“Oh!” I groaned, writhing on my bed. “Ohhhhhh!” Only half conscious, I tried to remember where I was. What is that terrible pain in my stomach? I groggily asked myself. Suddenly I knew very clearly what it was as my bowels snapped me fully awake with a five-second notice that they were about to explode.

Jumping out of bed, I bolted for the outhouse. As I ran I glanced at the clock on the water filter. 1 a.m. Only three more hours before I had to be on the road to meet the pastor. I wasn’t sure I could make it.

As I sat in the outhouse, feeling like my life was draining out of me, my mind wandered back over the last two years. In 2015, a couple of Balangabong church leaders and I had begun developing a contact in the village of Pusog. The village had strongly opposed our work, and we had been forced to meet in a little shack 45 minutes from the village. All those who were interested in our message had to come and meet us there.

After several months of meeting like this, one of our church members, Ida, decided to move to Pusog. The village tried to keep her out, but since she grew up there and owned land there, they could find no legal ground to prevent her from living in the village.

Within two months, Ida had led four villagers to faith. They had completed baptismal studies and all were ready for baptism. Now the only problem was finding a pastor to baptize them.

For the next two months I tried unsuccessfully to arrange for a pastor to baptize them. The main problem was that two of the candidates were deathly afraid of coming out of the mountains. The only ordained pastor for miles was very busy and didn’t have time to hike into the mountains to baptize them.

One young man and a married woman were not so afraid of the lowlands, and we managed to bring them out to the pastor and have them baptized. But the other two men remained unwilling to leave the mountains. I was eager not to delay their baptism, as one of them had already demonstrated a calling to lead this newly forming church.

And so there I was on that miserable night. I had finally managed to arrange for an ordained pastor to come and baptize the two men in the river near their village. I was to meet this pastor at dawn and guide him into the mountains. I can’t do this, I whimpered to myself. I can barely stand. There’s no way I can hike into the mountains with the pastor in just a few hours. I’ll just have to text him that I can’t make it.

But then I thought about how long my people had waited to be baptized. I remembered how anxious they had been, how they had asked me over and over when someone would come and baptize them. I remembered how long I had negotiated with the various pastors on the island for this opportunity. Furthermore, it was nearly time for the pastors in our area to be moved to different districts. If I passed up this chance it could be months before I would find someone else to come. No, I told myself. You will go. You will drag yourself on your hands and knees if you have to, but you will not let your people down today.

I only remember snatches of the rest of that day, like a collection of snapshots. I remember trudging down the mountain to the truck, my legs shaking. I remember jouncing over the rocky road on the way to meet the pastor. I remember the pastor telling me that his key had broken off in the lock of his van. I remember waiting for hours while a mechanic drove out to the boonies where we were. It took him another hour to hotwire the pastor’s van, and I lay on a wooden bench while my body ached with fever. I remember dragging my feet one after the other up the mountain, my eyes not daring to look farther than my next step.

All of these scenes are like fragments of a dream. But I remember one scene almost as clearly as if I were still there. A little band of believers stood on the banks of an emerald-green pool. A few curious children from the village looked on as the pastor led the men into the water. They caught their breath in the chilly mountain stream. Then, with a prayer, the pastor buried their old selves in the water, and they came up out of the water to a new life. Joining their two fellow believers who had gone before them, they knelt on the white marble boulders beside the river as we prayed over the seed of the new church now planted on the northern border of Tawbuid territory.

As I recall this image, all the pain seems to fade, and in its place I am filled with joy. I cling to hope that this church, planted with so many tears, will grow and grow until every Tawbuid has had the chance to hear and understand the good news.

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