NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

In June, we packed up our house in the city and moved back to our home in the mountains of northern Luzon for the summer.  In the village we had no email, no internet, and no telephone for almost two months.  We did have a two way radio with which we could contact our support center.

It was good to get back to our ministry location and we quickly got involved in ministry with our Isnag friends.

Heidi had a lot of work to do to get the clinic inventory organized, helped a few people that needed assistance, and organized some programs to bless the children and their families in the local school system.   Jonathan worked on Bible lessons, the translation of the book of Mark, Bible teaching, discipleship, and community development. We all worked on improving our Isnag and renewing our friendships.

We hadn’t been at it too many weeks before the helicopter brought two of Thomas’s school friends in for a week-long visit.  We really enjoyed having them with us and were sad to see them go.

We had Bible studies three nights each week and most Sundays the family hiked to a village for a service in the morning and then back to the main village for a meeting in the afternoon.

We also had a few chances to sing with the school children.  Heidi arranged a health program for them and also arranged for each school age child in the area to get a new school uniform.  It was a lot of work to make sure 250 kids got the right size of uniform.  (Thank you Heidi!)

Some generous folks had given us a gift for the Isnag which covered the cost of the uniforms and 130 fruit trees for the students to plant around the school.

One of the highlights of the summer was the baptism of four Isnag who trust Jesus as their savior.

As we got closer and closer to the end of July, we became more and more excited because two of our good friends from Manila and two of our cousins from the United States were scheduled to fly in to spend the last week with us.

We were disappointed when we were told that their trip would be postponed due to a problem with the helicopter, but we expected that the news would be better the next day.  Our visitors arrived at the support center but were stranded there.  A few days later we found out that the part the helicopter needed was stuck in customs.  Every day we waited to hear if it would be released.  Our stock of canned food started to run low.

Day after day the news was the same, “No news about the battery.”

We finally decided that if the helicopter couldn’t come the next day we would have to hike out while we still had a can of fish to eat with our rice on the trail.  Hiking wasn’t a very fun prospect because we had lots of gear that we needed to take with us and we knew the 8++ hour hike was difficult enough without carrying heavy packs.  We packed up the house and loaded the backpacks and waited by the radio for the morning check-in with our support center. If the news was bad we were going to hit the trail.  But, if the news was good we would extend our stay in the village several days so that our visitors could fly in and visit us and the Isnag.

Our visitors, stranded out at town, were anxious to join us, but found things to do while they waited.  They explored the town they were in, helped a missionary family paint their house, visited a cave in the area, and got to know some of the missionaries serving in northern Luzon.

We spent hours packing the house and our bags and stood by the radio waiting for our 7:30 check in time. At 7:30, the news came, “Don’t hike, the battery will be released today, go north on a bus during the night and be in the helicopter in the morning.”  We liked the part about not hiking, so we unpacked our bags and hoped that the battery would really fix the helicopter.

The next day the helicopter did two flights.  It brought our cousins, Jacob and Bethany on the first flight and our good friends, Patrick and Miriam, school teachers from Faith Academy, on the second flight.  With visitors and a new stock of food we were able to add several days to our stay in the village.  The extra days were a blessing.

The extra days included a Sunday so Jonathan had another chance to teach.  He taught on Christian love and the kids helped by dramatizing the story of the good Samaratian.

We thank the Lord that he allowed our visitors to visit us in the village and that he blessed our time there this summer.

Flying out to town was not the last of Bethany and Jacob’s experiences here in the Philippines.  If you would like to see where they went and what they did while they were here with us please visit our blog at: www.jonathanheidibamford.blogspot.com for the story of the rest of their stay in the Philippines.

I remember the hard travel I had back in October which involved hours of riding in unsafe public vehicles and 18 hours of hiking to get to our ministry allocation and back to town again. I remember thinking, “Someday perhaps God will provide a missionary flight service.”  It was hard not to dream of flying. 

After having to work so hard just to get to my ministry location, I arrived tired and without the supplies I needed to minister and sustain myself for very long.

Even back in October, God was starting to do above and beyond what we could dream of.  During that time and in the months that followed, God provided the funds to purchase an R-44 helicopter and to have it shipped to the Philippines.

He even provided two pilots to fly for us.  But, the helicopter and the pilots were still lacking licenses which would allow them to get airborne.  Our pilots made many trips to licensing offices and we prayed that all the paperwork would come together.  It was a long process, but by March, we had every sticker, paper, and license that we needed.  Praise the Lord.

Our family, together with friend, Jeremy, and partner, Vicky Martin, scheduled the first flights to start the New Tribes Mission Aviation program on Northern Luzon. 

It was a dream come true to depart and in 10 minutes to have covered what would have taken me 24 hours overland and then in another 10 minutes to have covered what would have taken me 8 hours of hiking.  So, in around 20 minutes I  arrived on location ready to serve the people.  We were able to bring big box of newly translated Genesis and Exodus portions, boxes of medicine for the clinic, and enough food to keep us going for a week.

Thanks to the flight program we were able to teach in two locations on Sunday, hold Bible studies every week night, and see the clinic restocked.  Due to the flight program, my family and Vicky Martin were able to come and minister to the people as well.

Praise the Lord for providing the helicopter, pilots, and paperwork.

Click this link to watch a short video of our landing in the village: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZDgHDn8Yy8

A link to the same video for those who have a slow internet connection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh1C4DpVH2k

After the Bible Teaching, Madian, the lady in the blue dress, asked if it was ok for her to believe and still be a shaman. Malana, the Isnag Bible teacher, told her that she could not do that because what the shaman does is from Satan. Then Madian said, “All you people here, do not come to me any more. From this time on I am stopping my work as a shaman because I am believer in God!”

Please be praying for Madian so that she will be able to withstand the pressure from those who would try to force her back to her old work.

Please:
Pray that Madian will grow in her love for the Lord and her understanding of the Gospel.
Pray that the Isnag Bible teachers will be faithful to keep teaching God’s Word.
Pray that many more Isnag will make the same kind of decision that Madian has.

I took this picture of Zane at the NTM conference this year.
A few years ago the Epps were our coworkers on northern Luzon. They worked in a different language group than we do, but we would hear from them every morning at radio roll call. Shortly after their third child, Zane, was born, they noticed that something was not right with his swallowing. They took him to a doctor and after a few check ups it was discovered that he had a very serious problem of infantile spasms. This condition causes a huge percent of children who suffer with it to suffer severe mental retardation. The doctors said that it was absolutely essential that Zane be taken back to Canada for help. The Epps packed up quickly and left, not knowing if they would ever return to the people group that they had wanted to share the Gospel with.
Many people prayed for the Epps and especially for baby Zane. Their prayers have been answered in an amazing way. Zane is well and is developing correctly mentally and physically. We are thanking the Lord for His goodness and for bringing the Epps back to work on N. Luzon again. We are so glad they are back. Please pray for them as they get their house ready to live in again. While they were gone, rats invaded their home. When the guys went into the village last week to work on the house and get rid of the rats they didn’t find any recent sign of the rats. They concluded that the rats must have gotten bored and moved to another place…. until they found the big python skin. Now they are looking for the python.
Please pray for the Epps as they move back to their village and get set up to start their ministry there again.

It is a little known fact that missionaries are world class losers. I think I had better clarify that before a mob of angry missionaries starts throwing bananas at me. I do not mean that they are not winners. All the missionaries I know are great people. (Really, guys!) I say they are losers because they lose things. I am not trying to say that they lose things any more than your average person does. I mean when they lose something it could be anywhere in the world. They are world class losers.

For example: An office chair of ours was shipped from our tribal location to Manila. When we went to pick it up, we couldn’t find it. After a few weeks of looking for the lost chair we sent out an email asking if anyone had seen it. Right away responses started coming in: someone in Palawan said they hadn’t seen it there. A kind person in Colorado said that it wasn’t there either. A guy in Portland, Oregon said he saw some kids using it to climb up to the water fountain, and a retired missionary in Port Angeles, Washington said that an office chair matching the description of ours mysteriously showed up in the lobby of her retirement center a week ago.

You see what I mean, at least I’m world class at something. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop at office chairs. We lose fellow missionaries too. When we lose them they are world class lost: California, Colorado, Maine, and Norway just to name a few of the places we lose to.

This past month we said good-bye to the two couples in the picture above. God has moved them on to other ministries. Steve and Ja Whitney and Markus and Sarah Rosvik have been more than coworkers to us. They are wonderful friends who treated us like family. God has wonderful plans for them but we sure hate losing them, they are world class.