End of March/April Newsletter

(end of March/April 2006)

Hi friends and family,

I’ve been having an interesting time in the Philippines recently. At the end of March, I traveled to the town in Nueva Vazcaya, and had my 24th Birthday celebration on March 24 at the missions center where B is staying. This center houses many Kalanguya students at a low cost to help enable them to go to school, as well as the Mother Tongue Translators and several of their relatives. In the Philippines, it is a practice to provide food for your friends or family on your Birthday, and I had a dinner for everyone who stays at CFM with the help of the students who prepared the food.

After that, I went with B to the 40th Day Commemoration of one of his aunt’s deaths in the village of Imugan in Nueva Vizcaya. This aunt had been asking to meet me, but passed away before we were able to visit her. At the Commemoration, they had a worship service, which we missed because we assumed it would start later, and a feast of boiled pork and rice.

When I returned home, I resumed my frequent trips to the doctor, and found out that I have a Mitral Valve Prolapse, a problem with one of the valves in my heart. It’s common and isn’t a serious problem, and may be something I’ve had for many years, but the symptoms had been getting worse. My heart would often race, I sometimes felt lightheaded and fatigued, had heart palpitations, chest pains, and other symptoms. I’m thankful that I was able to find out what was wrong and get some medicine. I’m feeling much better now, though I’m still not quite back to normal. Thank you for yours prayers.

On April first, I moved into an apartment next to the one I had been living in with the help of several of my classmates. My housemates in my new apartment are mostly some of the Mother Tongue Translators who are coming from the province for their MAs in Applied Linguistics. It’s a four-room apartment. I have 1 room, and the other 6 or 7 girls will share the other rooms. Please pray that we’ll all get along well together, and that I won’t suffer from too much culture shock.

Later in April, I finished my second semester at Alliance Graduate School, and again traveled to CFM. From CFM, we traveled to an Intertribal Singles Retreat in a Bukalot village called San Pugo in Nagtipunan, Qurino. It took about nine hours to get there, and the last four hours were spent riding on the back of an old logging truck with about sixty other people across two shallow rivers and up a very rough mountain road. I enjoyed the adventure, but all of us were scared because the truck could hardly make it up the mountain in some places, and even felt like it almost started to slide backwards. It’s good that we were able to call on God and ask for his protection, though I still need to learn to trust fully in God in situations like that.

At the retreat, I was able to meet singles from three different tribes, and was included as one of the Kalanguya, a “white Kalanguya.” We listened to speakers almost all day, and had music (several of the people were very talented) and testimonies etc. at night.

The people there went out of their way to be kind and hospitable to me. When I went to the outhouse (comfort room), they would get water for me. When I ate, often someone would bring an extra cup of soup or something just to make sure I had enough. I was even given the only pad to sleep on.

The village itself was beautiful. The village people are known as the Bukalot, and were headhunters who worshipped spirits before some missionaries introduced God to them about fifty years ago. They are grateful that they no longer need to live in fear. Amazingly, they have electricity there that is produced by generators.

After returning to the town, I spent some time finishing my last paper and reading while B was working with the missionaries who were visiting from America to check the translated portion of the Old Testament that B and two of his nieces made. We also went to the Village of Mapayao for a short visit with some of B’s relatives.

Thank you for your prayers and God bless!

Esther Nedrow

P.S. Please let me know if you would like to keep receiving my newsletter (or if you don’t). Also, feel free to forward this to anyone else who would be interested. I don’t have everyone’s email addresses.