[Listen to a dramatic reading of this story.]

Huge drops of rain pelted Ramon and Standing like gravel falling from the pitch-black sky. It was 1 a.m. Friday morning, and they were cold, sore and about to faint from hunger. “One more river crossing, and it will all be over,” Ramon mumbled to himself as he and his companion groped their way along the trail in the inky darkness. A few minutes later, Ramon finally stumbled up the ladder to his house and collapsed onto the floor. As he lay there, his mind drifted back to the events of the past two days.

Early that Tuesday morning, Ramon and another Alangan church leader named Standing boarded a bus outside of our base village of Pandarukan. They were attempting for the first time to penetrate into the interior of the Batangan territory and, by God’s grace, find a village that would be willing to let us move in. Satan had been fighting hard to keep this trip from happening, but Ramon and Standing would not be stopped.

Arriving at the trailhead at around 3 p.m., they met their guide, a lowland Batangan named Dong, and hiked off toward Barison, the first in Batangan territory. Barison is only about half an hour from the end of the road, so they made it easily by dark and spent the night there in an old school building. This lowland Batangan village has had quite a bit of contact with the outside. The village boasts a one-room school, and everyone wears clothes.

The next morning, they set off again. A huge, almost impenetrable mountain range separates the lowlands from the interior. Their first objective was to get over this range, so they started climbing the trail.

I use the word trail very loosely. Trails in the interior of Mindoro are nothing like trails in the States. They are more like deer tracks—faint, unmarked, constantly changing mazes.

About an hour in, the trail disappeared into a thicket of brush. Something made the men decide to cut to one side and go around instead of pushing straight through. When they reconnected to the trail, they got a shock: A cross of sticks was stuck into the path, one arm pointing toward the thicket they had just skirted. It was the sign of a wild pig trap. If they had followed the trail into the thicket, Dong, leading the way, would likely have been impaled by a spring-loaded bamboo spear. God was watching out for them!

Noon came and went without any sign of life. They were steadily pushing higher and deeper into the interior and had expected to find some Batangan villages by now. Suddenly, Dong motioned for them to stop and be silent. A highland Batangan was coming up the trail. Seeing movement, the man stopped, ready to run, but Dong called out in Batangan, “Friend, don’t be afraid! We are Batangan, too!”

Tentatively the old man approached. Talking soothingly to him, Dong learned he was the chief of a nearby Batangan village. When Dong asked if they could visit his village, the man sidestepped the question. “If I were to go with you, that would be all right,” the chief said. “But I’m going out to set pig traps, and you must not go to the village without me. Stay on this path, and under no circumstances may you veer to the right or to the left.” With that, the old man disappeared into the jungle.

Undismayed, the three pushed on. An hour later, the trail started skirting the base of an enormous mountain. A trail took off straight up the face, and despite the chief’s warnings, the men decided to take it as it seemed to lead toward the interior.

The trail was all business, going straight up the mountainside without any switchbacks. It was so steep that all three of them feared for their lives. Determined to not be stopped, they kept climbing, and by mid afternoon they had reached the summit and started down the other side.

The terrain here was unlike anything they had ever seen, and as they continued to pick their way down the mountain, they began running across little Batangan villages. I also use the word “village” loosely. Most highland Batangan villages consist of one or two houses with a couple of closely related families living in them. They are built in their mountain farms so the families can watch for pests that might destroy their crops.

Every time the men approached one of these villages, while they were still half a mile or so off, the Batangan would start crying out in fear, asking who was coming. Children and adults alike would jump out of their houses and run for the bush. All three men wore nothing but g-strings, and had purposefully darkened their skin with soot from a cooking pot to appear more like the Batangan, but the people were still terrified.

I have never fully understood this phenomenon. The Batangan rightfully boast of having the greatest satanic power of any of the tribes on the island, and they claim to have need of nothing. At the same time, they live in a terror like I’ve never seen before. This paradox is common among animists, but it seems to be extreme with the Batangan. You don’t have to be white to strike terror in them. You don’t even have to be from another tribe. Anyone not from their immediate clan, they consider a threat. I have heard stories of Batangan becoming so frightened by the appearance of a stranger that they hung themselves rather than suffer whatever evil he might bring

The tribe has two leaders who supposedly govern them, one in the north and one in the south, but in reality these men serve only to make sure outsiders don’t come into the highlands. They are well paid for their trouble and are kept honest by the threat of an immediate, horrible death by sorcery if they fail in their task. The true governing power, though, rests in the elders or chiefs in the individual villages. Permission to enter or have any dealings with a village has to come from them.

Mile after mile, the three men continued to push ahead. The sun was rapidly sinking, and they were worn out, but they hadn’t yet reached their goal. Finally, just before sundown, they topped another ridge, and the interior of the Batangan territory spread before them. For mile after mile, as far as the eye could see, the hillsides of the huge valley were dotted with mountain farms indicating the presence of small villages.

At the base of the hills lay a high valley, cut through the middle by a river. As Ramon’s eyes followed the river up to its headwaters, he suddenly saw it—the village God had shown him in a dream. It was an exceedingly beautiful place, but as he saw it, his heart fell. The resistance and terror of these highland Batangan was so great that the few villages they had passed through were already dangerously close to calling a meeting and demanding of the southern tribal leader that he keep us out. This village was another day’s walk from where they were, past many more villages. Ramon knew that if they pushed any farther they would destroy any possibility of our being able to work in the interior. He was within sight of the promise, and he could testify that the land was indeed very good, but there were giants in the land, and for the moment Ramon, Standing and Dong were forced to retreat.

Night was rapidly falling, so the men walked toward a village just ahead of them. As they had done at the other villages, Ramon and Standing held back while Dong negotiated with the village leader from a few hundred feet away. The men were exhausted. They had been climbing mountains all day, they were drenched with rain, they hadn’t eaten since that morning, and they had been fighting off leeches by the handful ever since cresting the high mountain. Dong begged that they be allowed to stay the night, but the terrified chief refused. Hoping for a compromise, Dong asked if they could just sleep on the ground in the mountain farm a few hundred feet from the house, but still the chief refused. Discouraged and faint, they turned back.

As darkness fell, the men selected a campsite and laid broad banana leaves on the ground, hoping to keep the leeches away. There was nothing but damp scrub wood to cook with, but they managed to coax enough of a fire out of it to make supper, and then they fell into an exhausted sleep.

As they slept, God gave Ramon a dream. He had actually seen two places that day that he recognized from previous dreams. The first one had been on the slopes of the first mountain range earlier that morning, still well within range of the lowlands. The other one had been the village at the headwaters of the huge valley. As if to confirm that this second place was the one He intended for our work, God briefly showed Ramon this village. Ramon strained to see how God intended for us to get across the obstacles in our way, but the scene vanished from his sight.

As Ramon awoke the next morning and rolled over, he noticed a large puddle of blood on Dong’s sheet and quickly woke him. During the night, a leech had found its way to Dong, drunk its fill, and then inched off, leaving the wound bleeding onto the sheet.

The men had another long day ahead of them, so, picking the persistent leeches out of their rice, they gulped down a quick breakfast and then began their hike homeward.

Late that afternoon, as if Satan was trying to give them proof of his absolute sway in these mountains, the men had one last encounter with a highland Batangan. A man appeared on the trail ahead of them. As he approached, he spoke to them in a voice that boomed like thunder through the jungle. As he passed them, Ramon looked back at him and saw four perfectly spaced bumps on his back. Ramon knew what these bumps meant—Satan had granted this man supernatural powers and protection from knives, bullets, fire and all other man-made weapons. The war between God and Satan is very real in these mountains.

We were all sobered by what we discovered on this expedition. Not that we question in the least that we will make it into the interior, and that the Gospel will prevail. Victory is sure. But, as Ramon, Standing and I realized as we talked that Friday morning after they had gotten a few hours of sleep, the road to victory is going to be rougher than we ever imagined. Right now, we are looking at setting up residence in Barison. If the village elder lets us come in, I will begin learning the Batangan language and culture there while making frequent trips up into the mountains. We will push in a little at a time, giving the people an opportunity to get used to us and build a degree of trust. If we can develop enough trust in a highland village, I’ll move there and keep pushing deeper while continuing to learn the Batangan language and culture.

The enemy seems to have an inordinately strong grip on these people. I am puzzled as to why he is holding onto them so much more tightly than to any tribe on the island. To us, it is a sure sign that there is something important waiting in that valley, deep in the mountains. Those people must be reached with the Gospel. God will not let Satan win this war. And so, until the day of victory, we fight on.

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