Showdown with a Curandero

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

We have now completed our work in Ayuma, teaching the last two stories to Nelly a little over a week ago. She is still recovering from some recent abdominal surgery but was eager to learn and did a great job. In all, she has learned 19 stories from Scripture, beginning with creation and ending with a story from the book of Ephesians. She has worked so hard, and we know that the Lord's Word will accomplish every purpose for which He sends it forth!

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please be in prayer for Leah as she spends time visiting a friend in Ecuador, then heads to Peru for some training. Pray that she will be rejuvenated by time with other believers during this time and would return ready to make one last trip to a Quechua village.

2. Pray for our upcoming trip to Taramarca, the community where our journeygirls Misty and Amy worked. We have been promising to come there for some time now but had to wait until we had completed the task in Ayuma. We are planning to make a 10-day trip in which we will teach seven stories related to the church. Please pray that they will learn them and that the Holy Spirit would use those stories to teach them what they need to know about how to be the church.

3. Continue to pray for the new church in Salvatierra. We talked with one of the believers there last week, and she told us that they are meeting together and are studying 1 Corinthians. Pray that the Spirit would continue to work in their hearts and mature them in the faith and that they would be able to stand firm in the face of persecution.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Our last trip to Ayuma was a bittersweet one. We had planned to drive out there on a Thursday and come back the following Monday, but our trip was cut short by a blockade that kept us from going out until Saturday. Still, even during the shortened time, we were able to teach two new stories to Nelly and two new stories to the church as a whole. We spent a lot of time with our friends there, and everyone, including us, was sad when we left on Monday morning. We have loved these people, and they have loved us, and it's always hard to say goodbye to loved ones. But they were excited to hear of the work the Lord has called us to do next.

Nelly is probably the one we will miss the most. She has been one of our best friends there and is always ready to hear stories or just to talk to us. She especially loves it when we all cook together, and we are always glad to eat what she makes because she's a great cook! :)

She recently had some abdominal surgery, though, and is still a little sore as she recuperates, so she's not able to cook with us right now. She spends most of her time in the house because of the surgery, so she was especially glad to see us. I think she's been bored. :)

We are glad she was able to have the surgery for her female problems, and we feel confident that she will feel much better now. She has been complaining to us about her pain for the entire time that we've known her, and she says she's had these problems for four years. So we are certainly glad that she's gotten the treatment for her medical issues.

She was scared to have the surgery. That's typical of most Quechua people. We Americans can be scared of going "under the knife," too, but at least it's a relatively common occurrence in our culture. Not so among the Quechua. The idea of being put to sleep while someone cuts you open is absolutely terrifying for them, and they often choose not to undergo even life-saving surgery simply because they're so afraid.

When Nelly called her father to tell him that the doctor had suggested surgery, he was understandably worried. Nelly's dad is not a follower of Christ, so his beliefs align with an animistic worldview, as do the beliefs of most Quechua who aren't believers.

When a Quechua non-believer has a health problem (or just about any other kind of problem), they seek out the curandero. Now there are a wide range of curanderos, anywhere from a person who uses herbal medicines to treat sickness all the way up to a full-blown witch doctor who reads coca tea leaves (the Quechua equivalent of palm or tarot card reading) and casts spells in order to determine the problem and cure it.

When Nelly's dad found out about the surgery, he asked his local curandero what could be done for Nelly. The curandero read his coca leaves and said that Nelly definitely didn't need to have the surgery. She would die if she did! And she needed to come to him for treatment because he had the cure for her problems.

In the meantime, she had also had a dream about a cow. In Quechua beliefs, a dream like that means you are going to die. Needless to say, she was pretty worried about all of these things. And her father was absolutely insistent that she come home and see his curandero. She would die if she had the surgery!

It was a crisis of faith for her, a clash of her old Quechua cultural worldview vs. her new worldview as a disciple of Christ. Who was she going to believe? Her culture or God?

Well, you know she had the surgery, so you know she chose to believe that the Lord could cure her without the use of a witch doctor. I know Nelly well, and I know that worrying is deeply ingrained in her nature. Even now, after an uncomplicated surgery and with good healing, she still worries about whether she has an infection or any other potential complication. So the fact that she chose to ignore these fears that align with what she has believed all of her pre-Christian life and trust God to control her health means so much.

We are so proud of her! And we are hopeful that she will be able to tell her dad that her God is so much more powerful than his curandero. Maybe he, too, will come to know the God Who is the Great Physician!

Me alongside Nelly and her oldest daughter Danitza and youngest son Oscarito