Letters by a Modern Mystic : Excerpts from Letters Written at Dansalan, Lake Lanao, Philippine Islands, to His Father

Frank C. Laubach (Sept. 2, 1884-June 11, 1970) was a Christian evangelical missionary and mystic known as "The Apostle to the Illiterates." In 1929, after fourteen years of successful teaching, writing, and administration in Cagayan and Manilla, he pursued his long-standing ambition of settling among the fierce Moros, a Muslim tribe on Mindanao. There, in the province of Lanao, he underwent a remarkable series of experiences of God and simultaneously developed a technique for reducing the Moro language to writing with symbols closely correlated to their spoken words. This technique not only made it possible to teach them to read in only a few hours but also permitted them to teach others immediately. In 1928, two years before his transforming experiences, Laubach found himself profoundly dissatisfied. He then realized in 1930 that after fifteen years as a Christian minister he was still not living his days "in minute-by-minute effort to follow the will of God."