January Translation Checking Trip

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?!

Annual Conference 2010

Conference was a busy time for us because Heidi was in charge of the nursery up to age 3 program and Jonathan was involved in meeting with ministry teams. The toddler program is a challenge because many of these children live in villages with their families and are not used to being dropped off for play time. Heidi works very hard to transfer a bare room into a happy place with fun toys and nice decorations. You should have seen how much stuff we packed in the van!

Katrina, our visitor from Florida, was a big help. She even got a free ear check from Dr. Neo.

Jonathan came in once a day to do the Bible story time.

It's always nice to have a captivated audience.

This year Thomas asked to be baptized to show that he trusts that Jesus death on the cross paid for his sins and that he desires that the Holy Spirit be in control of his life.

We are thankful for the spiritual growth we see in Thomas's life.
The kids also enjoyed some soccer game, but I'll post those photos on Facebook.

New Year's Eve

The day after the wedding we drove a few hours down to the ferry dock and caught a boat going over the Mindoro Island. The trip was delayed and we ended up landing in a different port after dark and taking two motorcycles with side cars to get to our hotel.

Since we only had one full day at the beach we decided to do as much as possible. The first item was snorkeling. We took a small boat out to the coral reef.

James and Jonathan

Heidi and Thomas


Katrina and Carrie

It was a beautiful trip and the snorkeling was nice too.

After lunch we took a hike up to a waterfall. Along the way we saw some interesting flowers and enjoyed walking through the jungle.

At the waterfall we enjoyed drinking and eating some young coconuts which the locals were selling.

On the way back we stopped at a ministry center that some friends of ours have set up to help the folks living in that area. In the evening we hiked down the beach to an Italian restaurant and ate our pizza while watching people lite fireworks on the beach.... and at the table next to ours. This made for a bit of excitement because some of the fireworks malfunctioned and blew up or went off the wrong way.

New Years Day we ate breakfast on the beach. Heidi and the kids surprised me with some birthday gifts and then we headed for home to prepare for our annual conference.

Wedding on the beach

A few days after Christmas, Katrina Abbott arrived from Florida to help Heidi with childcare at our annual NTM conference. Before we went to the conference we had several days of activities.


The first activity was to attend a wedding at the beach. The children of some of our fellow NTM missionaries were being married and we were invited to attend. It was a beautiful afternoon for a wedding.

The father of the bride is one of the teachers at the school our children attend and the father of the groom is a supply buyer for some of our missionaries down south.

The dress code tended to be a bit casual. (Thomas and James)

After the wedding those who had dressed up changed and enjoyed visiting on the beach. Heidi with Carrie and some of Carrie's good friends.

James enjoyed a bit of Frisbee...

and won the sand sculpture contest. This was the first wedding I have attended that included a sand sculpture contest not to mention the "unity sand."

It was a beautiful event and we were blessed to have been invited

to enjoy it.

It's Christmas Time In The City!

Christmas time in the Philippines means Christmas carol time for the children.

Singing Christmas carols is not really the focus. It is much more like trick or treating than caroling except that it goes on for several weeks. The kids start banging on the door in November and we have to tell them it isn't time to start "caroling" yet.

In December we relent and from then until after Christmas the evenings are spent standing at the door handing out candy. The kids usually yell, "Mamasko" or sing a little song in Tagalog which says that Christmas is near and that mom and dad are getting ready for Christmas and it is time for Christmas treats.

For the most part we do enjoy seeing all the kids and having a chance to show them some kindness. We gave away around 1,500 pieces of candy.

Bits of December

When you are driving and you see red and blue flashing lights, what do you think? Here in the Manila we often see red and blue flashing lights ahead, but we have given up looking for a police car. Here the most common use of red and blue flashing lights is to mark a U-turn slot in the road. These U-turn slots can be very interesting because it is very common to have three lanes u-turning at the same time. Throw in a bus and a dozen motorcycles into the fray and it gets very interesting.

The other day I looked in my mirror and thought a U-turn slot was about to pass me on the left, but I was wrong. It was a police fork lift. If you look closely it has a police car flasher on the top.

One of the things that Thomas has enjoyed at his school is the drama class. At the end of the semester he participated in a few different dramas.

Carrie has been involved in all sorts of things. She and James were involved in a Sunday School ministry for children from a near by squatter village. She also has helped at a nearby orphanage. In this picture she was serving food for a class function.

A couple of weeks ago I sent several chapters to our translation consultant for checking. I received her list of suggestions a couple of days ago and was very happy that there were very few corrections, considering the amount of the material and that the necessary corrections do not look difficult. I am hoping for another trip to the village early in 2010 to do translation checking, Bible teaching, and distribute rice.

When we first came to the Philippines I taught in the school for the children of missionaries and Heidi took on the roll of supply buyer for several missionaries living out in the villages. Now that we are in town, Heidi is doing a bit of her supply buying job. We have one missionary family that is actually closer to Manila than they are to our northern support center, so we have been helping them out a bit. Last week Heidi purchased a food order for them and when school was out for Christmas, we took the order and two of their children who have been studying here in Manila to meet their father and hike into their tribe.

The hike starts at the river. This picture was actually taken the last time we took the kids north to see their parents. This time the river was low enough to wade across, but not low enough for our van to drive across. We are enjoying getting to help people in many different ways.