Mission Mindanao – Chapter 1
Preview from Prince of Sumba, Husband to Many Wives
The narrative you are about to read has been written as if the Great Awakening of the 21st century has not yet taken place. You will be presented with facts and figures as well as descriptions of places that may no longer be the same. It has been many years since I first set foot on Mindanao but we shall begin there. May you be blessed.
As our plane circled to touch down, I felt inadequately prepared for my mission. Mindanao was a huge island, larger than many countries. Its population was in the tens of millions, and still, there were vast areas of uninhabited jungle. Its demographics were changing so rapidly it was hard to keep track. The largest portion were Roman Catholic. The rest, were split between Muslim, Born-again Christians, Animists, and Maskers. Yes, the disgraced and now underground doctatorship still managed to keep the empty souls of the Maskers spellbound with new rumors of disease. I prayed out loud as was my habit. Yet even such boldness could not awaken the sleeping souls of those still wearing masks, decades after the doctatorship had fallen. But I didn’t let their delusions bring me down. I remembered my grandfather’s prophecy, that I’d become a missionary to Asia. The prophecy was about to be fulfilled, and then some.
“Praise God!” I nearly shouted.
My wife, Mary concurred. “Amen!”
Our plane eased across the runway at Cagayan de Oro Airport just as the midday equatorial sun took its place above us. When the crew opened the door of the plane, we were greeted by a burst of heat and humidity. By the time we descended the stairs and walked across the airport runway to the lobby, I was sweating profusely.
I took out my handkerchief and wiped my forehead. Well, we were here, Mindanao. I looked across the landing strip and saw nothing familiar except for a few tufts of grass stubbornly poking their way through the cracks in the runway. A water buffalo was yanking them out as he grazed. The field beyond the airport didn’t supply a choice enough variety for his tastes. The grass is always greener. Now that’s an idiom the Christian world had forgotten. Evangelizing on street corners had disappeared, how much more in distant lands. Christian world, what an oxymoron; daughters walking unaccompanied, and worse. That’s Christian?
At the airport, dozens of drivers of various sorts and sizes of taxis were arguing over fares. By the looks of some of the vehicles, they’d have to pay me to get in. I was glad that we were expected, and that our ride would be along soon. But before we had a chance to take a seat in the waiting area, a man approached us.
“May I be so rude as to bother you?” He asked in their language.
Had I not studied their language and culture first, I might have misstepped. But this was a land of formalities. If you were formal, you were safe… usually. He continued:
“Are you Mr. David?”
“That’s right, and you?”
“I’m Tony. Pastor sent me. He knew there wouldn’t be enough room for all of us to fit into my vehicle, so Pastor Sam and his family are waiting for you back at their place.”
I looked at what Tony called, his vehicle. It was what they once called a bao-bao. Sort of a taxi with stunted growth. The doors were what you’d find on a carnival ride, but less. There was definitely no safety equipment, no seatbelts. It was obviously made locally. And when I say locally, I mean in the neighbor’s garage. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But you get my point. There was barely enough room for luggage, let alone, passengers. Even so, we managed to squeeze in.
“Will it be all right with you if we go now?” Tony asked.
I was trying to figure out a polite way to get out of riding with Tony and to find some safer way to get to Pastor Sam’s house when Mary answered.
“Sure Tony. We don’t want to keep Pastor Sam waiting. Is this your taxi?”
“Yes, my American brother-in-law gave one to me, and one to my dad, as dowry for my sister when they got married last year!”
Tony beamed with pride.
After loading our luggage, we got into Tony’s tricycle for the five-mile ride to Pastor Sam’s place. Tony had to shout to be heard over the din of his engine. He’d halt mid-sentence as his engine revved. Then as it glided into the next gear he would begin speaking again.
“We only have two brown outs per day now.” He said. “That’s what we call our scheduled power outages. Our country only has enough power to supply most of our needs, so we have brownouts.”
Tony then related a story of one missionary who checked into a local hotel during a brownout. Having assumed that the power could be out for hours, the missionary climbed the ten flights of stairs to his room. The bellhop stepped out of the elevator with his baggage, just as he arrived. Upon realizing that he’d been allowed to climb the stairs, even though the bellhop knew the power was about to return, he threw a fit. So much so, that the church he’d been sent to wouldn’t accept him. The bellhop was simply being polite, according to local etiquette. The missionary had told him to bring his baggage up after the power returned, and that’s exactly what he’d done. He didn’t want to insult the intelligence of the missionary by telling him what anyone on Mindanao should have known. Brownouts were part of the landscape. They came and went as consistently as the sun rose and set. The bellhop simply figured the missionary was like other Americans, taking the stairs to keep fit. Some of the things the missionary said to the hotel staff were so personal as to be seen not just as anger, but as bigotry, so he was called back home despite his protestations.1
I was familiar with this missionary. He’d come from the old school that said, regardless of the message, it was the messenger that counted. And if you were a Doctor of Divinity, you must be a messenger of truth. All that mattered was that you had credentials. What you preached was incidental. Our mission board had taken very seriously the trouble this “missionary” had brought upon his denomination. Because of this, they leaned heavily on multilingual missionaries such as myself. We were generally more interested in the people we met than our highly educated but language illiterate counterparts. Can you imagine how Americans would receive a foreign missionary who refused to speak English? Yet to this day, most American missionaries can’t speak the language of the people they’re sent to. It’s insulting at worst, condescending at best. Worse yet, instead of spending their free hours studying the local language, many missionaries spend their time playing racket ball with the few rich locals fortunate enough to have studied abroad. The people they’re sent to, get little more than a Sunday sermon in English. I’m not sure how they get away with calling themselves missionaries. They simply piggyback on local congregations.
I was beginning to enjoy our ride to Pastor Sam’s house along the scenic winding highway. We drove through little barangays (communities) that ended just minutes after they’d begun. Each barangay had its own mix of stores. Each store had a sign or banner that told its specialty. One such sign read: We make authentic brand name jeans. You pick the label. Apparently, trademark laws still weren’t enforced here.
About now, I was beginning to feel guilty for having wanted to find another mode of transportation. This certainly wasn’t going to be the most dangerous ride I’d taken, and Tony had been kind enough to pick us up. Besides, being a missionary to remote places was going to entail more dangers than a taxi ride.
I never liked holding things in, so I said:
“Tony, I wanted to let you know how much we appreciate your having come out to the airport to pick us up.”
But before Tony had a chance to reply, an explosion went off behind us. Judging from the way his taxi careened to the side, we’d been hit. Mary held even more tightly to my now sticky arm. I wasn’t sweating as profusely as before, but that was because what I’d already sweated just remained on my skin. The humidity was so high that it couldn’t evaporate. Luckily, the explosion was only a flat tire.
Tony now responded to my thanks:
“I’m glad to know I can be of service to the Lord’s work. I’ll just change the tire.”
I noticed that the tire Tony was swapping for the flat, was no less bald than the one that had just blown. Well, as the locals were fond of saying, bathala na, translated, in God’s hands or come what may. I knew the wisdom of this saying for at the equator, things can go at such a slow pace that an impatient attitude is a sign of either low intelligence or extreme rudeness.2
There was a little sari-sari store at the side of the road where we got the flat, and while Tony was changing it, we had mango juice and snacks. A sari-sari store is a little shack where candy, snacks, and drinks are sold. Small packets of soap, shampoo, and other sundries are also sold there. I always liked these little places where you could get a snack and a drink. They were a great place to hang out and exchange tsismis (gossip). The cost of our juice and pastries was the peso equivalent of two bucks. But Suni, the girl who ran the sari-sari store, was more interested in tsismis than getting paid. It wasn’t every day that an American and his wife stopped by for a snack.
Suni, in sharp contrast to the dilapidated little sari-sari store, looked more like a fashion model than a poor roadside vendor. Her lips were glossed and her fingernails glistened in the sun. When she walked, her toes would peek out from her long dress, revealing their stylish pedicure, then hide again. Her hips swayed each time she came around the corner to put another snack in front of us. I know, such things are to be far from a missionary’s mind, but that was why the Lord blessed me with Mary, my wife. My youthful drive had never left me. I must be married or face the possibility of fornication and disgrace, each time a beauty such as Suni sauntered by.3
Suni’s feminine charms were nearly matched by her skills as an interrogator. She wanted to know our whole life story; how long we’d been married, how we’d met each other, whether it was love at first sight, and whether we’d been married before. Had Tony not finished changing the tire, the conversation could have continued for hours, if you could call it a conversation. Suni was asking all the questions. In America, we tend to think that questions such as these are rude or nosey. In the Philippines, they’re indications that someone is genuinely interested, no harm intended. And they don’t forget any of the things you’ve told them, unlike the West, where we invented the term, small talk.
Suni was looking at some of the pictures Mary had brought of our family, when Mary showed her one of our wedding pictures.
“Oh, you got him!” Suni exclaimed, then she apologized. “Sorry hah, it’s just the dream of every single girl to get her man. You’re so blessed!”
Mary wasn’t used to being told that she was blessed to get me. In the West it’s the man who’s told he’s lucky to have gotten his bride.
Not wanting Mary to feel slighted, I responded quickly:
“And I was so blessed to get her! And now I must take her again.”
I took Mary’s arm and helped her back into the tricycle since Tony was done with the tire.
“It must be wonderful to have such a strong husband.” Suni shouted as we drove away.
Suni’s praise was over the top. I silently prayed it wouldn’t go to my head.
Mary, having gotten over the unintended insult of being told that she was lucky to have me, shouted to me above the motor of the tricycle:
“Wouldn’t it be nice just to have Tony drive us all over the city getting flats and chatting with people at sari-sari stores?”
It was as if she’d read my mind. It would be great fun meeting all those people one by one, but next time I wanted to be the interrogator. Suni’s longing to have a husband had triggered my curiosity. Wouldn’t someone with her beauty and personality have lots of suitors? Maybe she did, but since we hadn’t asked, she hadn’t told us. I regretted that our conversation had been so lopsided. It seemed a shame that we were the adventurers but had learned so little from our first encounter with one of the locals. I promised myself that next time, such an opportunity wouldn’t be wasted.
Chapter 1 Footnotes
1. Proverbs 19:19 A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment: for if thou deliver him, yet thou must do it again.
2. Proverbs 14:29 He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.
Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
Proverbs 15:18 A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.
3. 1 Corinthians 7:9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
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