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Issue #16. July 2005 Preparing with New Tribes Mission for Tribal Church Planting and Bible Translation in the Philippines |
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George & Ginny Olson 134 Main Drive Box 67831 Roach, MO 65787-9724573-317-9635
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email: george_olson@ntm.org
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Dear friends and family, It has been too long since we last put out a newsletter, and we have had many new developments! Our prayer at this time is that God would be glorified in our lives, so that many people would come to know Him! Our God is great and wonderful and worthy of all praise!
As we make our journey through life with God, it becomes abundantly clear how much we need Christ in our daily lives. As a young believer, I dreamed that being a full time minister or missionary would automatically make me feel spiritual in everything I did in life. Unfortunately, that is not the case! Yet, I should say "fortunately" because it is clear that God would not want us to rely on our feelings as the primary gauge of spirituality.
Nevertheless, those emotions are very powerful, as anyone who has had a spiritual encounter with Christ can testify. Though powerful, feelings and emotions are not the answer, because God would have us walk by faith (Galatians 2:20). Furthermore, our faith is a reasoned assurance built on facts the facts of creation, the evidence of history, and the factual events written in the Scriptures.
So we press on, with our hearts full of the assurance of faith, thankful that God has given us the privilege of being part of His plan for redeeming mankind to Himself! Do you know that God desires for you to be a part of that plan too?
Since last time Since our last newsletter, Ginny has finished the training, and I (George) have begun the more "in depth" linguistics training. We are now official "members" of New Tribes Mission! It is hard to believe that 4 years have gone by so fast!
Our last year in training included learning how to: - make the sounds that other languages uses - write those sounds down on paper with an international alphabet - start a medical clinic and meet basic medical needs - set up a solar power system for basic electricity in a remote location - decipher the grammar rules for an unwritten tribal language - learn a national and tribal language from scratch - ask questions to a native of a tribe about his culture in order to understand how he or she is thinking - develop an alphabet for a previously unwritten language - develop a literacy course for a society which has no written communication - develop a strategic plan for living within a tribal culture and communicating to them the Gospel of Christ
In the next 6 months, we have some very challenging work ahead. First, Ginny will be home-schooling all 3 of our kids in our tiny little apartment. This is the best thing for us and for them, as we will be finishing in December, and if we kept our kids in the public school they would have to transition to 3 different schools in the next 18 months.
Second, I will be studying the more "in depth" linguistics, which basically consists of exposure to many different languages from all over the world, putting together the "phonemic" alphabet, deciphering the grammar rules, and producing a formal write up of my findings. Following the academic portion of these studies, we will move to Tallequah, Oklahoma on October 1st to live in the Cherokee nation for 6 weeks. There, I will team up with another student, and we will hire a native Cherokee speaker to teach us the language. We will put all our tools we have learned into practice, and analyze the Cherokee language solely from hearing it we will not be allowed to use any previously written material on the language. In the end we will produce a formal write up about Cherokee. I am really looking forward to this assignment!
We are also really excited about home-schooling, and our kids are too! Isaac loves to read, and he has a list of about 20 books that he plans to read over the next year. Sarah loves art, and the home-schooling curricula we are using allows us to bring a moderate degree of specialization for her in that area. Abby is enjoying great success in reading, and continues to amaze us with her progress! The future We will wrap up our
training in December. Then we will have about a year to get ready to go to
the Philippines! Yes, that's it after much prayer, we have settled on the
island nation of the Philippines. There are 168 living languages in the Philippines, and estimates show that over 50 of those have never heard the Gospel of Christ
in their own language! Until then, we have much to do. The next year and a
half will be - December 2005 finish training, move to Temple, TX and begin partnership activities - January 2006 - a preliminary trip to the Philippines to look at tribal works - Spring 2006 conduct home meetings, church meetings, and visit with people to build up partnership team - begin language introduction sessions with a native Filipino speaker - finalize preliminary design of tribal home - acquisition of materials for shipping overseas - finalize acquisition of passports, visa requirements - June/July 2006 move to San Antonio, TX and initiate partnership activities there - Fall 2006 finalize activities necessary to move - Make financial arrangements for stateside/Philippines transition - December 2006 Move to Philippines, settle in Manila or Mindanao to begin national language & culture study in country
When we go on the preliminary trip, we will determine whether to study Tagalog, the language of the northern islands, or Cebuano, the language of the southern islands. When we move to the Philippines, we will know before we get there which language we will study as a trade language. This will not, however, be the language of the tribal group that we will ultimately have a ministry with. Instead, we will use it as a bridge language to learn the language of the tribe. More on this later, though.
Because of His Grace, George for the Olson team
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Summer projects - visiting churches, friends, family - VBA linguistics program development using Microsoft access as a foundation - begin design of tribal home and solar equipment |
A message from Isaac, Sarah, & Abby, Abby: I am excited about going to the Philippines because I get to have my own room. Sarah: I like eating squid, and they eat squid in the Philippines. Isaac: I am looking forward to living with a tribe in the Philippines. Being able to shoot monkeys and birds and stuff with a bow is going to rock!
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Do you think you are agnostic? Do you have doubts about the reality of God?
If you believe that "primitive religions" eventually "evolved" into higher monotheistic religions as man has "progressed," you are standing on shaky ground! I summarized something I read recently to the right there. Actual evidence indicates no such "progress" in thought has ever taken place. The actual evidence leans immensely in favor of the biblical accounts being factual in every aspect. |
Primitive religions? In 1871, an Englishman named Edward B. Tylor theorized that man evolved and developed the concept of a soul by seeing his reflection in water. Then, as man evolved further, he became animistic and polytheistic. As further advancement on this path, man eventually became monotheistic, and the ultimate advancement of man is to realize that there is no God, or if there is one, man certainly has no need of Him. This philosophy remained solid for about 3 decades, and helped form the foundational thoughts of the Nazi and Communist regimes which have since ravaged the world.
These ideas are still prevalent in varying degrees in anthropological circles today. In 1898, Andrew Lang, who had been a favorite pupil of Tylor's, began to investigate reports of tribal people from all over the world having some knowledge of the one true Creator God. Later, Fr. Wilhelm Schmidt of Austria began compiling evidence reports from anthropologists and missionaries of the many tribes all over the world who had a concept of the one true Creator God. He called it "native monotheism" and compiled over 4000 pages of documentation in 12 volumes evidence that tribal people will often have a concept of the Creator, and often with tribal folk stories that parallel biblical accounts of creation, the garden of Eden, the worldwide flood, and the tower of Babel.
All of this evidence flies in the face of evolutionary theories which say that "primitive religions" will eventually evolve into monotheistic religions. After all, if they already have a concept of the one true Creator God, He is not going to be just one of the pantheon of spirits they try to appease, but will have some unique characteristics that set Him apart from the others. Even if their concept of God is flawed, as the Yanomami thought,* this shows that man's idea of God is not a scientific result of evolution, but has been on the hearts and minds of men and women since they were created. God cannot be explained away by science.
For more information, I recommend reading Eternity in Their Hearts by Don Richardson. *The Yanomami (Source Spirit of the Rainforest by Mark A. Ritchie) held that God was the spirit who would eat the spirits of their children, because in their spirit visions they would see an eagle come down from heaven to take a child's spirit there when the child died. |
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