Lamane: February 2008

My wife and I returned from a two and a half week trip to see her home in the Philippines on September 16, 2007. We had wanted to take this trip sometime before we started having kids, and with her being over 5 months pregnant, that window of possibility had become very small. The goal was simply for me to see, smell, touch and taste all of the wonderful things that she grew up experiencing in a tribe located in a remote jungle of a third world country. Though we did accomplish this, we also encountered a lot more than we had expected.

Tanya grew up as a daughter of missionaries in a tribe of Tagbanwas on the west coast of Palawan in the Philippines. When Tanya’s parents moved to Lamane (with their 8 month old Manila-born daughter) it was a quaint little community with a picturesque strand of beach. The way to get to this piece of paradise was, first, to catch a flight or boat from Manila to Puerto Princesa, then ride a bus over halfway down the rest of the east coast of Palawan (approximately three hours of curvy, pothole-filled roads), then take the only road across the island and finally hire a boat from Quezon[1] for the three hour ride to the tribe. By the mid-nineties they could skip the boat ride and take a jeep another hour back up the west side of the island before walking the last couple of hours into Lamani. Needless to say, neither they nor the Tagbanwas came or went much.[2]

Tim and Karen Grossman lived and raised their four children in a small house on stilts there in Lamane from 1980 until 1992—when Tim felt that the new church would be better served if the local leaders were made more autonomous by his absenting himself. Following a year furlough back in the States, the Grossmans moved to Puerto Princesa for two years, allowing Tim to maintain periodic contact with the Tagbanwas yet still providing them with the independence they needed and freeing him up to work in other fields. The Grossmans remained in the Philippines until Tim and Karen decided to stay in the States after their 2003 furlough for family reasons.[3] However, throughout the years Tim has maintained contact with the people of Lamane through visits, extended stays, and more recently, through email—even since being in the States Tim has taken several trips back to Lamane.

Though the church has done very well during the fifteen years since the Grossmans lived full time in Lamane, there have been a lot of changes and these have, of course, brought challenges with them. In 1997 a gravel road was put in along the coast and now there are three jeepneys a day that take passengers, produce and mail to and from Quezon. As a result of this accessibility, a number of people have left the tribe to seek work in towns or cities—even as far away as Puerto Princesa. Also due to its recent ease of access, Lamane’s beaches are frequently visited by pleasure-seekers (in spite of it being private tribal land) and land prospectors looking to buy, cheat or steal from anyone they can in their never-ending quest to turn a profit. New found “relatives” have even moved into parts of the region to “help” some of the elderly in exchange for inheriting the rights to their land. Because of these challenges, the church/community leaders have repeatedly been stretched beyond their capacity to make decisions and have consequently begun to solicit help from their younger, more educated counterparts. However, even with the help of the more experienced youth, the leaders are increasingly finding themselves in situations larger than they know how to handle.

Into this atmosphere has entered the most recent and significant challenge that these people have had to face. In 2002, a mining company began to court the Tagbanwas in order to gain their required consent to proceed with proposed operations—as early as the 70’s, exploration efforts had revealed rich nickel deposits within the ancestral domain of the Tagbanwas. Numerous people in the tribe were offered bribes to help convince the community to embrace this project. Eventually, a full on campaign was entered into—complete with a comic book portraying imminent infrastructure and agricultural developments to be paid for by a royalty and promises that at least half of the jobs created at the mine would be given to the tribal people.

In October of 2005 the Tagbanwas were given a Memorandum of Agreement outlining Berong Nickel Company’s offer and told that they would have 150 days to deliberate on it before an answer was needed. Three days later a group of leaders and tribal people were taken into Quezon and hosted by the mine officials for a day. That night the Tagbanwas were visited by a group from the NCIP[4] and six of the less than reputable members of the community secretly signed a contract with the mine in spite of the fact that the leaders had agreed not to sign it just the night before. The mine began full scale operation in January of 2007 and has made been making shipments of ore since that date.

During the past year the affected communities have been racked by internal struggles. Large scale division has erupted over what should be done with the royalty that is being set aside for the affected communities. This division has been fueled by rumors that the mine is not dealing fairly with the people—these rumors being started by the same locals who secretly signed the agreement and were the mine’s initial arbiters within the community. The goal of creating such unrest is so that the mine will break down and start making cash payments instead of funding infrastructural development as was agreed—these individuals, of course, have also worked very hard to make sure that they are the ones through whom such handouts would be channeled.

I do not have to tell you that seeing and hearing of all of this has been incredibly difficult for my wife and, consequently, myself. However, there is a great deal that can be done. While talking to JJ Rasmussen, a twenty-five year veteran missionary who has known the Grossmans almost since they moved to the Philippines,[5] I began to think about whether it would be possible for my father-in-law to re-invigorate his connections with the Tagbanwas. JJ informed me that he had rarely met a missionary of Tim Grossman’s caliber. He said that not only is Tim uniquely qualified to meet the needs of the tribe,[6] but he has a heart for Christ and ministry that is evidenced by his own 25+ years of service in the Philippines and the fact that his four children are all walking firmly with the Lord.

Since our return to the States, Tanya and I have talked extensively with Tim about his being willing to reinvest in the tribe. He has wholeheartedly engaged. He took an initial three week trip back, in early November, and is now gearing up for a two month stay in Lamane. The primary goal for his upcoming trip is to promote Christ centered unity and responsibility within the community. Secondarily, he will look for opportunities to advise/challenge the people to use the royalties that are being held for them in ways that will ease their own transition into the 21^st century and provide lasting resources for their future generations as well.

Subsequent to Pops November trip, we have had a number of long talks about what can and should be done to help the people ease into the 21st century. We have discussed possibilities and dreams ranging from electricity, water and sanitation to schools and renewable income sources in agriculture and acquaculture. However, when Pops shared with Tanya and I a conversation that he’d had with the church elders while there, we were all three struck by the reality that the biggest issue is not a lack of vision, but rather a lack of unity and Christ centered love. Christ said that His disciples would be known by the way that they "love one another." There are countless references in the New Testament to the centrality of unity and love, from the sanctity of communion to the conceptualization of united believers being the current incarnation of "His body." John reports Jesus as saying: "I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." While there are many projects that could be done to help the Tagbanwas progress their economic and natural condition, we believe that all of this is "as filthy rags" when compared with the greatness of knowing and living in Christ.

Modeling, challenging and teaching this kind of unity and love is the vision with which Pops wants to return to Lamane. His strategy for achieving this is to return for an extended period of time throughout which he would be meeting routinely, both individually and jointly, with the elders mentioned above and with a select group of young leaders in the community in order to mentor and challenge them. While we remain concerned about the direction that the community will go developmentally, and will of course keep advice in this regard as a very high priority, we are convinced that the division and self centeredness that so easily surrounds vast monetary windfalls can only be overcome through developing and maintaining a Christ centered mindset.

Due to the nature of the tribal system in Lamane and the surrounding villages, the church elders and leaders are often times the community leaders as well. Right now we are in a position where these leaders are still very open to external spiritual guidance. Further, due to Pops' 25+ year relationships with many of these leaders, he is currently in a unique position to impact the leaders' spiritual walks—and, subsequently, the community as a whole. It is our belief that if these leaders can be challenged to think and act in accordance with Christ's character, then this royalty could be used not only in a responsible way to develop their own communities into sustainable and independent entities, but it could in fact be a catalyst for their reaching out to their neighbors to become the "blessing to the nations" that Christ has called us all to be.

Pops has set the departure date for his next trip to be March 5^th. The plan is for him to be there for 2 months in order that he can maximize the amount of relational/mentoring time that he will have. As was the case before, due to the fact that he'll have to miss 3 months of work, we need to be able to raise enough money to cover his State-side expenses as well as his traveling expenses. We have calculated that both of these combined should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 for the two months. We hope that you will prayerfully consider how you can support this effort. Thank you for your prayers and interest,

Tim L Mewmaw

For more information please email me: timmewmaw@yahoo.com. For tax-deductible donations, checks should be made payable to Bay Area Community Church with "Philippine Project" written in the Memo/For line. Bay Area's address is:

884 Chesterfield Road

Annapolis, MD 21401

[1] Quezon is the closest real town, complete with stores, a market, internet access and a port.

[2] Previous missionaries had put in a small, bumpy grass airstrip but private plane rides were both expensive and weight restricted thus they were reserved for necessities only.

[3] Three of their four children have married since then and their first grandchild has arrived with the second on the way.

[4] National Commission on Indigenous People—a government entity whose main responsibility is to protect indigenous people, their land and their customs.

[5] JJ and his wife worked with the Molbolgs on Balabac until their mission pulled them off of the island due to Martin and Gracia Burnham’s capture by Muslim extremists. JJ has been working on a translation of the Bible into Molbog ever since and it has just been submitted for publication.

[6] Tim is fluent in Tagbanwa (the tribal dialect), Tagalog (the national language and the Filipino language of trade) and English (the legal language of the Philippines); he has personal relationships with all of the tribal leaders; and he has a very solid grasp of both the local and regional culture.