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.