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
2nd 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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
