Ants in the Printer, Thorn in the Foot

Monday morning: Get ready to print out chapter 4 of I Peter, so I can
begin doing the exegetical checking on that chapter. But, oh no,
can't use the printer yet. Ants have moved in and are nesting in it
since the last time I used it! So the first hour of the morning was a
big battle, killing all the ants spilling out of the printer when I
disturbed it, and trying to remove every last one of them from inside
the printer, and putting bug powder all around my office area to kill
any ants remaining, as well as discourage new ones from trying to
take up residence here again.

Tuesday morning: Reading Bible and praying before the start of my
taping session with Lini. But, oh no, first I have to come out to the
porch where a crowd has assembled. The mother of one of our neighbors
was threshing newly cut rice with her feet, and stomped down hard on
something that stuck into her foot. Could I remove it, please? Sure.
I disinfected the area of her foot where I could see a 1/4-inch thorn
sticking out. Got a good grip on it with my tweezers and pulled. And
pulled. And pulled! The thorn kept coming and coming. It was a sliver
of bamboo, imbedded in her foot. Yikes. Yes, the part I saw was about
1/4-inch long, but the part we couldn't see was a good 1 1/4-inches
long! My, oh my, oh my! The poor woman was in a lot of pain, and the
rest of us were just amazed by the length of the sliver in her foot.
Bamboo is very sharp. It went in the bottom and almost came out the
top. There was a drop of blood on the top of her foot where the
sliver broke the skin there.

Tuesday afternoon: Starting to work through the process of exegetical
checking on I Peter chapter 5, but a woman and her children are on
the porch. The clinic is closed this week while we work out some
difficulties within the community. So the very sick ones are coming
here. This little girl, five years old, looks like a little Biafran
child. Her arms are stick-thin, her stomach is protruding, her legs
are skinny, she has a horrible cough and is coughing up blood. Her
mom claims she has only been sick two weeks, but I find that very
hard to believe. She probably has TB among other things. I started
her on some medicines, but she will need follow up when the clinic
opens again.

Wednesday: The clinic is re-opened, hurray! And my life is back to
normal again. We are taping Luke now, and it is going very well. Bill
and I have been learning so much all along the way as we work through
these New Testament books. The things we learned from working on
Acts, Bill has applied as he is drafting Luke. So we are starting
from a better first draft. Which makes the taping go more smoothly.
Which bodes well for comprehension checking. We are thankful for the
privilege God is giving us to be involved in this job. And we are
thankful for all the ones He has provided to help us.

The Apostle Peter Speaks on Liposucton

Rini with baby Adrian

One of the passages I taped with Lini this week was I Peter 3 where
Peter is talking about women -- that our beauty shouldn't come from
braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes, but should
come from within. As we were going over that in the Palawano
language, I couldn't help but think of an email I had received from a
friend back in the U.S. just the day before. She is working as a
nurse in a plastic surgeon's office. She said in the mornings they
take care of old people -- removing skin cancers and the like. But
the afternoons are for cosmetic surgery and Botox for 'high
maintenance people' as she put it. I thought of all the money being
spent in the cities of the world tucking and shaping and zapping and
lifting and 'enhancing'. How would I Peter read if it was written
today, I wonder? I didn't even try to explain to Lini about what I
was thinking. How could a Palawano, who is just trying to get enough
food grown for her family to eat understand about people spending
thousands of dollars to make themselves look like they are starving?

Bill has zoomed ahead and is drafting Luke now, and my taping is
lagging behind, so Lini and Rini worked out a schedule. Lini will
come two days a week and Rini will come two days a week. So Rini came
back to work this week, with her six-week old baby boy tucked up
against her chest in a cloth sling over her shoulder. While we taped
I Peter, he slept and nursed. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it
went fine. I don't know how long he will stay this quiet. We only
work for two hours. Longer than that and Rini's ability to remember
the passages I'm reading and tell them back to me in her own words
seems to fade. She begins to need a lot more prompting, and then I
don't think the renderings have as natural a feel to them.

So now we are moving ahead. When I'm not doing taping, I'm still
working on the Palawano language to improve my vocabulary and
fluency. We are also collecting Palawano traditional oral stories,
getting them recorded and transcribed and translated into English to
preserve them.

Civilization Strikes Again

Over the years we've been working with the Palawano people a lot of
things have changed. The outside world has come nearer and nearer.
The government has still not put in the long-promised road to this
spot in the 'jungle.' And I put jungle in quotes because when we
moved here, most of the land around us was forest. But over the
course of the years, many outside settlers have moved into this area
among the Palawanos and cleared rice paddies. So now much of the area
looks more like farmland. The Palawanos have also learned how to grow
rice in paddies and many of them now own the requisite water buffalos
to do so. Last night, when Bill and I were walking the airstrip, we
counted four water buffalos grazing along the sides of the strip.
There didn't use to be any. The people have more food now, since you
can harvest a rice paddy three times a year, while their dry rice
fields only yield one harvest a year, which was never enough to last
the whole year through. That's a good thing.

Electricity still has not reached us. But cell phones have. We don't
have good cell phone coverage at our house, but up on the hills
around us, people can send and receive text messages. But how do you
charge a cell phone when there is no electricity? Simple, take it to
the missionary's house. We often have one or two of the peoples'
phones plugged into our outlets, charging from our solar panel/
battery system.

There are lots of little stores now, out of different people's homes.
It is easier for the Palawanos to get the things they need or want.
That's a good thing. But after shopping, both adults and kids often
just drop their candy and cookie and snack wrappers anywhere on the
ground or along the trails. We didn't have a litter problem here before.

And the government finally got a school going in here, after years
and years of the Palawanos requesting it. Which is a good thing. The
Palawanos want to learn, they don't like being taken advantage of in
their ignorance. But---the school has its downside too. The teachers
are not Palawanos, and they are bringing in things in from the
outside world that are contrary to the Palawanos' customs and
culture. Traditionally, Palawanos are peace-loving and modest. The
current teacher has a TV and video player. Every night she shows
Tagalog movies -- think violent action films and over-dramatic love
stories -- for a small fee to any one who wants to come. And lots of
people do. And now she has instituted a Friday night dance. Last
Friday the Christian Palawano girls didn't go, but one can't help but
wonder if they will continue to stay away from the fun. The church
leaders are very concerned about the influence of the movies and
dances on the young peoples' morals.

Speaking of TVs and videos, not just the teacher, but a number of
Palawanos and the non-Palawano settlers have those too. They aren't
hooked up to satellite, but can watch and show movies, too. The
machines run on batteries, and a few people have small generators to
charge those batteries. Where before, people used to sit around the
fire at night and tell stories, now they hike over to one of those
houses with a TV and watch Tagalog movies. We are seeing kids play at
fighting, karate kicking and punching at each other. That is
something they never used to do.

These changes are inevitable. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are
neutral. We can't stop progress. We can't hold on to the past and
make the future go away. Ecclesiastes says, "Don't long for the 'good
old days.' This is not wise." (7:10) But there are good things that
don't change. We are in the process of translating 1 Peter right now.
It says, "For you have been born again, but not to a life that will
quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from
the eternal, living word of God. . . the word of the Lord remains
forever." (1:23-24) Our new life in Christ, and the word of God will
last forever. That is our hope for ourselves and for the people here.
That's why we are here, to put this Word of God into the Palawano
language.

Lini, Rini and Nili

Lini & Elisa with Butterscotch

Once upon a time, a little girl moved to a new house in the jungles
of Palawan. Her name was Elisa. Elisa was four years old, and had a
baby sister named Bethany. Elisa's house faced the grass airstrip.
Across the airstrip was another little bamboo house. In that house
lived two little girls named Lini and Rini. Lini was 3 and a half
years old, and her big sister Rini was ten. Lini came across the
airstrip everyday to play with Elisa. They were best friends.
Sometimes they would go down to the river that ran right by their
houses. Sometimes Elisa's mommy would take them, and sometimes Rini,
the big sister would take them to watch them play in the river. Lini
and Rini had a cousin named Nili who came to visit them sometimes. It
was Nili who taught Elisa how to swim underwater when she was six
years old. Elisa's mommy and daddy where so happy that their daughter
Elisa loved her new house and friends and neighbors.

Many years went by. Elisa is now a young married woman, living in San Diego, California. But Lini, Rini and Nili are still living in the
jungles of Palawan. And Elisa's mommy and daddy are living there
again. Lini, Rini, and Nili are young married women with three, four
and five children respectively. Nili now helps the people in the
village with their medical problems. She works at the little clinic.
Rini was Elisa's mommy's language and translation helper for two
years, but she just had a new baby boy and can't do that work right
now. So Lini is her new language and translation helper.

Elisa's mommy and daddy never imagined that the little girl living across the airstrip from them would become such a great help in the
translation work they were doing.

Did they all live happily ever after? Well, this isn't the end of the
story yet. We will all have to stay tuned to find out.

Can You Guess What These Are?

On Sunday morning of the three-day Palawano Acts Bible Conference, a big group of people from Rora showed up, hiking for one hour on muddy trails to join in the fellowship. And a large family group from Kementian arrived, as well. They live a two-hour hike from our village in the opposite direction. Also, Bildin and her kids came. They live one-hour away in another direction. The church was bursting at the seams and extra benches had to be squeezed in. Then Abil counted the communion cups and realized we would run short at communion time. Our communion cups were originally little medicine cups from off children's cough syrup bottles, and get rewashed every time they are used. He sent someone out to chop up some bamboo from a patch behind the church. So by the time communion was served, there were plenty of cups to go around. That's what this picture is, a tub full of bamboo communion cups. The juice served in them was a sort of tea made from the leaves of a local plant that is red in color. I love it when the people find indigenous ways to express their obedience to the Lord.

Cockroach Cookies and Vacuuming for Spiders

I may have mentioned it before, but Bugs R Us. Something about this
tropical climate and a bamboo house. Critters are a theme around
here. We are getting ready to come out of the tribe for a seven-week
stint to help out at the Puerto Center. So to get the house ready to
pack up and leave for awhile, I did a couple of things. Yesterday, I
made a batch of roach cookies, and this morning, Bill and I had a
spider vacuuming session.

When we were new in the tribe, the cockroaches would get into
EVERYTHING and nearly drove me batty. Until I discovered Roach
Cookies. Hurray! Insanity temporarily averted. A veteran missionary
gave me the recipe:
1/4 kilo boric acid powder
1 cup flour
1 small, finely chopped onion
a little bit of milk

You mix it all together, to a really stiff dough, and shape into
little balls, then dry, and then place around in all the dark corners
of your drawers and closets, out of reach of pets and children. It
really works. The cockroaches die, and are no more. Well, for the
most part. Some manage to evade the stuff. But all in all, those
cookies do wonders. Bill says the roaches get homemade cookies more
often than we do. But that's not really true -- the roach cookies are
good for about three months.

We used to be able to get the boric acid at the local drugstore
chain, or at our Puerto grocery store. Then, this time moving back to
the tribe again, boric acid disappeared from the stores. I looked and
looked all over Puerto and all over Manila. The cockroaches were
coming back, and starting to drive me crazy again. It was a grim
situation. Then last August, I got the Manila Yellow Pages, and
looked up chemical companies, and started calling around. I finally
found one company that would sell a few pounds of boric acid powder. (Others wanted to sell me a 100 pound bag of the stuff.) It was a long, long taxi ride out to the chemical plant, but totally worth it. The cockroaches are under control once again.

For most bugs you have Raid. But spiders, that is another story. Our
friend Dave, the Bug Man, gave us a tip on one of our furloughs when I
was complaining to him about the spiders taking over our house. How
do you get rid of them, I wanted to know. He explained that spiders
have spiracles, or breathing tubes, that they can close at will. So
if you spray them with bug spray, they just close their spiracles,
and keep on living. Dave's advice was to smash them or vacuum them
up. So one of my proud acquisitions that furlough was a little vacuum
cleaner that I shipped over to the Philippines and flew into the
tribe. Not for our lone 4x6-foot patch of carpet, but for the
spiders. About once a month or so, Bill and I get it out, fit an 8-
foot-long PVC pipe on the end of the wand and vacuum away up in the
rafters, where so many of the spiders love to live. It is really
satisfying to suck up the egg sacks and know I won't be having
hundreds of baby Charlottes raining down inside my house.

But for the big guys, the spiders the size of my hand, that appear in
the house every once in awhile, I have another solution. When I see
one, I call, 'Help!' to my wonderful hero of a husband, and he'll
comes and smashes it with his flip-flop. They are huge, and really
quick, too. I don't think they bite, but I wouldn't want to stick
around long enough to find out. There was one just the other day on
the window sill just over my laptop. A little bit creepy. I was in
too much of a hurry to see it dead to think of getting a picture of
it. Sorry.

Handicapped Access in Palawano Land

This past weekend was the Palawano Bible Conference introducing the Book of Acts. Three days of meetings, teaching Acts chapters one through six. On Sunday we topped the weekend off with communion, a potluck and baptisms. People showed up from far and wide. Sunday morning, a big group from Rora came, and I knew we would run out of seating space. I asked Indak if he could bring over some benches from Bright's house. When he and another guy brought them into the church, everyone was trying to figure out the best way to place them to squeeze them into the already crowded building. I heard one person say, Sebali beyean ni Ula, or 'We need a pathway for Ula.' That really cracked me up. You see, Ula is a crippled woman. A generous church in Temecula, California sent over a wheelchair for her a few years ago. Every Sunday that she is feeling well enough, Ula is rolled across the yard from her house, over the little bridge, and down the center aisle, to her spot right in the front of the church. The guys were thinking handicap access.

My mind flashed to different churches we were associated with back in the U.S. that had to enlarge their bathrooms and change their parking lots for handicapped access. Who would ever think that would be an issue in our jungle church? We don't have roads. No one owns a vehicle of any kind. . . Well, unless you count water buffalos. The church doesn't have a bathroom, nor do any of the people's houses. The only electricity is from solar panels and batteries in a very few of the houses. But our church needs to have a wide pathway from the door to the center aisle and down the center aisle for Ula and her wheelchair!

Ula is a blessing to our church. She is one of those angels God sometimes sends to a body of believers. She stopped growing and developing at a very young age as a result of a sickness. Most of her life she spends laying on the bamboo slat floor of the house she lives in with her elderly mother. For you or me, it would be a hard and boring life. Her mom has to do almost everything for her. But Ula became a Christian years ago. And she really, really loves the Lord. She inspires all of us with her joy and praise. Her two favorite songs are the Palawano versions of "Hearts Courageous," and "Forever Grateful." She always requests one or both of them on the Sundays she can come to church. For the Acts Conference, Bill distributed some verses and portions ahead of time for people who wanted to to memorize. During the conference, different ones would come forward and recite their verses. Ula memorized the most of anybody -- she did four verses from Acts and one other one.

Ula decided she wanted to be baptized at the end of the conference. Three of her brothers and Indak rolled and carried her wheelchair down the trail to the river, and right on into the water. Abil baptized her by pouring handfuls of water over her head. She loved being in the river for the first time in her life, so they let her stay there for awhile with the water flowing over her lap and through her legs. It was a joyful ending to a joyful conference.

Grating Sengley Kayo

The other day I visited Aming's house, and came across Bibi doing something I hadn't seen before. She had a big piece of sengley kayo, and was grating it into a plastic dish tub. Sengley kayo is one of the Palawanos' staple foods. It is the starchy root of a plant. Sengley kayo means "wood sweet potato." It is the shape of a sweet potato, but much larger, and yes, it is woody. The flesh is white, though, not pink or orange. And it is not sweet. They are easy to plant. Just take the stalks of sengley kayo plants that have been already dug up, chop the stalks into four- or five-inch sections, and thrown them on the rice field where you have just harvested this year's crop of rice. It grows with no attention. No weeding, feeding or watering are needed. It is a low maintenance food, but also one that seems to me to lack flavor and much nutrition. It fills empty bellies, though, when the rice harvest starts to run out.

Bibi told me all about what she was doing. She had traded for this bunch of sengley kayo from a man named Bilintino for some rock salt. Apparently Bibi and her husband had extra rock salt, and Bilintino had extra sengley kayo, so a deal was struck. She peeled off the rough dark skin, soaked them in water to get any dirt off, and then started grating them. She said they aren't too hard to grate. I asked her why she grated them. I knew the common way to cook them was to roast them over a fire, or boil them in a pot. She said that when you grate them you can use more of the root, even the tough middle part. So you don't waste as much food. Boiling or roasting doesn't allow the tough middle to soften enough to be edible, and then that part is wasted.

After grating them, Bibi will wrap it all up in a rice sack and press it with a board to get the water out. Then when it is drained like that, the sengley kayo is ready to be cooked. Bibi said she cooks it two ways. Either she puts it in a wok with grated coconut and cooks them up together, or she wraps handfuls of grated sengley kayo in squares of banana leaves, and boils them in water, to make little portable snack-size servings.

I have to tell you, I was impressed. Here is a "food" that to my taste buds is virtually inedible. Yet Bibi was working hard to make use of every last bit of it, and not waste any of it. Am I rich and spoiled? Yes. I'll post a picture of her doing this next time we hit civilization.