excessive flare up in my symptoms. It wasn't super easy, but it wasn't as hard as I was expecting. My latest checkup from the doctor cleared me of any possibility of cancer, but it also confirmed my bacterial imbalance.

I will be honest, this has been a very spiritual challenge for all of us, especially for me. I was used to having lots of energy and being able to travel to the tribes when necessary. That has been taken away from us. I don’t fully understand the Lord’s reasons for allowing this in my life, but I do believe he is calling me to fight this and press on in faith. I also believe in the good things He has for our family, as part of His bigger plan for reaching the world with the message of the Gospel, and for drawing us in closer to Himself.  We appreciate your prayers as we press on.


Which also brings up another point I would like to mention. It is important to see this from a biblical perspective, and also in the light of eternity. I have recently been in contact with an old friend who faithfully admonished me to hold to the Bible's point of view on sickness.

Acts 10:38 -
"... Jesus from Nazareth, that God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with him."

There are tons and tons of scriptures that indicate the same thing, and I don't have time or space to list them here. The point is, sickness is part of the work of Satan in this world, and Jesus came to free us from Satan's work. I do not want to get into all kinds of doctrinal discussions on this, as I understand also that the curse of sin is the root cause of sickness and death in this world. But God gave us life and has freed us from the curse, so that we may begin to experience the kingdom of God today.


Don't worry, I am not avoiding doctors or doing anything silly. However, it is important for us to press forward in faith, believing that God is working a healing process in my body.

As I have begun to realize that this is going to be a long-term healing process, it has definitely changed my perspective and affected how I am doing the work for the mission. I have set up several missionaries now to be more self-directed in their language study programs, so that they won't need multiple consultant visits in order to reach level. I also try and interact with people regularly over the computer more, since I cannot go and visit them in the tribes. But it also has drawn me closer, into a deeper relationship with Christ. My life has to become more ordinary, because I don't have all kinds of fantastic trips to tribal areas to write about anymore. It is humbling, but also good. Jesus is the Messiah - I am only His servant.

We have a lot to do over this next year before our home assignment. More missionaries in language study, teaching at Faith Academy, some technical assistance to missionaries for various things, and getting my health under control. All for the purpose of bringing the Gospel to the tribes, for God's glory to be shown in all the Earth!

Blessings on you all in Christ,
George for us all



*For those of you who may be scientifically minded, here is a little tidbit I have learned about digestion. A monosacharride is a type of sugar that has only a single sugar molecule. The villi that line the small intestine will only absorb monosacharride sugars, of which there are 3: fructose, glucose, and galactose. Sucrose, from table sugar, is a disacharride (2 sugar molecules chemically bonded) and has to be broken down by digestive enzymes into glucose before being absorbed into the bloodstream. Starches and complex carbohydrates are all polysacharrides (multiple sugar molecules chemically bonded) and also have to be broken down by digestive enzymes. When there is a bacterial imbalance in the gut, the time that it takes the gut to break down and digest all the disacharrides and polysacharrides also gives the bad bacteria that aren't supposed to be there time to use these as food before they get absorbed into the bloodstream. Thus, the eating of any type of food that has a disacharride or polysacharride source of energy has the potential to exacerbate the problem and cause the bad bacteria to multiply, causing even more damage. Furthermore, the waste products from excessive bad bacteria cause damage to the villi, reducing the villi that are available to absorb the monosacharrides. This has been shown to be a root cause of many intestinal diseases, like Celiacs, Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), and Crohn’s Disease.

The first leg of fall 2012 travels - Agta tribal ministry

Now that I am finished with about 4 weeks of travels around the Philippines, I am ready to take a rest. It is really good to be back home with Ginny and the kids. I am pretty exhausted as I write this. It was a good all around visit to the tribal areas, working with the missionaries in their respective locations. I am actually slightly ill right now with an upset stomach, but I can't sleep, so I am writing this in lieu of sleeping.

I was just reading John Piper's “Don't Waste Your Life,” for the 2^nd time, and I highly recommend it. He admonishes his readers to learn to live with that single all encompassing passion for the glory of God, which is the glory of Christ. Boasting in the Cross of Christ, because Christ took our sins upon Himself when He was nailed to the cross, and because of this we can now have a relationship with God. Those who do not know Christ, do not know God.

In truth, in my life, I have always found it difficult to keep up that passion when on the valley floor. Mountain-peak experiences are fantastic, but when you get down to the everyday life, it is not so easy to think about living solely for the glory of Christ. It is easy to get distracted – what do I have to eat today? What plans will I make for next week, next month, next year, and after-wards? Yet there is a way to still have that all encompassing passion, even in the daily grind of life by faith. What is it? It is by faith – believing and remembering that we are most satisfied in life when we are most satisfied in God. He is worthy far above anything this world has to offer.

I am going to separate the narration of the last 5 weeks into segments, so as to break them up and make them shorter. I hope that this will make it easier to digest.

The start – week of August 26

At the airport, I met up with Jun Fabra, the head of the Filipino branch of New Tribes Mission. We flew to Tuguegarao, where our helicopter base is. We were able to meet and have supper with the supply buyer and purchase some fruit out in town. We expected the town to be mostly filled with Ilocano speakers; however, the fruit vendor we bought from did not speak Ilocano – only Tagalog. Apparently in the city, it is more useful to have knowledge of Tagalog than Ilocano. This makes for an interesting challenge for our future missionaries, because in the outlying towns and barrios, Ilocano is more useful.

The busy northern town of Tuguegarao

The next day we got up and got in the helicopter, flying over the mountains in the North in order to arrive at the black sand beach where the Agta people live. We did not go there ourselves to evangelize, but to help the missionary become proficient in the language so that he can evangelize and make disciples. “Making disciples” is the key phrase here – this goes beyond evangelism. There is a lot of work in developing deep relationships with people and teaching them how to become a disciple of Christ. Making disciples cannot happen without 2 principle components – a shared language that both people can communicate deeply in, and time spent with each other. 

With Jun Fabra of NTMPI and getting ready to fly

Beautiful black sand beach

Upon landing at the helicopter pad we were greeted by the tribal people, the missionaries with their kids, and all the friendly dogs in the area. (There were also a couple of water buffalo, but they did not pay much attention to us). After a friendly exchange of greetings and saying good-bye to the pilots, the helicopter left and we took our bags to the missionary's house. Now we were here, and ready to get started!

Agta boys playing basketball by the airstrip

But wait, we did not come just to do a job – we are friends with these people! It is an interesting thing in the mission, that we find ourselves living at someone's house in the jungle for a few days to evaluate their language progress, and they have to feed and shelter us. It is pretty easy to get to know people doing this, and the fellowship is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the work. Furthermore, it is a very important part of the evaluation to ensure the missionaries there that we have come to help, not criticize. 

A nice catch of river shrimp for a good snack!

Getting to know the kids and their pet turtle

After spending some time talking over things and talking to their kids a bit, we sat down and came up with the plan for what we were going to do. We had to accomplish the following tasks:

• We would go into the village a couple of times and meet with some of the missionary's tribal friends, let him introduce us, and visit some (while listening and observing the missionary's interactions with his friends there)
• We would come back to the house and go over a questionnaire about the tribal culture
• We would have some specific communication tasks for the missionary to go over with his language helpers, which we would then record and listen to, having the tribal guys translate them back to Tagalog so that we could know how well things were communicated

The whole process usually takes about 3 days for each missionary that is going to be evaluated. It is also very helpful to have another person along (in this case, Jun Fabra from NTMPI) in order to discuss the things observed and develop an accurate rendering of the missionary's level according to our progress chart.

Since this is the ministry assignment I have been given, both in the national language study for new missionaries and in the tribal areas for missionaries studying the tribal languages, I would appreciate your prayers for all of our ongoing evaluations. It is of supreme importance that when missionaries come to the Philippines, they are able to connect with Filipinos and learn to love and appreciate the culture of the ministry God has called them to. It can also be a bit discouraging to have someone from the outside come in to your area and tell you that you are doing lots of things wrong. So I appreciate your prayers that I will exemplify grace to my fellow missionaries when I go on these ministry trips, so that they end up encouraged and helped, knowing they are heading in the right direction.

Discussing the day's events

Going over language tasks with the Agta language helpers

This is an exciting time for the Agta tribal ministry. The missionary there is just on the edge of reaching teaching level in the language!

At the end of our time up in the North, I was able to meet with the other 2 members of the missionary team there. The first one is building his house and will soon move in with his family. We were able to talk about his strategy for getting ready for learning language in that area. The second missionary there that I talked with reached level in the Agta language a couple of years ago. He has already taught once through the Gospel lessons and is continuing the work there. We talked about strategies for sustaining his language and the work they are doing in the church. He also asked for help on how to re-configure his solar electric system, so I was able to offer some practical advice there.

Visiting at a local house

Public transportation in the village

The last part of the assist visit was to come up with recommendations on how and what the missionary should study in order to reach that final proficient level. We were able to do this, and communicate these things to him before we left. The helicopter came in, picked us up, we said good-bye, and then we left. After landing at our helicopter base, we drove over to the airport, boarded a plane, and returned to Manila. The plane flight to Manila took about 45 minutes; the drive through Manila traffic from the airport to our home was 3 and a half hours.

It was good to be home, even if it was only going to be for a short time.

As the helicopter comes in, a baby water buffalo (carabao) gets spooked and runs off

Getting ready to leave and say good-bye

PS - Just one thing to add and ask for your prayers about. I have had gastric reflux for some time. This past summer it flared up again, and after going through 3 courses of the medicine, I was getting no relief and had pretty regular pain in my chest. So I decided to change my eating habits to a rigid, gluten-free and grain free diet right before going on this trip. All of a sudden I was pain-free. However, this sort of diet is impossible to keep on these types of ministry trips, since most normal people don't eat that way, and I have to eat their food when I stay in their homes. So I would appreciate your prayers as we schedule our travels for next year and we adjust our diet in our home.

Next time: A week's respite

 

fierce hunters

Piling rattan on a boat for trading up the coast

The boat is now loaded down and ready to get underway

The Epp family taking a swim break in the ocean

The missionary teaching one of the tribal men to give medicine to his baby

Final leg of 3 tribe tour

December 7, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

getting the chopper ready for the next flight

heading towards the mountains away from civilization

a washed out bridge along the way

river coming down from the mountains

break through past the jungle to the coastal area

black sand beach with missionary house prominent

the isolated coast

chopper on the ground, people waiting for us

inside the missionaries' home

view from the back porch

rainy weather most of the time we were there

home looking up from the garden

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

houses in the Agta village

reviewing some CLA principles on the computer

unload and reload the helicopter while the engine is still running

storms the last couple of days made the seawater muddy

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

2 of the missionaries' tribal language helpers.

A bat cave we flew by on the way in.

Agta kids playing

One of the Agta villages.

Agta kids in a native Agta house.

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

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