Nard Pugyao's Mission Field Journal
Wycliffe Bible Translators
Outreach to the Isnag Population of the Philippines
2010 August 11
Trust your summer is going great and that you’re keeping cool where you are. It’s been a very hot summer here in the Carolinas with very high humidity! I guess it is preparing me for the Philippines or something. We will survive, though, because fall is just around the corner.
I am going to the Philippines for a week, August 27 through September 3, to check out a project among the Balangao people who live just north of Bagabag and south of the Isnags. They want us to help them build an office for their mother-tongue translators doing Old Testament translation. One of the translators is Joanne Shetler, author of the book And the Word Came with Power, a story about the Balangao people. It takes 20 minutes to fly to this place, but all day to travel on land. Since aviation is no longer available, we have to go by car. Thanks for praying for us, too.
As I will be gone quite a bit this year again, I would appreciate your prayers for Sandy and me that the Lord will provide strength and good health, as well. Pray for Sandy, especially, as my travel increases stress on her, which makes her fight against fibromyalgia more difficult.
Here’s how my schedule looks:
| Dates | Location | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 20–23 | Smoketown, PA | helicopter flying |
| Aug 27–Sep 3 | Philippines | — |
| Sept 10–13 | Essex Junction, VT | helicopter flying |
| Sept 14–20 | Rumford, ME | helicopter flying |
| Sept 16–17 | Indianapolis, IN to ME | Wycliffe side trip |
| Sept 25–27 | Tampa, FL | missions conference |
| Sept 28–30 | Hudson, FL | Trinity College missions conference |
| Oct 8–10 | Lincoln, NE | missions conference |
| Oct 16 | Shelby, NC | helicopter flying |
| Oct 21–24 | Santa Ana, CA | Concordia University, Beach Point Church conference |
| Oct 28–29 | Anaheim, CA | Wycliffe |
| Nov 5–8 | Indianapolis, IN | missions conference |
| Nov 20–21 | Salisbury, NC | missions conference, helicopter flying |
We send our love and prayers for you all and our thanks to the Lord.
Nard Pugyao
Email Nard Pugyao
2009 December 01
Dear Praying Team,
This morning at church they were singing a song I have not heard before titled "You are God Alone." In one of the sections, the words are, "Right now in good times and bad, you are on Your throne, You are God alone!"
I was blessed beyond measure this morning knowing God is in total control, and He is on His throne and sovereigh and awesome! Of course, I was thinking about the news l received from Rudy Barlaan this morning as they heard the news from Dibagat and neighboring villages as to what the super typhoon did October 1–2.
My team of 11 just left the Philippines in time to get out before the typhoon hit the Philippines and prevented flights from getting out, but family and loved ones took the brunt of the typhoon up in Isnag country. There were two different typhoons that came within a week in the Philippines, and you probably heard about the flooding in Manila. We even felt the wind and had lots of rain in the island of Panay where the Kinaray-a language is located and where we celebrated with them their on New Testament September 26. It was a wonderful celebration of His Word in the heart language and we can praise God and pray that it will impact their lives.
I am sending this prayer request so that all of you can ask God to give Rudy Barlaan, Mark Pugyao, (pastor of the Dibagat Bible Church) and me wisdom as to the best way to help the Isnags in Dibagat and neighboring villages. There are eight villages right close to where I grew up, but most of the Isnags—close to 60,000—are all affected with the typhoon, so praythat they will turn to Him for strength and wisdom as well.
The only way into Dibagat right now is flying in our Wycliffe airplane based in Bagabag. My nephew Mark is flying in on Tuesday since he could not go overland due to several landslides at the only road to Kabugao, where the road ends. Some of you have traveled that road when you went to Dibagat and then traveled by canoe up or down from Dibagat.
I am trying to find out what it cost for a sack of rice, and the cost of flying in from Bagabag to Tuguegarao and on to Dibagat. I had some gifts from special suporters that I gave to Rudy when I was with him September 27, so Rudy is going to buy some rice to help them out. Perfect timing on these special gifts. My nephew Mark will be reporting back what he will find when he goes home on Tuesday, and I will be sure to let you all know.
Pray for those Isnags trying very hard to get what they can out of their flattened out rice fields. Some of you who have gone to Dibagat have seen what those rice fields are like.
Read Rudy Barlaan's December letter.
Finally, thanks from my heart for your continued prayers for the Isnags! "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
II Corinthians 4:18
Merry Christmas,
Nard Pugyao
Email Nard Pugyao
2009 October 01
Greetings from beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, where I am this week. I head to Los Angeles and on to Laguna Beach on Thursday, October 29. I have meant to write you about the needs among the Isnags but didn't have a chance, so am sorry.
Rudy Barlaan said that the Isnags in Dibagat and seven other villages are struggling away to get what they can from their flattened out rice fields. So anything they can get, hopefully, will help. If the next typhoon does not hit, then they might not have any more rain, but not too good right now with another typhoon hitting the Philippines. The flattened out rice, when it's wet, starts germinating and no good for harvest.
So what Rudy and I decided to do is to take some rice to Dibagat to distribute after November 22. Rudy is planning to have some sent via Kabugao for $35 per sack, delivered to Dibagat, and then he will go there to distribute to all the villages. If Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church wants to help out, I am sure we will need to raise more funds for rice this next year, as they really don't have anything. Each sack of 110 pounds is at $35–$40 delivered to Dibagat.
So if anyone from church wanted to help, they can make their gift payable to Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church, designated Isnag Project Philippines Relief, or make out a check to Wycliffe Bible Translators, designated Isnag Project Philippines Relief. Send checks to Orlando just like you send when you do our support. They will apply this toward the Isnag Project Philippines Relief, and Rudy will know it is for rice.
Thanks for your support and prayers. Please continue to pray for the Isnags as they continue to work and try to salvage what they can from their rice fields!
Blessings to you,
Nard Pugyao
Email Nard Pugyao
Leonardo "Nard" Pugyao's Biography
Lenardo “Nard” Pugyao, was only seven years old in 1956 when a white foreigner walked into Dibagat, his village in the mountains of Northern Luzon, Philippines. By his own admission, Pugyao was ornery as a kid, rolling his own cigars at age five and having to repeat the first grade because he played hooky so often.
The foreigner, Dick Roe, with Wycliffe Bible Translators, had come to learn Pugyao’s Isnag language and to help provide the Isnags with Scripture in their own language. Pugyao, suspicious and curious, watched the tall, athletic missionary as he struggled to learn the language.
Roe won over Pugyao by taking a personal interest in him and other hooky-playing children. He visited, hiked, and joked with them as the children helped him learn their language. Nard observed that Roe was not like another foreigner in the area who didn’t seem to care about them, just telling them to get back to school.
Pugyao was twelve years old when Roe went on furlough, leaving behind copies of the Gospel of Mark. Pugyao read the Gospel from cover to cover several times and met Christ. Nard called it “The stepping stone to what God had shown me in my life.”
Having proved to be a good student after all, and able to read in English, Tagalog, and the local trade language Ilocano, Pugyao longed to leave his village to attend high school. Unable to see himself as a farmer, he prayed for the finances to make high school possible, asking God, “Prove to me you’re real.”
His prayers were answered when Roe came to him and said he needed to go to Mindanao and serve as the supervisor of the Wycliffe translators in Mindanao. He asked Pugyao if he would go with him to attend high school and help him with the Isnag translation.
While living at the translation center, Nasuli, Pugyao developed a real love for airplanes. He hung out at the hangar with his new pilot friend, 6’3" Bill Foster. He liked Foster, and he liked mechanical things. Foster and other pilots taught him how the airplane worked, and Pugyao dreamed of flying.
One day Foster said, “Nard, one of these days we won’t be around here any longer. You’ll have to fly these planes. You’d better start learning how to do these things if the translators are going to get the job done.”
“I thought he was nuts!” Pugyao later said.
While a senior in high school, Pugyao told Roe of his desire to fly. Again Pugyao was encouraged to pursue his dream as Roe said, “Let’s dream big.”
But Pugyao was feeling pressured to go to Bible school and help finish the Bible translation in his own language, despite his love for more mechanical things. After attending school in Manila, a technical school for two years, and Bible school for one year, it became clear Bible translation was not for him. Sitting in school, and sitting with Roe in order to help on the Isnag dictionary, convinced him of that.
Not cut out for sitting at a desk, he left in 1971 to go to the United States to study aviation at LeTourneau University. He later transferred to Moody Bible Institute and graduated in 1975.
While taking orientation at JAARS in Waxhaw, North Carolina, he met Wycliffe missionary kid Sandy Neumann. They were married, and together they joined Wycliffe in 1977.
After taking further Wycliffe field training, they went to the Northern Philippines in 1979 for a four-year term. From the translation center in Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya, Pugyao flew the short-take-off-and-landing Helio Courier to remote villages.
Pugyao says, “The highlight of that four-year assignment was flying the completed Isnag New Testament into my village, Dibagat.” Wycliffe translator Rudy Barlaan had joined Dick Roe and helped him finish the New Testament translation.
After helicopter training back in the U.S., a years’ term flying helicopters in the Philippines, and assignments teaching aviation at Moody Aviation in Elizabethton, Tennessee, Pugyao has made himself available for extensive speaking engagements. Now living in Waxhaw, North Carolina, he is trusting God to call more pilots and Bible translation personnel to bring God’s Word around the world.