I wasn't even in Grand Rapids before I met someone else headed to the Internet Ministry Conference. He flew in from the Philippines that same day. We'll, actually, he took off yesterday, but crossed the date line so he arrived before he really left... just take my word for it. :-) We both had a connecting flight in Cleveland taking us to the conference in Grand Rapids.

Anyway, he noticed my PHP book as we were boarding and introduced himself, asking if I was going to the conference. It just happened to work out that he had a seat assignment right beside me on the plane so we chatted through most of the flight about web geek things like semantic code, php, drupal, wordpress, missions and building online communities. About the end of the flight he realized we hadn't shared our names so we swapped names. (I guess Rachel would say, "That's such a guy thing!") His name was Dan Pape, Director of New Media for WM Communications in Asia-Pacific.

It sounds like a neat ministry that he's involved in. His personal site includes some great pictures from the Switchfoot visit to the PI. If you like switchfoot and know anything about jeepneys and balut you'll probably get a kick out of them.

Dan shared with me that he sees the Philippines being an important mission sending nation in the near future. The Philippines is politically considered a Christian nation, though much of that is in name only; but there are some strong Christian ministries run by nationals. For example, the couple that FIM brought on this summer have served God as pastors for a long time, but are moving to tribal ministry. Dan envisions these people being able to serve God more effectively in countries where the white skin color is an obstacle to be jumped.