When God Remembers the Unreached: The Salimbaa and the Tinananon

A Story by Star Maglajos

When God Begins to Remember What the World Has Forgotten

On November 3, 2025, the Evergreen Missions Team Philippines, together with our friends from Hill Country Church in Texas, visited Museyo Kutawato in Mindanao.

Being from North Cotabato myself, this was not my first time walking through its halls. The artifacts, woven stories, and preserved histories were familiar. Yet that day, something felt different. Sacred. As though the past and the present were meeting—quietly but powerfully.

We were there for one specific reason. Caleb Byerly, the founder of Evergreen Missions, had come to see the Salimbaa once again—a handcrafted tribal instrument of the Tinananon people that he donated to the museum in 2018. After many years, he was finally standing before it again.

As I watched him walk slowly toward the display, I was reminded of a truth Scripture declares again and again: God never forgets the ones the world has overlooked.

“For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His own people who are prisoners.” — Psalm 69:33

When a Whisper Becomes a Call—and a Call Becomes Obedience

This story did not begin in a museum. It began quietly, years earlier, with a dream.

In 2013, Caleb had a vivid and unusual dream. In it, he saw a large tribe of people reaching out to him, calling his name. When he asked who they were, they answered with a word he had never heard before: Tinananon. At the center of the gathering stood a tribal chief holding a remarkable instrument—bowl-shaped, metal-bodied, wrapped with wood, and strung with many strings. When the chief played it, the sound that filled the air was unlike anything Caleb had ever heard—heavenly, weighty, alive.

When he woke up, Caleb immediately wrote everything down. He sketched the instrument. He recorded every detail. Yet despite his efforts, nothing made sense. He attempted to recreate the instrument in his workshop, but failed again and again. He searched through mission archives, anthropological studies, and government records for any mention of the Tinananon tribe. There were none.

Eventually, he laid the dream aside.

Six months later, while riding crowded public transportation in the Philippines, a man began quietly watching him. A conversation started. They discovered a shared love for Jesus. Then, in a moment that could only be prompted by the Holy Spirit, Caleb asked a question he had never planned to ask:

“Do you know the Tinananon?”

The man froze. His eyes widened.“How do you know my tribe?” he asked.

Caleb pulled out his old journal—the one he had almost forgotten. As the man read, his hands began to tremble. He explained that three years earlier, God had given him a dream of a foreigner named Caleb coming to his people with the gospel.

The Tinananon, he shared, were a scattered tribe of nearly 50,000 people—isolated in dangerous mountain regions, largely unreached, and rarely remembered.

What Caleb had dismissed as a dream, God had been preparing as a divine appointment.

When God Restores What Was Lost

From that moment, obedience took on a new weight.

Caleb returned home and spent months pouring everything he had into recreating the instrument once more. This time, when he finally played it, tears flowed. The sound was exactly the same as the one he heard in the dream.

Soon after, he traveled to the Tinananon tribe. The journey was not easy. Treacherous roads. Violent storms. A near-fatal accident that should have ended in tragedy—but instead ended in miraculous rescue.

When Caleb finally arrived, he recognized the faces immediately. They were the same faces from his dream.

When he presented the instrument to the tribal chief, the elderly man examined it in silence. Then he spoke words that still give me chills.

The instrument was called the Salimbaa—the most sacred instrument of their people. It had been lost for over a century. According to their belief, the restoration of the Salimbaa meant one thing: the Creator had not abandoned them. He was drawing near again to restore His people.

God used a lost instrument to reveal a forgotten tribe.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child? … Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”— Isaiah 49:15

When One Yes Becomes a Sound That Echoes Through Generations

Standing inside Museyo Kutawato years later, I found myself filming as Caleb approached the Salimbaa once again. His steps were slow. His head was bowed. I wondered what memories, prayers, and tears were flooding his heart in that moment.

I felt deeply moved watching him. I thought about the first whisper God gave him through a dream—and how one faith-filled “yes” had become something far greater than any of us could have imagined.

Through that obedience, God revealed His immense love for an unknown people group. He reminded the Church—and the world—that no tribe is ever forgotten.

I remembered hearing Caleb preach years ago about a sound rising from Mindanao to the nations. Standing there beside the Salimbaa, I realized something profound: it was never just about the sound of an instrument.

It was the sound of God’s call.

A call once heard by one man. Now echoing through tribes, churches, and generations.

Caleb’s “yes” has become the “yes” of many missionaries.

And I am one of them.

“Ask of Me, and I will make the nations your inheritance.” — Psalm 2:8