Jason and Jonie Mellinger Connecting You to Tribal Missions 
Being at a “stuck” point while waiting for parts and an invitation from our Alaskan churches, we felt that would be a good time to make a trip to Alaska. Though visiting churches wasn’t the reason for coming back to the States, as a furlough would be, a couple of our churches in Alaska requested that we come up there. Though we couldn’t dedicate the kind of time to them that we really wanted to, we agreed to spend a few weeks there.
We knew that there would be a couple of church meetings and maybe some time with pastors and missions committees, but in the end it turned out we has 11 official meetings/get-togethers within 2 1/2 weeks and the final 1/2 week was at a 4 day pastors conference, so “relaxing” wasn’t really the name of the game.
On the way up we had a plane change in Seattle. As I stood at the counter of the Seattle Terminal Burger King there was conversation going on amongst the employees that none of the customers could understand, but me. Six or seven Filipina’s were working there chatting amongst themselves until the dayuhan (foreigner) ordered in Tagalog. All of a sudden everyone’s attention was on me. There is a standing joke amongst the Filipinos, every dayuhan can be sold until he knows enough of the language to understand that he’s being sold off. It’s always good to hear them say that I can no longer be sold, and it was especially good to hear that on my own soil, to understand part of a culture that is not my own.
We had two pastors that we hadn’t met yet in Alaska, one being our home church pastor and so spent a LOT of time with him. If he wasn’t so lonely while his wife was in Colorado, he certainly would have gotten sick of us! Since our trip really wasn’t planned we had to scramble to make contact with friends and family. Many adjusted their schedules for us, and we got to see just about everyone through our church meetings, home groups and individual times.
At one open house we met a filipino guy who invited us to speak at his Filipino church the following evening. It was so good for us to be surrounded by Filipinos again, some of whom were from the very remote places we’d visited and showed pictures of a place that was as special to them as is was to us. For a couple hours we prayed with them, told them our story and conversed in Tagalog. It was so special for us to be prayed for in Tagalog!
We certainly had a busy time, but also a great time with friends and family…
