Hiding in the Clay Pot

The following is a read aloud story for February 2006. This is one of a series of stories especially written for Awana Clubs, home-schoolers, Sunday school classes, VBS, mission conferences, or just the fun of reading about children in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who have children and would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God.   This month’s story is about a little boy in a village many, many years ago. It is sad and tragic…life for Indians often is very cruel.
The old story teller, Douemi (Dough-way-MEE)
(Missionary/cultural observer with the Amazon tribes for many years)
Serving with New Tribes Mission, Sanford, Florida

The ladies carried up to their village load after load of the rich, red clay. It had been a wonderful discovery for them as they had been on a fishing trip up river and gone back into the jungle on a little tributary stream and suddenly found the clay. Pot clay. Small Oneco (Oh-neh-COE) had been with his mother and he had no idea what all the fuss was about, but these women were really excited about the clay. He jumped out of the canoe, as they were doing, and waded to the bank and took a handful of the putty. It was pretty putty. He got a large gob of the clay and began kneading it through his dirty little fingers and it felt so good. It was so pliable and easily molded into whatever shape he chose. The women were already filling their old cooking pots with it…and whatever else they could find to carry this good clay home.
Days later Oneco sat watching old Grandma Mahawa (Maw-ha-WAH) as she cleared a small area and made a leaf roof to shelter her and her work from the direct rays of the sun and she began the tedious task of making a clay pot from the accumilated pile of red putty. Her hands were so careful and hour by hour the pot grew bigger and bigger and bigger. When it was finished it was enormous. Grandma Mahawa had set it carefully near the fire so the clay would harden slowly without cracking and she watched it so attentively that you knew it was her life-long prize. It was beautiful.
The Culina Madiha people in those days lived in large “malocas”. These were communal houses where up to ten families all lived inside. The house was made of poles and peach palm fronds and it was very high so that the smoke from their fires could go up and out the little slits along the maloca peak. It had two openings…one at each end, otherwise it was all enclosed by palm fronds down to the ground. It was very dark in there….and if your neighbor had wet wood, it could be very smoky and you coughed a lot. But it did keep the mosquitoes out!!
One very uneventful day, Oneco was playing with his sister in the “big house” and they had been doing a version of hide and seek around the large clay pot which now sat empty and upside down. And suddenly a woman screamed from out in the village yard, “Invaders! Invaders! We are under attack!” The Culinas had enemies that lived long distances from them, but every few years they would come and surprise everyone and kidnap women to take back to their villages. They killed all the men and older women. It was mad confusion as everyone raced for his bow and arrow, but the attack had been such a successful surprise that within fifteen minutes it was all over! Slain bodies laid here and there and women wailed as they were bound and herded together like cattle for the long trek back to the enemy village. Some men had been out fishing or hunting and would come back to find the village a killing field. Children were captured if the enemy group particularly wanted them…if not they, too, were killed. Oneco had heard the noise and screaming and shouts and he had thought about running. But where? He then saw the pot and lifted it up and slipped under it. There he sat in the darkness of the clay pot shivering and shaking with fear. He heard the strange language as the warriors came into the maloca and grabbed whatever they wanted to take back with them. They were laughing and bragging about their success and that none of their people had been killed in the surprise attack. One naked man sat on the pot. Oneco was sure the man would hear his heart beating…it was so loud and noisy! He tried not to breathe, but feared he might cough or gasp. Then quite unexpectedly the man sitting on the pot told his fellow warriors that he wanted that beautiful pot! They laughed at him because it would be impossible to carry it on the trail all that distance and would slow down their escape before the hunters returned. But the man suddenly lifted the pot up to put it on his shoulder! And there was Oneco! Tears filled his eyes! He sobbed uncontrollably. He, for the first time, saw the slain children. Everyone dead. Blood everywhere. Now they would kill him! But the man let the pot fall with a crash and break into many pieces. “HE IS MINE!” he shouted. He roughly grabbed Oneco and carried him outside into the sunshine and gathered him with captured women and children. And so it was that Oneco grew up in another tribe and learned to speak their tongue and became, many years later, a great chief amongst that tribal people.
Have you ever read the story of Daniel in the Bible? He was a little boy like Oneco who was captured by an enemy speaking a strange language and he was carried off to their land. Daniel, too, became a great leader and chief in that foreign culture and country. What would you have done if you had been Oneco? Isn’t it wonderful that we can know the Lord Jesus Christ personally in our lives and He will go with us through every cruel circumstance that happens to us? Bad things do happen. Sad things…like car accidents…are something we never can escape. But we can TRUST God that He will continue to love and care for us whatever the tragedy is in our lives. Jesus is our clay pot! Hide in Him always!