Philippines Trip January 2011 #13

Yesterday was a full day. We hosted a meeting of the full “Kalinga cluster” comprised of 4 couples and 4 individuals, all Filipinos, working in 4 Kalinga dialects. Christy and Eduardo provided meals for everyone and overnight accommodation for the SIL Director who came from Manila, as well as airport shuttle from Tuguegarao (an hour away). To accommodate us all Christy and Eduardo moved into the room where their children sleep along with Eduardo’s niece and Christy’s sister Beverly, her husband and baby (visiting from Baguio). That is how Philippine hospitality works. They are cheerfully willing to make these sacrifices. For our meeting with the Kalinga cluster we went to the pastoral center where the Bishop had allocated a very suitable meeting room for us. We started the day with a devotional mediation brought by the Bishop. The text he chose was the Emmaus road experience in Luke 24. He assured us that just as the two disciples experienced in that encounter with the risen Lord, Jesus is with us, even when we don’t recognize him and he enlightens us through the Scriptures, just as he did for the 2 on the Emmaus road whose experience prompted this response: "Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?" He assured us that this too can be our experience. He told of an experience he had just last weekend when his travels were rescheduled and diverted by circumstances outside his control, but as a result he made a “new friend” who had been wanting to meet him and announced his intention to donate 4000 Bibles for Kalinga, just “out of the blue.” The “new friend” had recently had a life transforming encounter with the risen Lord which resulted in his decision to sell all he had (except his residence) and use the proceeds for the Kingdom. The donation of the Bibles was his response to the joint Philippine Bible Society and Philippine Bishops plan to get a Bible into every Philippine home over the next 5 years. The Bishop ended with a word of encouragement to all of us as translators emphasizing the critical importance of the work of Bible translator by quoting Hebrews 4:11 – “The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword....” That was a wonderful note on which to begin our meeting. The Bishop also assigned one of the sisters on his staff to spend the day with us. She was from Kankanay, a language where our SIL colleagues had previously translated the NT. At the end of the day she said, if we didn’t already have our translation, I would volunteer to work with this team. It was a fruitful day and I hope all the translators went away encouraged.

The next event of the day was monitoring the flight of my brother Dave and his wife Debbie, coming to visit us here. Because of all that is happening here, we couldn’t go meet them in Manila, so we asked Rambie to stand in for us. Their departure from Toronto to Hong Kong on Monday was delayed due to the severe cold and some snow, so there was uncertainty about making their connection in Hong Kong for Manila. We needed to have some indication so that we could alert Rambie before going to meet them at the airport. Indeed they missed their connection in Hong Kong, but fortunately Debbie was equipped to connect with me here through Facebook and then I could relay messages to Rambie on his cell phone. They were booked on another flight about 4 hours later. That too got delayed because some passengers did not show and the airline had to take off their luggage before departing Hong Kong. I kept my facebook open for their arrival in Manila and sure enough, there was another delay. The baggage carousel broke down and Debbie sent me a message so that I could alert Rambie waiting for them outside the airport. They finally got out of the airport at midnight, about 5 hours later than originally scheduled. Today we look forward to picking them up in Tuguegarao at about 4:30 PM – assuming everything is on schedule and they don’t have the adventures we had on the trip from Manila to Tuguegarao 2 weeks ago. The next big adventure is the trip out to Asibanglan on Friday which promises to be bathed in mud after all the rain they have had there.

On Sunday I posted a couple of photos (I am not much of a photographer). These, along with my 12 previous posts are accessible on my blog here:

http://gowithheart.blogspot.com/2011/01/philippines-trip-january-2011-photos.html