At our annual field conference in January, we spent some time with the Smith family and discovered that they are interested in working in a place like our village, so Jonathan invited them to travel to the village with him when he went in January to work on the translation with his language helpers.
Jonathan met the Smiths at the bus station in Manila at 7 am and by mid afternoon they arrived at the SIL mission flight center. The next morning was cloudy and rainy in the village and our partners, Robbie and Vicky, were not able to give the go-ahead for a flight. Jonathan had some translation work that he was wanting to get done before he went to the village so he put the day to good use.
The sunrise the next morning was beautiful. It was going to be a good day for flying. As soon as the airplane was loaded we took off.
It was a nice day for flying.
Over the main valley all was clear, but as we went into the mountains it clouded up a bit.
After an hour of flying we arrived in our valley and found it clear.
This is a the village we work in.
The airstrip was clear so the pilot went around to line up for final approach.
The silhouette of the airplane as we made our final approach to the airstrip.
There were several Isnag friends at the airstrip to greet me.
This little guy is pretty cute.
This little guy isn’t so little and not quite so cute. Jonathan came home one night and went to heat some water for coffee and his flashlight caught this fellow hanging out on the wall by the stove. Fortunately, Jonathan and the spider didn’t have any relationship difficulties. Jonathan let him have the wall and the spider let Jonathan have the coffee.
“The Jesus Film” had just been released in the Northern Isnag dialect, so Jonathan showed it one night while he was there. It was very fun for the people to watch it and it included a good Gospel presentation at the end.
On Sunday, Jonathan tried to hike upstream with one of the Isnag Bible teachers so that they could team teach the Bible lesson. The Isnag guy got a bit ahead of him on the trail and when the trail came to a fork, the fellow went the new way and Jonathan went the way he had always gone. They met again upstream, but Jonathan did a lot of his hike by himself on a very overgrown trail. He somehow dropped his hat, so he hiked back on the same trail again and never did find it.
Jonathan actually got to the village upstream before the other guy, so he had time to take some pictures of the kids there before they started the Bible teaching. Some people like having their picture taken,
and some don't!
The week of translation checking went very well. Jonathan had language helpers every day and spent most of the evenings out in the village going over the translation with friends. On the day he left, he was walking by the kindergarten on his way to the airstrip when all the little ones started yelling good bye to him so he enjoyed going in to say good bye to them.
Thanks to the generous donations of so many people we were able to ship in another 1,200+ pounds (600 kilos) of rice to help out with the rice shortage. We planning on another 1,200 in March. The people are very thankful for the help.
This may well be the last time Jonathan sits in the airplane at the end of our airstrip and prepares for takeoff. He may fly in again in March, but he will probably have to hike out. The SIL flight program for Northern Luzon is coming to an end in March. SIL has been a huge blessing to us and the Isnag for many years.
The Smiths and Jonathan flew out and made it to the flight center mid morning. After organizing their things, they took a van into town and caught a bus. The bus trip took 8 hours. Jonathan arrived home around 10 pm. He was tired but glad to be home. Just in time to start disciplining the kids again. Thomas! What are you doing with all that sugar?!
