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Bible Study "Filipino" Style
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Each week our Bible Students are required to hold and teach at least one Bible Study with people that allow us to go into their homes. This helps us to follow up on new converts and reach the homes of the families that attend our church with solid Bible Teaching. It also allows our Bible student to study and learn how to prepare lessons that will help others grow in the Word of God. We not only teach our students the Word but we require them to go out and apply what they learn.
Two years ago, there was a lady in our area that had been led to the Lord Jesus by one of our soulwinners. She was baptized and attended our church faithfully until last year when her health began to fail. It was not but just a few months after she had became sick, the doctors told her that her days were ending, so she asked her family to take her back to her home place to die. She was a native tribal woman and wanted to die on her home soil. The family granted her request and took her to the foot hills of the mountains where her family of Tagbauna Tribes lived. She died shortly after going to her homeland.
The family asked us to hold the services of the funeral and again, things are done somewhat different here from the US. They asked us to provide a funeral at 11:00 to be held at 1:00! A normal wake last from 9 to 14 days and the funerals for the most part are at graveside. The family attends the funeral by walking to the graveyards carrying the casket, or loaded on the back of dumptrucks, jeepneys, or any kind of bus that can get them there.
We stood out in the afternoon sun beside this dear womans grave and watched the family gather around the many exposed tombs built above the ground. One of our preachers got up on one of the old tombs and led the people in a course of Amazing Grace and our students provided the music with a guitar and Holy Ghost singing from the heart. One of our preachers who knew the tribal language got up on a tomb stone and preached "Jesus Christ, The Hope Of All Living".
Normally, on the night of the burial, it is tribal custom for the family to get together, eat, drink liquor, gamble, dance, and stay up all night. This might continue for several days until the party ends and the family goes back to their homes.
Right after the funeral services, the chief captan (chief of the tribe) came up to us and asked if we could go to the family house that night and have "another teaching from the Holy Word" he called it. This was surely a change in plans for the party seekers and a good opportunity to defeat Satan, so we told him that we would be delighted to hold service that night at the homeplace of the woman that passed away.
What we did not realize was that the area where this tribe lived was located in a place that you had to cross four rivers by jeep just to get to the foot of the mountain, get out and swim another river, and then proceed on by foot up the mountain path to the tribal homeplace. Nevertheless, we went, preached, sang under homemade lanterns, and with the work of the Holy Ghost many of this tribe was saved!
Since that night two of our bible students, Brother Arthur and his wife April go to this tribe each and every week to hold bible studies. The results have always been good and as of now there are between 40 and 60 people of this tribe attend our Church on Sunday mornings!
SWIMMING THE RIVERS, CLIMBING THE MOUNTAINS, PEOPLE ARE HEARING THE GOSPEL! |
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