Olson Family Newsletter Update

Dear friends, family, and blessed co-workers in the Gospel,

              We are so thankful to be here serving the Lord in the Philippines! Wow, it is hard to believe that we will be moving into the tribe so soon, as soon as this summer!

              For those of you who do not get our regular email updates, we have committed to go to the Southwest Palawano tribe and join a team of missionaries there that is right now in language and culture study. We visited this tribe last February for a week and I have included some pictures below. This ministry is on the island of Palawan in the mountains. The Palawano live in scattered settlements across the mountains through the southern half of the island of Palawan.

              I would like to tell as much as I can about this people group in this short space, but there is so much more that we will know after we begin living with them and learning their language and culture.

Here are some facts we can share right now that we learned from our visit, to make a short summary:

·       The people in the area we are going to have never heard the Gospel and live in animistic darkness. They believe the spirit world controls everything they deal with, and consequently they attempt to serve the spirits in some way to manipulate the outcomes in their favor.

·       There are 3 settlements in the near vicinity of where the airstrip is already built, with more settlements a day’s hike in every direction.

·       Virtually all the Southwest Palawano live in isolation from the “lowland” Filipinos, and so have not been seriously affected by lowland culture.

·       In another Palawano village several miles away, another team of NTM missionaries have planted a church that is beginning to reach out, and they are finishing up a translation of the New Testament, with portions of the Old Testament.

·       The dialect in the village we are going to is slightly different from the dialect in the other village. This means that the scripture translation will be readable in our area, but will require some modification for them to understand it.

·       The people practice slash and burn agriculture and are semi-nomadic, planting new rice fields every year after clearing a section of jungle. They will sometimes come back to the same spot after 7 years, when the jungle has replenished itself and grown back up, but never before 7 years.

 

For those of you who may have not seen our email last February, you can go to our blog entry for that time by clicking here.

 

 

Update on evangelism opportunities

As we are wrapping up our time in Manila, we just want to make a quick report on how things have gone in this area. We have seen a few opportunities to share the Gospel with people here while in the middle of language study, and there seems to have been some success. At best, we know that seeds have been planted. As our Tagalog has gotten better, more opportunities have come our way, and we have been able to share the Gospel with probably at least a dozen taxi drivers and other people we know. After sharing the Gospel with people we have given out several Tagalog Bibles, and there seems to always be a very thankful and gracious heart for them. People are open to talk, and we always try and be ready to share. The language barrier, however, has made this difficult (in our area Tagalog is much more useful than English), and we are just now at a point where we are our communication of deep subjects is starting to become more clear. But of course, we are leaving soon, because our main purpose here is to go to the tribes. We are thankful to have been used by the Lord in the small way of planting seeds and giving out Bibles before going to the tribe.

 

Update on Medical Clinic training

              Since we will be doing medical work in the tribe, Ginny has been going twice a week to a ministry out on the East end of town to do volunteer work at a medical clinic. There are 2 American doctors there that have a ministry offering free medical service to the urban poor of Manila. She is learning to treat people for TB, skin ailments, worms, and a host of other medical problems common here. The doctors have offered to train any of us NTM missionaries through a 3 month training program as part of our preparation for tribal ministry. This has been a great chance for Ginny to learn, do something practical for the people here, and continue to practice language in that environment.

 

Future plans

As of right now, we have about 2 weeks left in language. We are due to take a final language evaluation on May 15. The result of this evaluation will determine when we are allowed to start our tribal ministry. Since we both feel confident in the language, we are considering that we will probably pass at that time and be allowed to proceed to moving into the tribe. In that case, the plan will be for us to move into the tribe in early June, stay there until around mid-July, and then come back to Manila to get Isaac prepared for moving into the dorm at Faith Academy. Then, we will pack up our house (we don’t have enough time to do that between now and June), move our things out, and head back to the tribe towards the end of August. If for some reason our language evaluations go sour, we will simply have to delay our move into the tribe by a few months. So we really appreciate your prayers for our final language evaluation!

 

Another bit on the animism and spiritism faced here...

We want to share the following story with you as an example of the kind of spiritual battles that are happening in the Philippines. Even though this happened in a province in the national culture, this is even more common in tribal cultures like where we will be moving. This was told to me by my language helper - it is the story of his uncle, one of his mother’s adopted brothers. I have translated it to English with as much of a direct translation as possible. When it says “the man” this refers to his mother’s adopted brother, and when it says “the lady” this refers to the spirit-lady that they all say he had a relationship with. As incredible as you may find this story, please understand that the people involved believe these events really happened. I have recorded the story in interview fashion below:

 

Language helper: They were friends. Our grandmother got used to it; whenever he would come home, birds would accompany him. One day, he told our grandmother this story. He said, “The reason for these birds is they are sent to guard me by a lady on the mountain.” This kind of lady is called an Enkantada.

to read the rest of the story click here to go to the next page

click here to read a quick update on the kids