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.
