Eternal Legends

One day, we were traveling in the mountains in the northern part of the country in which we work. Many people/groups live in that region, but it’s a blacklisted area and foreigners aren’t allowed to go there. But because we felt we needed to know what people/groups lived there in order to develop a strategy to reach them, we decided to take a risk. And so I got in the back of a pickup truck, and they covered me over with a tarp, and I was lying in the corner as we approached the military checkpoint.

The military started to check our truck and ask all kinds of questions. But for some reason, they didn’t look under the tarp. And so we were cleared, and we made our way up into the mountains of that region.

We came to a small village. And we stopped in that place, and we got out, and we were met by the village elder. He asked us what we were doing there, where we were going. And we said, “Well, we have just come to visit you, in your village.” And so he invited us up into his hut, and all of the men of the village came and were all sitting together talking.

I said to the man, I said, “Do you own all of the property around here?” “Oh,” he said, “We used to, but not now.” I said, “What happened?” “Oh, the spirits have required so much from us, so many sacrifices. We had to sell all of our land to other neighboring villages in order to buy the buffalo and the pigs and the chickens to offer as sacrifices, and now we’re very poor. Now we have nothing.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m so sorry to hear about this. But,” I said, “I came today to tell you about a spirit greater than the spirits you fear, a spirit who doesn’t require that kind of sacrifice, because he has already provided a sacrifice himself. Would you like to hear the story?”

The village elder said, “Oh, yes, I would like to hear this story.” And so all of the men just quieted down. And I turned to my national coworker, who could speak their language, and I said, “Tell them the story of the God of creation.” And so he began to tell them about creation and the God that loved them.

And after we’d been talking maybe 10 or 12 minutes, the village elder turned to those sitting beside him, and they just began to chatter in their language. Now, my national coworker was speaking in kind of a business-trade language, but it wasn’t the language of their tribe. And now they’re talking in their own language, and so we don’t even know what they’re saying.

And suddenly, the elder turns back to us and says in the national-trade language, “We have a legend that’s been handed down from generation to generation in our tribe, that one day a man with white skin would come to our village, and this man would have a book, and the book would describe the true and great spirit. Now, you’re the only white man we’ve ever seen. Are you the one who has a book that can tell us about the greatest spirit of all?”

I said, “I am. And that’s what I’ve come here to tell you.” And so we went on to tell about the living God and to show them the book that told the story of the living God.

We happened to have with us a Christian who lived not too far from that area. And I said to the village elder, I said, “I have to leave, and probably will not be back to see you. But can I leave this man to come in my place? I’ll leave the book with him, and he will come back and he will read to you from the book about the great spirit.” The village elder said, “Oh, we would like that very much.”

And so that’s how we left it. And now this Christian is discipling in preparation for evangelism in that particular village.