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I don’t know how many of you have watched the movie End of the Spear, but I will assume that
you all know the story of Jim Elliot and the other missionaries. I like the movie and it is interesting to
hear about people who where will to go and die for the Gospel. It makes you wonder what it would have been
like to have been able to meet one of them, and it makes me think about how
important is being a Christian to me? I got to meet someone very similar to them,
and there story.
When we where in the Chaco about a
month ago now, one of the things that we did was to visit Amanda’s
grandfather. He is an old guy who was born in Russia,
moved to Canada
and then to Paraguay. His family had fled Russia
because of persecution from the communist government.
Paraguay
has many different native people with different languages. One of the things that the Mennonites did
here was to train and send missionaries to these groups. To give you an idea about how different the
languages are from each other, when people from different tribes meet they
sometimes use German words that they have learned from the Mennonites to
communicate, because that is easer then trying to understand each others
language.
Amanda’s grandfather had been a missionary to different
tribal groups here in Paraguay. One of the things that he talked was about an
experience that he had. He and one other
missionary and a guide went out to look for a tribe that they knew of which had
not been contacted by missionaries before.
While they where out in the jungle looking for this group they where
suddenly surrounded by around 40 Indians with weapons. One of the Indians stabbed the other
missionary in the side with a spear, and he fell down and died. After that happened another Indian pulled
back his bow to shoot him, but the guide jumped in front of him and talked the
Indians out of killing him.
Now that would be a pretty crazy story if it ended there,
but that is not the end of the story. He
and other missionaries continued to work with the tribe, and he has pictures of
the dead missionary’s family standing with the Indian who killed him. The Indian who was going to kill him now
lives in the same small town as him and they are friends.
It was an experience that makes you think about what it
means to be committed to Christ. Both in
terms of going out and risking death, but also in forgiving the people who
killed your friend. It is always cool to
hear stories of the Gospel at work.
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