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God gives Dan and Aurea their hearts for
missions |
Dan and Aurea met in 2002 and married in
2005. Individually, God had spent their lifetimes preparing their
hearts about ministry in general, and missions in particular.
Dan has always had an interest in missions, and has consistently contributed to missions programs financially. In
the late 90's, through the influence of his pastor, Harley Allen,
Dan's interest in missions grew and he became aware
that generous missions giving is at the heart of God's blessing of
churches and individuals. About 1998, Dan felt God indicating to him
that at some point in his life he would serve in some
missions-related capacity, which he assumed would be in a support
role following his eventual retirement. Dan also assumed that God
would utilize his background and experience in broadcasting, studio
recording, computers, publishing or writing when the time came. Dan
said yes to God, continued to labor in his career with Bank of America
and awaited God's tap on the shoulder to "go."
Separately, Aurea was raised in the
Philippines, one of 10 children of a poor but noble man in the village
of Wali, on the south coast of the Philippine island of Mindanao.
Aurea's mother is a full-blooded member – a royal princess – of one of
the Philippines' few indigenous tribes, the T'bolis. Aurea's
grandfather was a T'boli Chieftain. Aurea grew up among the T'bolis.
In her youth, she ministered to them through the village church. She
spent her summers among the tribe in their remote mountain villages,
ministering to them spiritually and physically. Following nursing
training, she spent several years with the Salvation Army as a nurse. When Aurea met Dan, she
was teaching English in a school in South Korea and very involved in
ministry with her Korean church. It was Dan's involvement in lay
ministry and his interest in missions work that first attracted her
attention. Dan shared with Aurea his assumption that God would someday
utilize him (and now them) in a mission capacity. They met and were
married on September 24, 2004 and they both began to look forward to
the day in which they would be called and provided more direction for
their future service together.
In June of 2005, Dan and Aurea returned to Wali, her village, to be
married (they were married first in the U.S.) under tribal law
and custom. During the ceremony, Dan was supposed to exchange a
symbolic dowry to win the approval of tribal elders to wed Aurea.
However, when the time came, the elder asked Dan if he was providing
dowry or pledging to live among the tribe. At that moment, Dan felt
God instructing him to pledge his commitment to the tribe and he said
"I will remain." The elders thought Dan was mistaken or did not
clearly understand, and proceeded with the ceremony and the exchange
of the symbolic dowry. During the ceremony, Dan was also inducted into
the T'boli tribe and given a T'boli name (Datu D'fatto Mohine which
translates to "prince from across the sea"), with all the rights and
privileges of a natural born T'boli chief.
The next day, Dan was walking around the family farm and God very
clearly pointed out to him the contrast under which Aurea's family lives
(considered lower middle class in the Philippine economy) and the poor
tribal and Filipino people around the farm, who may eat just once a
day and are often unable to clothe their children and send them to
school. Dan felt God was indicating that a portion of the family farm
should be converted from its commercial corn crop (allocated for hog
feed) to vegetables for the purpose of improving the nutrition of the
villagers. Over the next 24 hours, God provided more detail, showing
Dan that he and Aurea could minister in many ways to the villagers
through farming, education, health care and spiritual services. Dan
spoke to Aurea about it, then they both spoke to Aurea's sister.
After returning home to Arizona, Dan continued to pray and seeks God's
direction. Aurea prayed also and after about 2 months, Aurea confirmed
that God had also spoken to her and that she believed they should
return to Wali permanently and start the project God had laid on Dan's
heart. They agreed to say "yes," to God, and then to await open doors
to proceed. Dan suggested that God might provide the first open door
in the form of a layoff from his job, or his retirement and presumed
the process might begin in 3-5 years. Within a few weeks (early
January, 2006), Dan was unexpectedly laid off from his job, and Dan
and Aurea began the process of permanently relocating to the
Philippines to live and work among her tribe.
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A legacy of
ministry |
Aurea's
grandfather Wali was the principle chieftain (Datu) of the T'bolis when he
was reached by missionaries, probably sometime in the early 20th
century. He converted to Christianity and decided that living among
his people who worship animals, the ground and other objects, was no
longer viable given his new-found faith and knowledge about God. So,
he took his family and a number of followers (who had also converted),
left the tribe's mountain village and occupied land on the coast.
Eventually, the Spanish government (which ruled the Philippines at
that time) granted Datu Wali approximately 2,500 acres of land,
which he farmed.
The T'bolis practice polygamy. Datu Wali had 23 wives and many
children. Together with his brothers who also had many wives and the
tribal followers who came to the coast with them, they created a
sizable village. He used his influence to minister and help his tribe
and many came to Christ. In 1945, before his death, he arranged the
marriage of his daughter Lillian, to a Filipino man (Alfredo
Desaville) from another province (a non-T'boli) because he saw in the
man someone who cared about the people and his tribe, plus he had
fought valiantly as a guerilla against the Japanese occupiers during
WWII.
Alfredo Desaville continued the Datu Wali tradition of helping the
people and he continued to farm the land granted to the family.
Today, the remaining members of the Desaville family, live and work
around the village of Wali. Most of them are Christians, and most are protestants.
When the family learned of our desire to return to Wali and start a
mission project to help the people, they remembered Dan's pledge to
remain among the tribe, and they pronounced that Dan and Aurea,
together with the other family members, will now be equipped and
positioned to continue the legacy of Datu Wali. In honor of his
legacy, the mission project has been named the Datu Wali Mission.
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The T'boli
people |
Filipinos are not a unique and proprietary
race. Most of the inhabitants of the islands originated from other
places in Asia. The Asian component of their heritage is thought to be
primarily Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Chinese (however, most
of those races are also hybrids). There is also an Arabian component.
In the 1300s, an Arabian sultan landed on the islands during a voyage
of exploration and conquest. He found Mindanao especially suitable for
farming, so remained and declared the island his own. The country's
population has also been diluted by its former Spanish occupiers. In
fact, the Philippine language (Tagalog) has many similarities to the
Spanish language, and many place and person names are Spanish in
nature.
The nation's other inhabitants are several indigenous peoples
predating the arrival of other Asians and Spanish by several thousand
years. Caves near the village of Wali were discovered in recent years
with pottery dating to about 500 B.C.. The T'boli tribe is one of
these indigenous people groups and since their ancestral lands include
the noted cave, and the pottery art resembles legacy T'boli art, it is
believed the T'bolis originated in the stone age and were among the
islands' original population.
Many T'bolis have mixed with the general population, but a large
number of them have retained their forest lifestyles. They live in
mountain villages in bamboo huts. They live off the land, hunting with
bow and poison arrow, and spears. They wear few if any clothes and
have their own religion that includes a creator and cataclysmic flood,
but they have a primarily animist-based religion. Since the era of the
Arabian Sultan, the T'bolis and other indigenous peoples, have been
contested for their religious affiliation by both the Muslims and
Christians. Today, pockets of T'bolis adhere to either God, Mohammed
or their traditional animist objects.
In the early 20th century, when the Philippines was still under the
thumb of Spain, the government felt that Mindanao was in danger of
becoming a break-away Islamic state due to the influence of the
original Sultan's descendents and the growing population of Muslims.
So, Filipinos from the main islands were encouraged to migrate to
Mindanao where there were given grants of land for settling and
promised assistance getting started. The concept is the same as that
adopted by the American government in settling the Western U.S. in the
1800s, and the result was the same – indigenous peoples pushed off
their lands. On Mindanao, the T'bolis fought to retain their lands,
but eventually retreated into the mountains, where many of them remain
today.
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Datu Wali
Mission origin |
The land on which the mission will sit,
is part of the original land grant to Datu Wali. It is also part of
the allocation given to his son-in-law, Alfredo Desaville, before the
Datu died.
Each of Alfredo's ten children were granted a portion of his land,
before he died. Aurea's portion is approximately 12 acres.
Dan and Aurea have built a home on the back part of Aurea's land, near the Pangi River. On the front part of her section,
they will hope to begin raising
vegetables in a work-for-food program. |
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