Being the Light in the Darkness

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

We are so excited after a short trip to the community of Salvatierra! The four new believers gathered with us for church meetings almost nightly while we were there, and it is thrilling to watch the Holy Spirit do His work among His people. They hear His voice and are receptive to what He says. We can't wait to see what else He will do to build His Church among the Guarayo people!

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please be in prayer for the new church in Salvatierra. They have already faced some persecution, and this is a critical time for them to stand firm in the faith and to be grounded in sound doctrine. Pray that they would be emboldened from the start to make disciples of others and that the Spirit would enable them to stand strong for Christ.

2. Pray for the church in Ayuma, as we have just made our final trip to disciple them. Pray that God's Word would take root in good soil and that they would bear fruit. And please pray especially for Nelly, who is currently recovering from a recent surgery.

3. Please pray for wisdom for Leah and me as we complete the work among the Quechua with a short trip to Taramarca in November and then begin the work in Salvatierra in earnest in December. We only have four months to spend there, so pray that we would make the most of every opportunity and that we would know how to focus our efforts in discipleship.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

First of all, please forgive the lack of pictures in this blog installment. I'm having some major computer issues at the moment and will upload pictures as soon as I can.

As I've previously mentioned, the church in Salvatierra is small with only four baptized believers. But those four are faithful, and the Lord's work in their lives is evident. Their names are Mariluz, her husband Umberto, her best friend Adela, and a young man named Benjamin.

We recently spent a week with them, and it was an emotional roller coaster of a trip. Salvatierra is in the jungle, and that's definitely an adjustment for me. When I first arrived in South America, I spent five months in the jungle doing training for our team. However, for the last two years, I've worked in the mountains at around 10,000 feet, which has its own set of challenges. But suffocating heat and biting insects are not among them, so Leah and I have definitely had to readjust. :)

Discomfort was certainly one of our greatest challenges, and the other was being asked for things - CONSTANTLY. The Quechua are subtle in asking for what they want; they hint around and, if you don't bite on the hints, they usually won't ask you directly. Not so with the Guarayo. They asked us for rides to their fields, for food, for money, for medicine, for anything they saw and lots of things they didn't see. Learning to discern when we should and shouldn't give has been an enormous challenge, and I'm sure will continue to be for the remainder of the time that we work inSalvatierra.

The village is predominantly Catholic, and the influence of those beliefs is strong. The priest comes every Sunday to perform mass, and catechism classes are taught in the schools. This has actually been one of the greatest barriers we've faced, and I will address some of that in a future blog.

Before we went to Salvatierra, Leah and I had discussed with the men's Xtreme Team what they had previously taught and had developed a list of stories that we wanted to teach that would address some of the problems that had been seen. Our first story was taken from the Sermon on the Mount, mostly focusing on anger, lust, and how to treat others.

One night after we had taught the story, it rained heavily. We were cooking dinner, and Mariluz and her son and his girlfriend were visiting in our house with us. It had just gotten dark, and someone came to the door and spoke to Mariluz in Guarayo. She then told us there had been an accident. One of the men from Salvatierra had been chopping down a tree when part of it fell and hit him in the chest. He was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital about 90 minutes away.

Mariluz left to go find out more and returned several minutes later to tell us the man had died on his way to the hospital. Leah and I were dumbfounded. This man had a wife and five sons, and now he was gone. We decided to stop and pray for the family he had left behind.

After praying, I went to the door and looked out, and Mariluz pointed out to me that all the other doors were closed. Now, let me tell you, that is unusual. It is HOT in Salvatierra, so people have their doors open almost all the time. When I asked Mariluz why they were all closed, her answer shocked me, even as it gave us great insight into the worldview of this people.

She told us that the people were scared that the spirit of this dead man would come to bother them. There is a larger town about 10 miles away that the ambulance had driven through on its way to the hospital, but the spirit wouldn't bother the people there because they had electricity. In Salvatierra, where there is no electricity, the spirit could come and wreak whatever havoc he desired because there was no light to drive him away.

This belief didn't surprise me. Beliefs in appeasement of the spirit world are common among indigenous peoples here (this is called animism) and, although they consider themselves to be Catholic now, their true worldview is really just a mixture of Catholicism and animism. But all of it made me sad that these people live their lives in such fear.

But the Lord encouraged me by reminding me of the story that I had taught just the previous night. At the beginning of His famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells His disciples:

"You are the light of the world." (Matt. 5:14)

I realized that Mariluz wasn't afraid. She was standing with us in the only house with its door wide open. I realized that she didn't need to be afraid because she had the True Light that drives away every evil spirit. And she, as the light in Salvatierra, could show others the way out of this dark abyss of fear in which they live.

I then told Mariluz what 1 John 4:4 says:

"You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."

She just nodded and said, "Yes, I believe that, hermana." And I knew that she really did because the threat of an evil spirit in the darkness outside didn't bother her at all.

Praise God that He has called her - and us - to His marvelous light!

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." (1 Pet. 2:9, NAS)