For many years, we have given our hearts—our lives—for the Palawano people. For years, we have rejoiced over their victories, cried over their failings and pleaded with the Lord for the salvation of the tribe. We have wondered how we could ever leave them. Would they ever be strong enough to stand on their own against the tide of cultural norms flooding in from the outside world? How could they ever subsist without support of mature Christians, without at least some financial support from outside their domain?

For years, our birth children have carried this burden with us, committing even to coming back to Palawan to take up the baton if we ever happened to drop it. We continually praise the Lord for this level of commitment from our children. The Lord surely called us, as a family, to the mission of bringing His word to the Palawano people. We are humbled at the immense responsibility. And still the question remains: what will it take to have an ongoing presence in these people’s lives, even in our absence?
Let’s go back in time to 1994 to visit a certain Palawano family—Anastacio, Lupina and their four children. Anastacio was a penglima, a tribal leader. With the other leaders, he made a decision that impacted the tribe for eternity. He agreed to allow missionaries to come into his tribe and create a school to teach their children.

Tragedy struck the family soon after the birth of the fourth child, a girl named Dyilin. Lupina suddenly became sick and soon died. For a while, Anastacio tried to hold the family together. Soon the eldest girl, Mumul, married and left. Bubit, the second eldest, a girl of about eight, took responsibility for the baby, constantly searching for someone to nurse her; feeding her rice water when no milk could be found. Their brother, Niksun, drifted here and there. Before too long, Anastacio remarried and left the children largely to their own devices. Within a couple years, he, too, passed away, his liver destroyed by alcohol.
The children scrambled to eke out an existence. Bubit was 11, and baby Dyilin was three years old. The ship of their lives was rudderless, and they floated hither and yon; sometimes with relatives, other times on their own. But always, they felt alone. There was no one to shield them from the harshness of life, no one to defend them from the injustices that were thrown at them.
Dyilin’s whole world was wrapped up in Bubit. At the slightest separation from her, she would cry and cry. Not a normal cry, but an outpouring of desolation. I remember on one occasion when Bubit simply needed to get away for a few hours and be the kid she really was, Dyilin screamed and hollered and threw continuous tantrums. I was still very much a newcomer to the area, and I was the only one who paid the slightest attention to her. I scooped her up in my arms and held her. When she realized I wasn’t going to let go, she quieted and then didn’t want to be put down. “Lord Jesus,” I prayed in my heart, “You know this child needs a mother! Who will be her mother?”

Another time, as I was hiking in the mountains, I came upon Dyilin and Bubit with some of their relatives. I saw that Dyilin had a huge abscess behind her ear. I asked the relatives what they had been doing to treat it, and they said they hadn’t done anything. I went back down the mountain to our clinic, collected the materials I needed and hiked back up the long, steep trail. I treated her abscess, and it healed rapidly.
Another time, Dyilin was very sick, and adequate medicines weren’t available in Kamantian. With Michelle Kelch, our nurse at the time, I took Dyilin to the lowland hospital where we got the needed medicines. I took her to our base house in Brooke’s Point and gave her an IV. I also took advantage of those few days simply to mother her. She eagerly soaked up the attention, but the lowland heat was hard on her, and she was ill at ease. She was just a toddler, but she was used to roaming freely in the mountains. Running out of ideas to keep her entertained, I put several cups of flour into a basin and plunked her down in the middle of it, not thinking of the mess it would create. To this day, she remembers the fun she had playing in that flour.

Then, suddenly, Dyilin and Bubit were gone. We were told they had gone to live with relatives in a far-off town. For several years we wondered what had become of them. Then they resurfaced in Kamantian for a short while, only to disappear again just as quickly.

Several years later, Niksun happened upon Dyilin in a faraway market. With tears, Dyilin begged him to take her to live with him. Knowing that he couldn’t just take her home without incurring the wrath of whoever was “caring” for her, he returned to Kamantian and reported her whereabouts to Mumul. Mumul enlisted our aid in going to ask for Dyilin’s return. We came to learn that Bubit had left Dyilin in the care of this family while she went to another city to attend school. The family was treating her a slave. Dyilin was eventually restored to her older brother and sister in Kamantian, and there was great rejoicing.

Dyilin struggled to integrate into Mumul’s family of three boys who often made her feel unwelcome in their tiny, cramped hut. Dyilin’s belongings, few though they were, were not respected, and she often didn’t have enough to wear. We would give her clothes, but soon we would see someone else wearing them. Dyilin became increasingly disrespectful to Mumul and wandered a lot, sleeping at her friends’ homes when she could and often begging to sleep at ours.

Stephanie took Dyilin under her wing, often consoling her and counseling her on how to get along with the other girls. Dyilin was very jealous of Stephanie’s attention to other girls, but Stephanie put up with it so she could keep mentoring this difficult young girl. Many times, she would say to me, “Mama, Dyilin just needs a mother! There is only so much I can do.” When there were discipline problems or sister problems between Mumul and Dyilin, I often had to step in and help make peace; encouraging Dyilin to be respectful and obedient even when Mumul was inconsistent.

After one particularly bad altercation, Niksun took Dyilin out of the mountains to relatives who handed her off to other relatives. It was weeks before we found where she had gone. During this time, Mumul and I talked about how things weren’t gong well for Dyilin; that she really needed a strong, steady hand to guide her and that Mumul wasn’t able to do that for her. Mumul very much wanted her back in Kamantian, so we hatched a plan to bring Dyilin back to live with us. (It was already clear that we were the only ones who could manage her.)

Dyilin was thrilled at last to be permitted to live at our house. (We hadn’t thought it a good idea previously because of her family politics.) The first few weeks were joyous ones, and we came to love her on an ever-deepening level. But as the honeymoon period wore off, her behavioral challenges resurfaced. She still grieved over a mother she had never known and a father who had abandoned her. She still saw herself as a rootless orphan, and she acted out her anger, hopelessness and hurt.

When issues would arise, Dyilin would threaten to run away. But run away to where? When we disciplined her, she would challenge our right, saying we weren’t her parents anyway. She accused us of planning to fatten her up and eat her, or take her to the States and sell her, or keep her in our home as our slave . . . it went on and on. Within a month, we realized that, in order to make a lasting impact on this child’s life, we had to convince her that, no matter what, we were her family—her parents. We prayed and prayed, wondering if this was God’s answer to this little girl’s plight. “Yes,” God seemed to say. “The time is right, and you are the answer. Become her parents, emotionally, physically, spiritually, legally.”

With trepidation, I approached Mumul, wondering what she would demand in exchange for her sister. I told her of Dyilin’s struggles, how she needed to feel she belonged, and I suggested we needed to adopt her so she could really heal.
Mumul’s face lit up. “I’ve prayed you would do this!” she said.

So that was that. Adoption proceedings began. Today, three years later . . . adoption proceedings continue!

What impact does this have on the tribe? What impact will this have on the future of our mission here? Time will tell. Dyilin turned 15 years old in January. Due to her spotty education, she is still in elementary school, but she has aspirations. She wants to be a teacher or a nurse—an agent for the Lord.

Last Sabbath, our family took a break from the intensity of our work in the mountains, and Dyilin and I had a quiet chat together about her spiritual growth. I asked her about her growing relationship with Jesus. She has said she would like to be baptized, and I asked her why. “I want to teach my people about Jesus,” was her simple reply. There you have it—a Palawano child with dreams of teaching her tribe about Jesus.

Oh yes, she would love to visit the States. She has grandparents she has never met, cousins she has only heard about, aunts and uncles by the score and a niece and nephew with whom she’d love to become acquainted. But she only wants to visit. She has a dream, and it isn’t the riches and opportunities of America. She wants to prepare for a work among her people.

We praise God for giving us the opportunity to minister to Dyilin on such a deep level and instill within her a love for Him and an undying desire to be His light in the darkness. We don’t know what the future has in store for Dyilin, but we do know in Whose hands she rests. In His wisdom and love, God has given us this pearl from the South China Sea to nurture and polish until she gleams for all eternity.

And so our ties with the Palawano people grow stronger every day. They will always be in our hearts and we in theirs. We are family.

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