Smoking the Mango Trees

In the Philippines, often fires are built at the base of mango trees to kill insects in the trees that may do harm to the fruit. Just like the mango tree, the church needs constant care so that it may bear fruit. This is a story of several Filipino churches in the mountains of the island of Mindoro and how these Filipino Christians overcome and at times succumb to obstacles in their faith. For a missionary, the author is an excellent author. The average missionary book doesn't have the greatest writing, but this book is written well. The landscape of the Mindoro jungles and the culture of the native people were communicated vividly. And the sections of narrative in the book were written well. As a missionary in the Philippines, I appreciated reading about the experiences of another missionary family going through some of the same things that our family has gone through. It also stimulated thought regarding some of the church planting methods the missionary employed. The biggest struggle that these Filipino Christians living in the jungle had were with the spirits. Generations (maybe hundreds) of Filipinos have always lived their life in great fear and respect of the spiritual beings that interact with them. Believe it or not, Filipinos consider this spirit world a reality just as real as their crops, their families and their land. Often Filipinos make great sacrifices and live in great fear in order to keep these spirits appeased. When missionaries come to these people and begin telling them how the Bible says that the supreme God is the only spirit that we need to fear and respect, but in a totally different way than their relation to the spirits, it often creates confusion and indifference. One common problem in missionary work is that the people just add this new `god' to their list of spirits in which they need to appease. They see church, baptism, tithing, etc. as ways to appease and manipulate this new `god'. This book tackles some of these issues (knowingly or not) and makes for very interesting reading.