Faithful in Obedience (Urbana 84)

message from Urbana 84
by Joanne Shetler

"I don't mean to imply that obeying God and doing his will is easy. It's very hard. And it will cost you all you've got. But I want to tell you the payoff is indescribable. If I could leave you with one thought, it would be this: "Don't be afraid. Do it. Obey God no matter what it seems the cost may be."

I want to share with you how I found out it's OK to obey God. I grew up on a farm in California and was eleven years old before I ever heard the good news. I remember thinking that this was the best news I'd ever heard and the best "deal" I'd ever heard of! So when they asked who wanted to become a child of God, my hand shot up.

By the time I was twelve, my pastor had introduced me to such verses in the Bible as "go into all the world," "make disciples of all people," "teach them" and "tell the good news." I remember thinking, "That's a sensible and logical thing to do. If that's what God wants, I'll do it. After all, look what he's done for me. I owe him my whole life." Besides, I was only twelve and thought you had to do it.

About that time, I heard that ninety per cent of these "goers," "tellers" and "makers-of-disciples" were concentrating on ten per cent of the world's population. And that left the other ten per cent of the "goers," "tellers" and "makers-of-disciples" to somehow reach ninety per cent of the world's population. And so in good, solid twelve-year-old logic, I realized I had to be a missionary.

I still had two problems though. First, even years later I could never figure out exactly what missionaries did, although I had heard quite a few speak. And how did they know when they were finished? I never perceived a definable job that I thought I could do. Also, I thought I could never live up to the spiritual maturity I assumed missionaries must have. My second problem was even bigger than the first: if I went off to a foreign country to teach people about God, I was scared to death that all they would ever know about God would be what I told them. How would I ever stand before God and answer for that? I was afraid of the responsibility.

I spent a good bit of time trying to explain to God that I couldn't do it. I was inadequate. He must have the wrong person in mind. But you know God - he doesn't accept inadequacy as an excuse - and I wasn't "released."

My pastor suggested that, since I, planned to be a missionary, I should go to a Christian college. That sounded logical enough; so I did. And I actually graduated from there ... still wondering exactly what missionaries did! And I was still afraid of being a limit to a people's knowledge about God.

After graduation, someone told me that if I'd take the summer course at the University of Oklahoma, I could learn to speak a foreign language. That sounded logical. If you're going to be a missionary, you need to speak a foreign language. So I went off to the Summer Institute of Linguistics and, for the first time, got acquainted with Wycliffe Bible Translators. What really grabbed me was the logic of it all (and I'd been into logic since I was twelve): if the Bible was the most important book in the world, how sensible to give it to people who have never before had it in their own language.

And there it was: a definable job! You'd know when you started, and you'd know when you finished. Then, about halfway through the summer, something else hit me, like a light out of heaven itself: if you give people God's Word in their own language, God himself could speak to them directly. I'd no longer be responsible for how much they'd know about God. It rang all my bells! I was on my way. At last I knew the thing for which God had made me. And I was excited.

Then it was spring of 1962. Anne Fetzer and I were escorted by one of our Wycliffe colleagues to a little place about five days and four centuries north of Manila in the Philippines. We were on our way to the mountain tribe of Balangao, to live with them, learn their language, see life through their eyes and translate God's Word.

A survey trip had been made into Balangao a few months before, and the people there said they'd like some Americans to come live with them. (The translation part didn't make sense to them.) And so Anne and I went. It was three days on a variety of buses until we came to the end of the road. And then there were still two more days of climbing through the mountains, and at some points almost crawling, before we arrived. We came to where the Balangao people lived, that magnificent and beautiful valley, reputed to be the eighth wonder of the world, the Philippine rice terraces. After getting us settled, finding a house and building an outhouse, our colleague returned to his work and left us with our newfound friends.

A Balangao Daddy

We hadn't been there but a few days when one of the men marched over to our house, visibly upset. He had been one of them who had originally agreed to have Americans come live there. But he had not bargained for women. "Don't you know it's not safe for women to be here? Don't you realize we're headhunters?" We did. "You need someone to take care of you. I'll be your father." There it was, right out of the Bible, God making his Word come true for us before we ever had a chance to give any of it to them: "If any man leave father, mother, sister, brother, houses or lands for my sake and the gospel's, I'll give him more fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, houses and lands than he left." We thought we were giving up everything; but before we had given anything, we were receiving.

The Balangaos couldn't understand why we had come. "Oh," we would explain, "we've come to put God's Word in a book so you can know what God wants to tell you."

"Yes, but why have you come?"

We'd try again. "We've come to translate God's Word into your language and teach you to read it."

"Yes, but why did you come here?"

It just didn't make sense. Later we found out they had decided among themselves why we had come. There were two possible reasons. Either we wanted to somehow get rich by selling their language in America (why else would we be writing it down?), or else we'd come to look for husbands since we didn't have any.

People there hadn't seen much of the outside world when we first came. I remember one day listening to the news of the outside world on our little transistor radio when a lady walked in. She heard the radio. Her mouth dropped open; her eyes got big. She knew that was a person's voice, even though she couldn't understand it. Finally she couldn't stand it any longer. She said, "How big are the people you keep in that little box?"

Our Balangao daddy told us if we'd eat more rice, we'd learn to speak Balangao better - and he was right. Anne and I would go down the terraces into our village, climb up the little bamboo ladders to their grass-roofed houses that sit on stilts, and we'd sit on the floor by their open fires. We could see pigs and chickens running around below through the cracks. Inside it was dark and smoky. And we'd eat the world's best rice with our fingers, drink their home-grown coffee and learn to speak Balangao. But that's not all we learned. We also learned what bothers Balangaos - their problems, hopes and fears.

Omens and Evil Spirits

We found that evil spirits were really what controlled their lives. If they'd go off to the forest to get wood and accidentally step on one of the spirits (or even worse, on one of the spirits' children), they'd have to make a sacrifice. They would know when they transgressed by finding a child sick or something else wrong when they got home. If a rainbow appeared in the sky, it struck terror in everyone. They'd have to sacrifice. Anyone building a house would have to tear it down to the ground, even if they were tying on the very last shelf inside. It was very frightening. The bird omens control much of their lives. I saw a man next door to us come home three days in a row trying to go to the forest. The birds made him come home every day.

The Tabali people, another tribe in the Philippines, explained to me why people have to obey the bird omens. They told me that they used to have a written language. They used to be wise a long time ago. But one day when the parents were off in the fields working, the kids got into the wooden trunk where the book which contained their written language was kept. As the children played with it, the pages of the book fell through the slats in the floor and birds came and ate those pages. The people not only lost their written language, they lost their wisdom. And so they were forced to obey the omens of that particular type of bird.

But that's not the end of the story. Legends also told the Tabalis that someday they'd get their book back. One day when a couple of our colleagues were doing some translation work, an old man came up on the porch and said to them, "Is it true you're writing Tabali words?"

They said, "Yes."

"Are you the ones that are bringing us back our book?"

And they said, "Yes."

Five years ago the Tabali got their completed book. In that tribe of over 80,000 people there are 150 churches.

The Balangaos were similarly controlled by omens. We learned all about evil spirits and how hard Balangaos' lives really were. They incessantly tried to appease the spirits.

Well, we had the answer to their problems! And for three meals a day I explained to them about the God who had more power than the spirits, and how they could trust him. By now I'd learned their language, and since my partner had gone home to get married, my Balangao daddy had come over and told me, "From now on, you're eating all your meals at our house. If you stay by yourself, you'll get lonely. And if you get lonely, you'll go home just like Anne did. And if you go home, who will give us medicine?!" The food I could have resisted the love I couldn't. And I had a tremendous opportunity to talk to them about God.

A Church Is Born

But I was frustrated. When I came home on my first furlough, after five solid years, only two people had believed not a very good showing, is it? I didn't know what to do. I dumped the whole load on my home church. And I found something out. You can't do the job by yourself. You have got to have people praying for you. You've got to have a team behind you. A tree is no good without a root system. Well, my root system was born in a brand-new way: My church no longer prayed "Dear God, please bless Jo wherever she's at and whatever she's doing." They took up the burden. And when I went back after furlough, things started to happen.

I gave my Balangao daddy a copy of my translation of 1 John to "correct." I had learned over the years that children don't teach their fathers, but fathers can "correct" the child's work. He started to read it. He didn't get halfway through it when he said, "My goodness, this stuff is good! Why, people would believe it if they could just hear it!" (I'd only been telling it to him for five years!)

I asked, "What are we going to do so they can hear it?"

A few days later he brought a whole bunch of people into the house and announced, "Here we are, teach us!"

"Teach you what?"

"Where did people come from?" He was thumbing through a New Testament I had on the desk. Looking at page one, he said, "You mean this has a genealogy in it?"

"Oh, yeah," I told him, "just skip that and you can get to the good stuff."

"You mean this is true? We always thought people came from a rock and a banana plant, but we never did have all their names written down!" And I started to get a flood of questions. "Where did sin come from?" "Well then, where did Satan come from?" Some saw a comparison between their sacrificing of pigs and chickens to evil spirits to God's sacrifice system. I explained to them about that great liar and counterfeiter. Then they'd ask, "Now what is that you tell God when you want to become one of his children?" I'd give them a little prayer to pray. One man went down on the spot and prayed. When he came up, he said, "Is it all right if we tell this to other people?" And we were off and running! The Balangaos started to believe by the dozens.

But this created all kinds of trouble with the evil spirits. Many times when a person said he wanted to believe, his whole life would fall apart until he would sacrifice. This got to the point where I thought I couldn't take it any longer. Then one day we saw before our very eyes a knockdown, drag-out power confrontation between God and the evil spirits. The spirits tried to kill two women because they wanted to believe. But they could not kill them. And then people came by the fifties, by the hundreds, to find out who is this God who has more power than the evil spirits. And a church was born.

I, a single woman, had something on my hands that was bigger than I was, worth more than money could buy. I would get weary, and colleagues dug me out of the ditch more than once. And at one point it almost cost me my life. But the worst thing that could ever happen to a person is not death - anyone would die given a cause big enough. The worst thing that could ever happen to you is never having anything worth dying for. And I had it: a church born.

Prayer, Preaching and Widows

And what do you do with a church on your hands? Teach them to pray. But they wouldn't. "You've known God longer. You talk to him for us!" I'd explain, reason, give examples, but they wouldn't pray! They were glad to have me pray three meals a day, but they wouldn't. What do you do? If you're a translator and a church is born, you skip over to the pastoral epistles and translate them. I was working on 1 Timothy with my Balangao daddy. We got to chapter two where Paul says to Timothy, "I will that men everywhere should pray." My Balangao daddy thought that's what that meant. And that night at supper, he says, "Ahem, I'll be the one to pray tonight." And that was the beginning of Balangaos praying.

Sundays were a wonder to me, hours of questions and answers. People from all over the valley came. But sometimes I couldn't be in Balangao on Sunday, and so I tried to get them to teach. I'd go over it beforehand with them. I reasoned, begged, pleaded, argued, but they still wouldn't teach. "We just don't know anything about all this," they insisted. It got so that when I was out of Balangao, I'd have to fly home weekends. But sometimes I just couldn't fly home and so on Sundays nothing would happen.

I continued translating in Timothy with my daddy. And we came to a verse where Paul says to Timothy, "I don't allow women to teach men." My daddy didn't bat an eyelash. But that afternoon, after we'd finished work, he said to me, "Now what is that we're going to study on Sunday?" I thought he was just curious. I didn't know what was on his mind since fathers don't report to their children. So I told him. Sunday morning came, and before I could stand up to start, he stood up and said, "My daughter here knows more about this than I do, but we found in the Bible that women aren't supposed to teach men. So I guess I have to be the one!" And that was the end of my career, and the beginning of their teaching.

We kept on translating in Timothy. We got to the end of the book where it talks about widows in need and the church's responsibility to take over for widows who have no other source of livelihood. About the same time, Forsan, one of those old women the spirits had earlier tried to kill, lost her husband. And she was a widow indeed. All of her children had long been dead. She had no relatives in Balangao. In fact, she was not even a Balangao. And in Balangao culture there is no mercy if there is no blood connection. She would have been left alone in her house with or without food until she died. One of the men who had helped me in the translation, not knowing any better, went over and took Forsan by the hand with her one little pot, brought her over and said, "You will be like my mother and you will live with us in our home." And, that old woman is there today, even though she is old and sickly. But he didn't know he had any choice. He thought he was supposed to do it because that's what the Bible said.

Well, even I was getting smart. I knew that what I needed to do was to get this stuff translated and into their hands as soon as I could. And so I, who hate to type, typed up a dozen copies of a book as fast as I could as soon as it was translated. (That was before we had computers. I love computers.) And I'd pass out copies. I had given Fanganan a copy of the book of James. A few days later he came running to the house shouting to me, "Come quick, come quick. My boys are dying." They had been off to the forest and they'd eaten poison berries and they were dying. I was paralyzed.

"But I don't know what to do!"

I could see his frustration mounting. "Well, can't you at least come and pray? That's what that James says you're supposed to do!"

I gulped. If I was going to hand that stuff out, I'd better go do what it says. So, not with the most confidence in the world, I went off and we prayed. And bingo! Just like that, the boys were OK. And who was the most surprised? Me, the missionary. Fanganan wasn't: "That's what it said, wasn't it?"

Today, the Balangao church is active in outreach. Even though there's little hope that any will be formally trained as pastors, barefoot farmers are teaching what they know to others. When I left in 1982, after finishing translating the New Testament, the Balangaos were teaching in six different places in the valley. Since then it's gone to ten different places. And they're going off to other tribal groups too. Ignacio, a young man who helped me on final revision, was so overwhelmed with the power of God's Word in his own mother tongue that he's in the process of becoming a Bible translator, cutting his teeth on the Balangao Old Testament before going off to do another language. He describes himself as a rock in a riverbed looking for a place to belong, and now at last he's found his wall, the slot he was born to fill.

A Pearl Payoff

I don't mean to imply that obeying God and doing his will is easy. It's very hard. And it will cost you all you've got. But I want to tell you the payoff is indescribable. If I could leave you with one thought, it would be this: "Don't be afraid. Do it. Obey God no matter what it seems the cost may be."

I will never forget the story of the little girl whose daddy had given her some plastic pop beads. Now they were poor, but she loved her daddy. And so she loved those beads. She wore them everywhere. She wore them to church; she wore them to school; she wore them to bed. She never took her beads off. They were the thing she loved most. One day, her daddy came home, and he asked her for those little beads back. She was incredulous. He asked again, and she got tears in her eyes. He asked the third time, and she was torn. She couldn't understand. Why is this? She loved those beads. She loved her daddy. Finally, sobbing, she took off her beads, and she put them in her daddy's hand. And, then he reached in his pocket, and he pulled out a string of real pearls and put them around her neck.

How much more did that little girl love her daddy then? How much more did she love her pearls? God has pearls for each of us. Can you imagine how much you will love your daddy and how much you will love your pearls if you will just obey him? Don't miss yours.

Joanne Shetler spent twenty years working among the Balangao people and translating the New Testament. Dedicated in July 1982, the Balangao New Testament has strengthened a growing church with a missionary outreach.

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Faithful in Obedience (Urbana 84)

God's Word

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December 27-31, 2009