Prayer: Breaking Down Walls of Hostility

“Get out of our village!” Orange light from a small fire danced across the features of the Tawbuid elder. Every twitch of his hand, every glance of his eyes betrayed a fierce determination to keep me away from his people. Around him sat his council and the rest of the village, all intent on the same purpose. “Yes,” another wizened old man rasped. “The elder told you to leave our village, and you will obey him. But I’ll take it a step further and tell you that the entire Tawbuid tribe doesn’t want you here, especially the highlanders that you are so persistent on living with. Get out, and leave the Tawbuid people to themselves.” Eight years earlier I had first heard of the Tawbuid people, a remote unreached tribe on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. When I tried to visit them, however, I ran into a brick wall. The tribe had set up an elaborate system to keep all outsiders out. For the next eight years, I visited Mindoro every summer, trying to break through the wall of hostility, but to no avail. Finally, in 2011 I arrived as a missionary with Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) to formally begin working with the Tawbuid. Even after four long months of trying every plan I could imagine, the Tawbuid steadfastly refused to have anything to do with me. In fact, it was an honor that this border village even condescended to hold a meeting to formally forbid me from working with them. Most Tawbuid would not even look at me, let alone speak to me. I had arrived in the Philippines full of fire and great ideas gleaned from AFM’s first-rate training program. I was certain (with God’s help of course) that I would be able to blaze into the center of the tribe, strike to the heart, and revolutionize their life by leading them to Christ. I knew that it would be hard, I grew up in the mission field, but I expected that my experience and new ideas would make the work easier. Now, four months later, I was still beating my head against the same brick wall. My