Paglalakbay ni Steve

"Steve's Travels".

The Tagalog sounds so much more interesting. :)

A couple weeks ago, Steve traveled about 12 hours north to attend a tribal believers' conference as well as tribal church leadership meetings.  He was very encouraged by the time he spent with these dear brothers and sisters, and we are so excited by the ways that God is at work in their midst. 

 After the conference, Steve and several of the leaders headed off into the mountains for a leadership retreat.  

 They hiked several hours (5?) through some gorgeous terrain.

 After a couple hours, they started following the river bed up into the mountains.

 That waterfall waaaay up there is their destination.

 Quite the venue for a retreat, yes?

 They camped out by the waterfall overnight, then this was breakfast the next day.  Little minnows, frogs, and eels.  Yum!

 And, of course, don't forget the rice!

 The next day they lowered themselves down into the waterfall basin.  Thankfully, Steve had brought some ropes to make this a little safer.  Don't want to lose any leaders at the retreat!

 Absolutely gorgeous!

 They spear fished for eels in the pool under the falls.

 Doesn't get much nicer than this for a retreat venue!

 

 The bottom pic is actually waterfalls; the pool in the above pics is located between the two falls!

 The men had a wonderful time enjoying the beauty of God's creation, connecting with one another, and discussing future direction and vision for their tribal church.

Shared Heartbeat

If you scroll down through the next couple posts, you will see that this summer was pretty crazy for us, with lots of travel and adventures.  Well, in between a couple of the trips that we took as a family, Steve took a trip with a friend to another island.

You know that our heartbeat is tribals reaching tribals, and we love when we get an opportunity to mobilize tribal churches to send out tribal partners to unreached tribal groups.  Well, Steve had the amazing opportunity to be the speaker for a tribal church conference on another island.  It was actually a gathering of the churches from 6 different tribal groups on that island, and he was so encouraged by his time with them!  These churches are already working together very well, and have sent out some of their very own to bring the Gospel to unreached tribal groups around the Philippines.  It is such a blessing to spend time with this tribal group that shares our heartbeat, and we are looking forward to opportunities to partner together to help one another be more effective in the Task to which God has called us.

The trip was quite the adventure, including travel by private vehicle, boat, tricycle, jeepney, and hiking.  Steve's not very big on taking pics, so I don't have any to show from their travel. They slept wherever they could find room - here is a pic of one of the places where they stayed.

 They started out their time by attending a board meeting for the leadership for the churches from the different tribal groups on this island.  Steve was so blessed to hear their hearts and encouraged by their interaction with him and one another.

 

Then the group proceeded to travel further interior to attend the conference.  Steve was given several hours to share his heart, and they welcomed him warmly.  It was in this place that the "footprints" comment was made (scroll down to find the post about that or click HERE).

 It was so encouraging to hear their hearts.  We share a passion to mobilize tribal churches to reach the unreached tribes, and we are prayerfully considering how God can use us to encourage these tribal groups in this Task.  Will you pray with us to this end?  God is doing some amazing things, and we are so excited to see what He has planned for the future!

Another Adventure

After we flew up from Bicol with the volunteer team (scroll down to see next post), we picked up a couple more volunteers and started driving north for our next adventure.  This time, our team consisted of 5 Hagens, 4 volunteers from Missouri, 2 of Mikayla's friends from school, and 1 Filipina volunteer from our partner church in Singapore (our ministry partner, Joseph, also joined us for the first couple days).

It was a great group, and we are so excited by all that God did during our time in the mountains!

For the first couple of days, we stayed in our tribal-style house in the mountains.  We traveled from village to village, doing archery presentations and sharing in churches so we ate what the people prepared for us and (for the last part of the trip) slept in whichever home was brave enough to host 13 foreigners. :)

We had two presentations that we did in each village - an evangelistic presentation that comprised of an archery demonstration (drew a big crowd!) with testimonies as well as a presentation geared to encourage believers and vision cast for the use of small groups for discipleship church.

(Click on any picture to see a bigger copy.)

 

 Since Mikayla just got back from her trip to the Himalayas (see post HERE), she also got to share with the churches about her trip.  It was so cool to listen to her share her heart and encourage the believers!

Mikayla also got to help with the archery demonstration!  The idea was to encourage others that they could try the bow and arrow as well.  I mean, if a teenage girl can do it, then surely these tribal guys can do it, right?  Some of the guys were actually quite good, but it ends up that Mikayla is a pretty decent shot herself, so it was fun when she actually showed them up. :)

We saw some breath-taking scenery and some even more beautiful people.

 And the people in one village blessed us with a Bugkalot cultural dance presentation!

One afternoon, we bathed in the river, and several of the group took the challenge to jump off the rock.  Unfortunately, one of the volunteers held his glasses in his hand, and the lens popped out and got lost!  God was SO gracious to us though because the next day, as we traveled through a TINY town, we were able to find an optometrist who figured out his prescription AND was able to cut him a new lens in about an hour!!  Absolutely amazing since, even in the city (or the States!), glasses often take 1-2 wks!  Such a God thing!

It was a wonderful team, and we so enjoyed spending time together - not only serving together but also in prayer and studying His Word.

I was especially impressed with the "kids" on the team.  Before the trip, someone very graciously offered to keep our kids for us so that we could focus on working with the team.  While I appreciated their thoughtfulness, I told them that our kids are key members of the team, and I NEED them on these trips.  Mikayla's friends from school, Drew & Karis, jumped right in too, and they all worked their tails off carrying gear, loading the topload, setting up and breaking down the archery demo equipment, sharing testimonies with and playing games with village kids and even sharing testimonies with adults!

 Someone asked me recently if I think it works to have teenagers on adult volunteer teams.  It definitely depends on the teenager, but I would take any of these back in a heartbeat!  They were a HUGE help! 

We traveled more than 1,000 km (650mi) on this trip, and keep in mind that the roads here are just a little bit different than in the USA - take a LOT longer to travel the same distances!  While we spent MANY hours (40ish) packed into these two vehicles, we used other modes of transport too...

We rode on a raft to get to one village...

 ...and hitched a ride on a massive truck!

We also did some old-school hiking.

However, most of the traveling was done in our faithful 4x4s.  So very thankful for these great vehicles!

 Some of the mountain roads were very sketchy - really more of a trail than a road - and they required some crazy intense 4-wheeling to get where we needed to go. While we were in the one village, it started to rain, so we weren't sure how we would be able to get back out on the wet roads.  We got to one part where there was no way we couldn't do it without 4-wheel drive.  Well, the one vehicle's 4x4 was working great (the one I - Jen - was driving), but the other vehicle's 4-wheel drive would not engage.  There was no way we were going to make it out without it, so we just gathered and prayed, and the 4-wheel drive engaged for the first time in 6 months!  We put some weight on the back and drove right out!  God showed Himself faithful so many times on this trip, and this was a shining example. 

On our last afternoon up there, we ended up with a couple extra hours, so we took the opportunity to explore a cave that the people there have been encouraging us to check out for a long time.  It was phenomenal! The first picture shows the entrance from the outside, then the second one shows the hole (once you got inside) that you had to crawl down into.  Once you got down there, the cave was huge!  The people said that you could explore all day in there and not see all the tunnels.  After a while, you started wading through water.  Soon it started getting deeper and deeper until the only way to continue was to swim through the water.  It was the craziest feeling to swim through an underwater river like that!

 We had an amazing adventure with some wonderful friends!

And, best of all, we had the privilege of having front-row seats to see all that God is doing up in those mountains!

So very thankful...

Volunteers

In the overseas ministry world, there is an on-going discussion about the role of short-term volunteers in the Task that God to His church.  I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of that multi-faceted, complex discussion , but one of the points that is often debated is the purpose of short-term trips.  Some people say that it doesn't really matter that much what exactly the volunteers accomplish while there are on-site; the main purpose of these short-term trips is for the volunteers to see what God is doing in that place and be encouraged in their spiritual journey to go deeper and get more involved in what God is doing at home and around the world.  Other people focus not on what God does IN the volunteers as a result of the trip; they focus on what God can do THROUGH the volunteers.  As a result, some do not want to give valuable ministry time to coordinating volunteer teams because they see it as a distraction from more effective ministry; after all, the volunteers don't speak the language or understand the culture, so they can't be as strategic as long-term personnel.  I could speak at length about our thoughts on this topic, but the bottom line is that we see both sides.  We agree that God works mightily IN volunteers when they take a short-term trip, but we also think that he can work mightily THROUGH volunteers -- provided that there is careful thought that goes in to how they can fit into the on-site strategy.  As a result, we are very picky about volunteer teams with whom we partner; they have to be willing to ask the question, "How can we fit in?"  and they need to have the attitude, "We are willing to do whatever you need, whatever is strategic for the ministry." Once we determine a strategic role for a volunteer team (what God can do THROUGH them), then we put them to work with the assumption that God will work IN them at the same time as He is working THROUGH them.  Consequently, we work our volunteer teams hard; we have specific objectives for them to accomplish!  Coordinating teams DOES take a lot of valuable time, and we want that time investment to pay big dividends not only in what God accomplishes IN their hearts but also THROUGH them in that place.

All that to say, our volunteer teams work hard!  We had 2 teams this summer, and the first one was with us for 11 days. 8 of those days were ministry days (plus a fair amount of travel); 3 of those days were solid travel of 10+ hours each (not counting the days of travel to the Philippines and back).  In the course of those 8 ministry days, they did 15 evangelistic presentations and 11 presentations to encourage believers.  So that's 26 presentations in the course of 8 days!  By God's grace, He did work IN them during this time, but He accomplished a lot THROUGH them too.

This first team came from my parents' church in central Missouri.  As soon as they arrived, we traveled down to Bicol to visit the Agta tribe and our Bugkalot tribal partners.

We utilized a variety of public transportation options to get from place to place, including van, jeepney, bus, trike, motor scooter and boat.

We also did a lot of hiking, which caused quite the scare with one of the members of the team (age 71) as the hiking and tropical heat ended up being too much, and we were literally afraid he might die on the trail in the middle of nowhere!  It was a scary time, but God carried him through.

God allowed us to see some wonderful people and share the Truth with them.

The team had a 3-time world champion archer, and it was such a great tool to draw a crowd since tribal people are very interested in archery.  As a result, we were able to share the Gospel with so many people!  

We did archery presentations in a variety of places:

In small villages...

...in open fields...

...on basketball courts...

...next to homes...

...and the banks of rivers.

Our Bugkalot partners traveled with us from place to place, and they were so excited by the impact that the team had in each place.  We were also able to spend some time with our partners at the training center, encouraging one another.

After a couple action-packed days in Bicol, we boarded the plane to fly back to Manila and then drove north up into Bugkalot territory. (Stories from that adventure will be in the next post).

It doesn't really fit into this post, but I just have to share this pic that one of the volunteers took of Mikayla in Bicol.  She often has a baby in her arms in the village. :)