OlsonPhilMission

Ascribe to the LORD , O mighty ones, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness. Psalm 29:1-2

We are back safe and sound from Palawan, from our trip to the mountains, and Isaac and Sarah had a fantastic time at the volcano! As always, God protected us from various hazards, and we are back in Manila in Tagalog study!

The trip to Taal volcano was really great for the kids, and we are very glad that they enjoyed it and had a good time. They got to see volcano fumaroles and swim in a sulfur lake and all kinds of fun things. If you want to get the complete story from them, you can email them from the email links below. Also, Isaac uses windows live messenger and his user id for that is jeffthegofer@hotmail.com.
Isaac’s main email: elendil_ike@yahoo.com
Sarah’s email: turtleslikejelly@reachthetribes.com

For Ginny, Abby, and I, we had quite an eventful trip to the Palawano tribal area in Palawan. We flew on a commercial jet down to Puerto Princesa on Monday morning, and then we loaded up the tribal airplane to get into the tribe. It is nice that this is available to us, because we can get into the tribal area rather quickly like this. If the airplane is not available, which is sometimes the case, the missionaries have to ride a bus for 8 hours and then hike over jungle trails for 4 hours to get to their area of ministry.

The missionary team there welcomed us and introduced us to some of the people. Most of the people in the village were not actually there at this time, because right now they are building their umas. An uma is the Palawano term for rice field. They clear a section of the jungle, chop down trees and scrub, burn it, and then plant mountain rice. This is a common practice in many areas of the Philippines. Then they leave that section to sit for 7 years or more before farming it again. In 7 years, much of the jungle grows back. These people do not know any other method of farming.

During the time of clearing land for their rice fields, we learned something interesting. They perform a ritual before they begin the clearing where they make a sacrifice and ask the tree spirits for forgiveness for chopping them down. In the ritual, however, they call the place they are chopping a secondary clearing, rather than an initial clearing. They said they do this in order to trick the spirits. They actually think they can fool the spirits. We pray that one day they will be delivered from this bondage of fear and deception regarding the spirits into the glorious freedom of worshipping the only true God.

We sat by a young farmer and talked to him a little while he was chopping. This was one of the few men in the village that actually spoke Tagalog (he had learned it when he went and worked in another town a few years back). This tree was very tall – it must have been 100 ft or so. He showed us how he built a scaffold around the base of the tree, using a split vine as rope to tie the scaffold together before getting up and chopping this tree. He also had the young boy with him take a few whacks at the tree. We stood in a certain area thinking the tree was going to fall away from us. As the time got closer to the tree falling, suddenly he yelled “Maguli! Maguli!” (which means Go back! Go back!) and we all noticed the tree start to sway. I looked up and it was coming straight at us. Ginny was already running ahead of me, and I ran to the right of where I was standing. Then Ginny turned left and ran up the trail the way we had come, so I followed, running hard. Suddenly we both tripped on roots and fell down. I looked behind us and saw the tree fall – right where we had been only a couple of moments before! (Later the guy chopping the tree told one of the missionaries that he was really scared when he saw us run because we ran right where the tree was falling, but then we turned out of the way just in time.) So thank you all for your prayers!

The other hazard that God protected us from was that where they had chopped the small vines and small trees growing out of the ground, they had chopped at an angle, so there were all these spikes sticking up all over the place where we walked. When we both fell, we could have easily fallen on one of these spikes! So thank you all again for your prayers – things could have turned very bad very quickly! As it was, neither of us were injured, and we had a good laugh about the whole thing! (By the way, Abby had stayed down in the village that morning to play with the tribal kids, so she was completely out of danger.)

Click here to see our google page of the pictures of our whole trip. I captioned most of the pictures so that the explanation will be clear.
You can also click here to watch a short (3 min) video of some of our trip. It is not really edited – just some video clips thrown together.

Now as for the tribal work, it has become abundantly clear to us what we believe the Lord is having us do. In fact, this is a real answer to prayer for us, as it seems we are finally a perfect fit for this particular tribal work. We have great fellowship with the missionaries already there. The team needs another family to come in and join the work. They have just started teaching literacy, and one family is still in language study. As a third family coming onto the team, we would be involved in language study long enough so that when the team begins teaching the Gospel and the scriptures, the burden will be shared all around.

This is an important time for us. We have to finish our Tagalog study, and the better we get at Tagalog, the better we will get at speaking the tribal language when the time comes for that. (This has to do with the fact that all Filipino languages are related). So we ask for your prayers for us to continue to press on in our study of Tagalog. We will have another set of evaluations towards the end of this month which will give us a better idea of the time frame we are talking about.

We would also ask your continued prayers for our relationships with people here in Manila. We intend to stay in touch with the people here and always come back and visit them when we are in Manila, which should be at least a couple of times a year as long as we are in the Philippines. Pray also for receptive hearts to the Gospel, and that those in bondage to sin will look to Christ alone (not works) to find their freedom and salvation, as the scripture says in Ephesians 2:8-9.

Dear friends, family, and prayer partners,

The contrasts are so often evident in this developing country. I took a picture of the skyline from a bridge near here with the squatter settlements in the foreground. People pour into Manila every day looking for work because their life in the provinces is hard. Many end up taking low end wage jobs and find that life is not necessarily better here than in the provinces, and you also have the constant pollution to contend with. However, for some the availability of work is better here – even if one can only get a job as a tricycle driver in a local area. They say that the population of Manila is now up to 20 million.

While the superbowl is playing Monday morning (Sunday evening for you all back in the States and Canada) our family will be splitting up and going 2 different directions. Isaac and Sarah will be going on a school field trip to Taal Volcano, where they will remain for a week learning all kinds of outdoor type things. Taal is a volcano that is on an island in the middle of a lake. In addition, there is another lake in the crater of the volcano! The last time it erupted was in 1977. There has not been any seismic activity since last June, and that was just a very low earthquake. Nevertheless, please pray that all will remain safe in their adventure. We are lending them a camera to take some pictures, so hopefully it will be really fun for them with lots of good memories!

While Isaac and Sarah are heading to the volcano, Ginny and Abby and I will be heading to Palawan to another mountain tribe to visit. The tribal people in this area are called Southwest Palawano – they are considered among the least reached of the Philippines. They live in isolation in the jungle, gathering a living from mountain rice farming and hunting wild pigs. There has been some outreach by our mission in another area south of here, and there is a growing church with people professing faith in Christ. The area we are looking at has missionaries in there learning language, but the people there have not yet heard the Gospel of Christ in any language. So we will leave the industrialized mega-city of contrasts and smog and spend a few days sharing clean air with grass, trees, mosquitoes, and tribal people! I included some pictures of the city and the place where we are going.

So when you see Tom Brady make his first touchdown pass for the Patriots, please remember us in prayer about this trip! The team there in the tribe is looking for another family to come in and join them, so we pray that the Lord’s will be done. I will do my best to take good pictures!

In order for us to join this team soon, we have to finish our Tagalog study – that is a one of our biggest prayer requests! It is progressing for both of us, as are our friendships with the people here.

Thank you all for all your prayers, love and support as we take the Gospel to the tribal people in the Philippines!
In Christ,
George & Ginny

PS – Click here to download the Google Earth location of Taal Volcano.