The Ambush
The following is a read aloud story for May 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 people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. In January 1968 my co-worker, Ray Mellott, and I were involved in a hair-raising jungle crime scene. Ray was a veteran of World War II and in his forties, I was 28-years-old. Neither one of us realized the danger we were in and how close we might have come to be killed by arrows.
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 man came home from his fields in time to wash up and have supper before the sun went down and darkness swallowed the jungle. He was tired from hours of chopping logs and clearing a field for planting. His mind was on supper and just having a restful evening with his wife and recently born child. They had no neighbors and were
pioneering a homestead far up Fish Creek. “Maria! Maria!” he shouted as he came to the house and realized she was not there. The fire burned in the clay stove. There were evidences of preperation of the meal. But where’s Maria? He decided to take the trail down to the creek as she might be bathing or washing clothes or cleaning fish. “MARIA!” he shouted and heard only his own desparate voice. Then he saw the young woman’s body in the yard. He raced to where she had fallen and to his horror saw that she and their child had been riddled with thirteen arrows. One arrow had gone right through the body of the baby and into the mother! Shock! Fear! And then he raced to the house to get his shotgun. But it was all over. Maria was dead. The baby was dead. His world had crashed down on his head!
Ray and I had been in Brasil less that three years. We had teamed up to begin an evangelical work with some tribe in the Jurua River area. Our families had just arrived in the small river-front town of Eirunepe and we would be making various survey trips to the Indian villages. We were still learning Portuguese. And we were not expecting to receive an offical summons from the Department of Indian Affairs asking us to investigate the murder of a woman and her child. But there was the letter. The official request. The new missionaries were now police!! Well, investigators anyway. We went to Eirunepe’s local police commander, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Your names are on the request. They are asking you to do it! Just go do it!” Thank you, Sir! Alright, we wanted to do a survey anyway..so, let’s go do it!
After a long boat ride up river to a rubber cutting settlement called Deixa-Falar (Let-Him-Speak) we met the people and heard details from them of the Indian attack on the woman. Everyone was upset and threatening to retaliate by attacking the nearby Indian villages. Finally, a man named “Grilo” (Cricket) said that he would be our guide with a couple of his friends. He would take us to the village of the Indians who killed the woman.
“Ray,” I am sure I must have said over and over again, “what are we doing? How in the world did we get in the middle of this mess? Is it safe? Will we be killed too? Will there be a big fight between these angry settlers and the dangerous wild Indians? Are our wives going to be widows?” I definitely had the Jim Elliott and Nate Saint story firmly fixed in my mind. They were killed only a little over ten years before by savage Auca in Ecuador. Was I turning my beloved Nadine into an “Elizabeth Elliott”? And what of Ray’s wife, Lena, who must have been so nervous for Ray to return?
We followed our guides deeper and deeper into the forest. I wore jeans and tennis shoes and we were soaked in sweat and mud and scatched and cut by the razor sharp briars always reaching out to grab us. And Grilo lost the trail so we wandered for miles getting nowhere. No food. No place to rest. We marched on. Then Grilo suddenly stopped.
“Indians!” he whispered, “there are Indians laying in ambush! I can smell them!” Smell them? Ambush? Everything I feared might happen to us on this trip, was about to happen! We were soon to be pin cushions. Martyrs. Two crazy American missionaries killed by wild Indians in the middle of nowhere! I sniffed and sniffed and could not smell anything but jungle mold and plant mildew. Grilo was frozen in the trail nervously readying his shotgun. “Don’t shoot!” Ray and I both said almost at once. Oh, Lord, please get us out of this!
And, then, slowly an old Indian man and his old wife got up out of the forest brush and grass where they had been laying flat. They were shaking with fear. They were on their way to the village ahead of us and heard us coming and had flattened themselves down in a small gulley. How did Grilo smell them? Oh my, our hearts had been beating so rapidly and we were so scared, and now relief just overwhelmed us. We smiled at the frightened pair and tried to assure them in Portuguese we were friends. The old man spoke a little Portuguese and said he and his wife would go ahead to the village and announce we were coming so the people wouldn’t be afraid of us. We gave the old couple an hour’s head start and when we got to the village everyone was expecting us. No, they hadn’t killed the woman. They were sure it was a wild naked people who had done it. Would we like to go even deeper in the jungle to that people? I don’t think Ray and I needed much time to answer. But Grilo did for us…”You can go with them or return with me!” We went back with Cricket.
Have you ever done something you later regretted doing? Have you walked “where angels fear to tread”? Sometimes we find ourselves in “sticky situations” and wonder how we ever got there. And how we ever will get out of it. I am older and much, much wiser, but I still find myself flirting with a disaster now and then. You cannot escape “risk”. Life is full of risky things. We wouldn’t even get in a car and go out on that highway if we weren’t willing to take the risk of not being hit by a drunk driver. The important thing is to be right in the center of God’s perfect will. If you are obeying God and trusting Him, you will find it is not so scary after all. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Is that your life motto? It is mine. Put your life in the hand of God and then the “risk” is His, not yours. Just do it!
The Roaring Alligator
The following is a read aloud story for June 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 people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. The story you are about to read was just told to me by Peter Rich, veteran translator with the Manchineri people, and he heard it from his Manchineri translation helper, Genesio. The Bible says Satan goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Genesio met a “roaring alligator” just a few weeks ago now, in fact just days before he was to fly here to Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, and help Peter and Terri with their very last verses of translation of the New Testament in Manchineri. It was a frightening experience.
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
It was an absolutely fantastic night. The stars not only twinkled in the sky, they seemed to dance with sparkling fervor! And the moon…oh, the moon was gigantic and radiating such brilliant light down on the small group of Manchineri people in their makeshift shelters on the sandy beach of the river. Fire flies darted here and there along the beach playing tag with one another. Someone was quietly chant-singing around a small fire on the ground and you could smell the fish roasting on the coals. It was a wonderful night and everyone felt nothing evil could ever happen…ever!
Genesio laid back and watched the stars and gazed at the moon and thought of God. There was a Creator God, there was a Great Spirit who spoke and the stars and the moon and the forest and everything came into existence! He had been learning more and more about this Great Creator God from Peter and Terri. He tried to remember when this strange couple from another world had come to the jungle and the Iaco River and taught him about the Creator God. It had been many, many years ago when he was a very small boy. And God felt so close to him there on the beach!
Morning broke and the birds came alive with their morning songs. Genesio’s friend aroused him from his sleep saying, “The turtles have laid their eggs! There are great deep nests of them on the upper beaches where people rarely go. Come, my friend, let us paddle way up the river to the undisturbed sand beaches where the treasures lay buried!” Turtle eggs! A seasonal treasure for the seeker and a delectable feast for the finder.
And, so, the two men were off in the small canoe. The river was so shallow that they could not paddle, they instead had long poles to push themselves along. One man stood at the back of the canoe with a pole and the other stood at the front, and because they had done this type of poling since childhood they were experts at it indeed. Push, shove, steer. Push, shove, steer. Hour after hour they went farther and farther up the river. In time they came to a deeper place in the water…mysteriously deep…and there was the long beach with the tell-tale turtle tracks from the night before. Why was the shallow river so deep here? Their poles hardly touched the bottom.
Genesio remembers seeing something dark and awesome in the murky brown. He reasoned instantly that it had to be a sunken log. But this log seemed to be moving. And then to his horror, the great form on a monster alligator surfaced at the side of their canoe. The beast may have been twenty feet or more from the tip of it’s snout to the end of its tail. It was thick as a barrel. And with an unearthly force it crashed against the canoe in an attempt to spill everyone out into the river. The Indians were frightened beyond words. But they had brought with them a .22 rifle. Genesio grabbed the weapon and saw that a shell was ready to shoot. BANG! He shot at the alligator again! BANG! But then realized the .22 shells were having no affect at all on the creature and were only ricocheting off into the water. The beast’s tail was whipping ferociously back and forth sending giant sprays of water in all directions. And it’s mouth opened so wide that it seemed he could swallow canoe and all! Huge, huge, huge teeth! Genesio was sure they would be killed.
The roaring noise of the great river beast was deafening. But the two men knew they must not try to run or surely this gigantic reptile would speed up the beach chasing it’s prey to the death. They saw that the rifle was no help, but with a carefully aimed blow they struck the alligator in the eye with the pole. It did considerable damage, but the beast only roared the more and whipped it’s tail more franctically. The eye was torn loose. Genesio felt God was telling him to shoot the .22 rifle at the torn eye socket. How could he take careful aim with all the commotion going on? But God gave him the calmness…don’t panic…and BANG the shell went true to the mark and into the skull of the reptile. It must have reached a sensitive part of the giant’s brain as like Goliath before little David, the beast fell and died!!
The two men were so badly shaken by the experience that it took many minutes to calm down and get their breathing back normally. They tried to pull the alligator up on the beach, but it was so heavy they could not budge it so they left it there and wanted to just get out of this frightening no-man’s land and back with their people.
Genesio may not have realized that this attack indeed had come from a frustrated Devil. Satan hates the Word of God. He seeks to destroy translators and translator’s helpers. He may well have sought to destroy Genesio before he could help finish the translation of the New Testament in Manchineri! But God, who created the river beast, also controls His creation and it is God who takes life and gives life. God spared Genesio in a miraculous way!
Do you recognize all around you the evidences of a Creator God? Are you aware of His presence in your life all the time? Do you sometimes wonder if you can defend yourself against all the “firey darts of the Wicked One”? Have you experienced the peace of God in the midst of spiritual combat? As you step out to serve Creator God and to proclaim His Son Jesus as the only Savior of the world, you will be attacked by “the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Rev.12:9) and you will be glad that you “put on the whole armour of God, so you were able to stand against the wiles of the Devil” (Ep.6:11). Just like Genesio did! Pray for Genesio right now as he works on those last precious verses of the translation with Peter and Terri Rich.
Corned Beef
The following is a read aloud story for August 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 people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. This story is bit comical. But if you are in a different world and a different culture…it does make you wonder about just what those long-legged white missionaries are really up too! Natives have studied the missionary’s culture for years and they probably could write books about the strange and weird things that missionary’s eat and do. This would be found in Eretete’s book!
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
He sat on the palm bark floor and watched the strangers as they were coming and going from their house. “Stranger” was the right word, these people got “stranger” every day! They don’t even speak an intelligible language like Culina, or Portuguese, but just that sneezing, sniffling, snorting language. Who could ever learn English? He was hearing the missionary shouting to his wife, “WASPS! WASPS! Look out for the wasps’ nest!” And it sounded like the long-legged white guy was blowing his nose or something!
Eretete (Eh-reh-teh-TEH) was a visitor to the Culina on the Jurua River. He and his wife, Nazare, (Nah-zah-REH) had traveled many weeks from their village in Peru. They had heard about the foreigners, who were living now with the Culina of Brasil, and he got there just in time to help with the work of clearing the forest for an airstrip. This was no small job, as giant trees had to be cut down by axe and then using the same axe you had to chop through them making short logs so you could finally roll the logs off to the side to let them dry in the sun and later be burned. Many, many sink holes had to be filled and tamped with dirt. The “howie”, the Culina name for trail, had to be leveled. Eretete came out for a few hours every day and sweat and strained and chopped until he had callouses on his hands. Meanwhile, the white people with the big straw hats would walk here and there checking everything and forever giving them advice that was hard to understand. This howie, they said, was so one of the big noisy birds could land on it and then fly off of it again! He had seen airplanes up close and they were pretty fascinating. To Eretete they looked like big tin milk cans with wings. He knew some of the Culina people had never seen an airplane up close in their lives…and they were always asking what the big birds were like. They were noisy creatures, that’s for sure. People crawled in the tin cans and went up in the clouds!
“Nazare, have you watched the white people?” Nazare was wrapping the potato root in leaves to let it roast on the coals. Yes, she was watching them closely too. “Nazare,” Eretete remarked, “did you notice that their little children have to wear cloth all around their bottoms? All the time!” He had no idea what diapers were all about. “It is a strange custom of theirs”, she replied, “they must collect the children’s droppings for some reason!” “Yes,” he replied, “I hope they don’t eat it! We just let our children go naked and drop their stuff wherever they want. That’s better!” They both laughed about how silly the white people were.
Day after day after day Eretete worked on the howie. Then came the day that a very old lady died and they had a major ceremony for her wrapping her in her hammock and burying her in an old canoe with a nailed down palm bark lid on it. Of course everyone kept alert and looked for her spirit to be walking around during the day. They were not sure where her spirit had gone or whether she was still trying to find the trail to the Culina afterworld. It was during this time that Eretete happened to see the big white foreigner open a can of meat. It was corned beef. But to Eretete it looked like a something that might be good to eat. “Can I buy a can of that meat for my dinner?” he asked one day, and the missionary gladly gave him a can. He was so curious about this meat that comes in a can. He went home and called Nazare and others to watch as he took his knife and dug out the meat from the can. Then everyone gasped. It was sort of stringy and looked an awful lot like ground human being! Everyone chattered. Were the white missionaries cannibals? Did they eat people? Yes, someone suggested, they dug up Grandma at night and they have ground her up and put her in a can! It was perfectly logical to the Indians. They just sat around and felt sick. Ground grandma. Disgusting.
The next day Eretete came to work and he acted a little angry and upset. “Eretete, did you like the corned beef? Did you eat it?” Then he just blurted out, “I know that was Grandma’s finger in that can! We could not eat Grandma! How could you do that to her?” The missionary just laughed and laughed. It was not funny. Would he eat more people? And for all the explanations about Corned Beef and how it comes from cows and is canned far away in Argentina…the people just could not accept it was not Grandma. From that day on the big white missionaries were very careful not to show the Indians canned meat. What in the world would they think of a can of Spam?
Could you picture Eretete’s predicament? Do you know people who do strange things that are hard
for you to understand? Every culture is different. Peoples of other countries and nationalities eat things that we would never eat. Have you ever eaten a dog? Did you know some people from Asia find dog quite delicious? I have watched the Indians eat a live big white fluffy grubworm…live and wiggling! It must not taste bad because they didn’t even make a face! But, I cannot yet eat a grubworm. Can you? In the book of Acts we learn about giving thanks to God and eating all kinds of strange foods. Acts 10:11-16 God showed Peter “all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and creeping things,and fowls of the air”. God ordered him to KILL AND EAT! Creeping things? No way! But if God asks you, or has to shout at you to just do it, then, JUST DO IT! Missionaries have had to learn this lesson all down through the years!
Don’t Kill Us!
The following is a read aloud story for July 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 people in a wild land called: “The Amazon Rain Forest”. Print them out. Collect them. E-mail them to others who would like to get these stories. Use them for the glory of God. We are changing the pace a bit. For the next few months I want to share some true stories of people and events that have happened in the Amazon jungle. The story you are about to read is absolutely true. I was there. God was there! It is just a fear-filled memory now as it happened July 8th and 9th, 1973. I was 34-years-old and Nadine and I were pioneering a new work with a new tribe in the deep isolated jungles of the Amazon. The Culina people were very primitive and killing one another all too frequently. And we were right in the middle of it!
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
My journal entry for July 9, 1973 reads, “At midnight we were standing under a star-filled sky with a fattening moon slowly heading West. At our feet lay a dead man whose life was now past and whose eternal soul was forever gone…how dreadfully sad! Who knows the deep sorrow we feel at seeing a lifeless corpse of an Indian man who never knew Jesus personally. We gave him some Gospel, BUT PERHAPS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE!”
Isanaua. We had nicknamed this man “the gorilla”, as he was of larger stature than the average Culina. Stout. Thick. Strong. He was the brother of our village chief, Nodia, and he was a killer. Nodia, himself, had killed nine different Culina before he was 30-years-old, and Isanaua had killed his share. They were friendly to us and wanted us to live in their village, but they always had murder on their minds. Revenge killings for past crimes against their clan members. It was a vicious cycle of kill “them” because they had attacked and killed “us”. Interclan warfare.
But what happened on Sunday, July 8th, was not a revenge killing. Isanaua had two wives and yet when a new family came to the village with a teenage daughter, he wanted her for a wife too. He talked to the girl’s father, Iba, and apparently Iba accepted a payment for his daughter to be Isanaua’s third wife. Something was given in exchange. But the young lady decided she did not want to be wife # 3! And she certainly did not want to be married to a “gorilla”. So, Iba and his family took their daughter when Isanaua was not home and they fled up the jungle river to another village. When the man came home, he was humiliated and shamed by everyone knowing he had been rejected by the young teenager. He immediately put on the war paint…completely covering his face with red dye and got his grown sons to do the same. Off they raced by trail to kill Iba and his family!!
We were a young missionary team. Ray Mellott, a World War II veteran, had just flown in to spend a few days building his house and his wife, Lena, stayed out at the town. Mark Emsheimer, a young man in his 20s and single, was hosting Ray in Mark’s newly made house. And Nadine and I had small children at home, including a baby boy, Brad, who had just arrived in May. A young man from Oregon, Dan Danforth, was there to help us finish up our new house. We had never been in a situation like this before. The evening of July 8th Isanaua and his clan ambushed and murdered Iba as he was coming down the river in the dark to escape. They blasted him with shotguns. Fortunately, only Iba was killed in the ambush and the other members of his family escaped into the woods. But about 11:30 at night we were all awakened by the frantic shouts and screams and wailings of women outside our house, “YOUR PEOPLE HAVE KILLED MY HUSBAND! IBA IS DEAD! YOUR PEOPLE KILLED HIM!” Iba’s wife was frantic. Mark, Ray, and I decided to go over to the village and there we found the blasted body of the Indian man. Iba’s clan and family were just sure that Isanaua and his people were going to come in the night and kill them all. The women kept going down the trail and shouting, “DON’T KILL US! DON’T KILL US!” They would shout out our names into the dark telling the unseen enemy that we were also there!
Fear. Cold, clammy fear. Would they attack? Were they actually out there in the dark? How were Nadine and the children doing over at the house with Dan as their sole protector? Nadine admitted she slept very little. Ray and Mark and I sat by the body talking about eternal souls. Death is so final. No more hope to save this soul. He was in Hell. These are terrible realities to Bible-believing missionaries. We were just learning their tongue and we hadn’t the language well enough to tell them of Jesus and what He did for them on the Cross. How frustrating! We listened all night to the women wailing and shouting out “DON’T KILL US!” One time I heard a noise in the dark and I sprung up and walked down the trail a few feet and shouted, “ISANAUA, IT IS I!! IT IS DOUEMI! DON’T KILL US!” We learned later they had not even come to the village that night and were actually far, far away fleeing from the fear of avengers who would be after them!
Have you ever been in a fear filled circumstance? Your heart beats rapidly and you begin to sweat even on the coolest of nights. You keep repeating to yourself, “Fear not!”, but you keep fearing anyway. It is a human response. But God has promised to never leave us or forsake us…and He never does! When you get scared about something…a noise in the dark or whatever…just pray to God and He will calm your heart. He always does! Read Psalm 91 and especially verse 5 which says, “thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night”. Even if that “terror” is a wild, gorilla-like man!
Poor Polly Parrot
The following is a read aloud story for December 2005. 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. Sorry, this story is coming to you a month late. My “story-maker brain” went on vacation. The bones for this story come from a veteran missionary with the Manchineri Indians, Peter Rich, who told us this sad but amusing tale one evening in a fellowship meeting. I hope you will enjoy it and pass it on to others. 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
Young Getulio sat in the corner of his palm-thatched shelter and studied the movements of his mother. She was busily keeping their wood fire going and boiling their potatoes for the main meal. He stretched and played with a small bow and arrow that he always kept close to him. You never knew when a blue and green lizzard would suddenly race up into the village yard! If one did appear…ZIP…Getulio was good at scaring the wits out of those lizzards!
“My son,” his mother suddenly said from the fire, “this morning old Zepi came with the most wonderful gift. Did you see the young parrot he gave me? Look at it over there! It will grow up to be a beautiful bird! I’m so proud of it and I want you to be very careful around that parrot. Don’t harm it! It is so beautiful to look at!”
Getulio had already studied his mother’s newest pet. She was always caring for baby monkeys, or young hawks, parakeets, and he chuckled to himself as he remembered the little black buzzard she had nursed to adulthood. Mother’s pets. He put the arrow in his bow and when she wasn’t looking he aimed it at the young red and yellow parrot. He could easily put an arrow through that bird…lizzards were harder to hit! He relaxed the tension of the arrow. It was certainly going to be a hot, boring day.
“My son”, she said again, “I am going out to the field to get some big bananas for roasting. Do not let any of the children play with the parrot. Did your ears hear what I said?” And she took her basket and left.
Getulio eyed the parrot. It was stretching it’s young wings. I wonder, he thought, how fast the parrot can fly? When they fly overhead in the late afternoon going to their nesting trees they really seem to fly fast. He looked at the long string that was laying on the floor and then picked it up and carefully tied it around the parrot’s middle. Standing up he began to swing the parrot around and around…quite slowly. The parrot tried to keep its equilibrium by fluttering its wings. Then Getulio swung the parrot a bit faster and the parrot countered by flapping those young wings faster and faster. Wow, this bird really could go fast. Now Getulio increased the spinning of the poor bird and enjoyed the squawks and screams of the parrot. Faster! Faster! The bird was now twirling around at record breaking speeds. In fact, it was also string breaking speeds! Suddenly the string broke and the poor parrot went screeching head long into the wall of the house. Getulio suddenly felt panick hitting him! He raced to the red and yellow feathery pile and knew instinctively it was dead. Dead! He had killed mother’s parrot. Oh dear. And soon she’d be coming back with the bananas.
His mind raced. What could he do? Mother would whip him when she returned and then, worse yet, she would chid and harangue and scold him for weeks without end. He had to think of something! First he untied the string from the limp, broken body. He threw the string in the fire and watched with satisfaction as it went up in smoke. He next put the bird back where Mother had placed it. But how could he tell her it had died? What excuse could he give for it’s demise? Looking up above the dead bird he saw the rolled up hammocks and mosquito nets. That was it! He would pull them down and tell mother the bird had suffocated when they fell down on it. He hadn’t noticed in time to rescue the parrot.
Mother soon returned. She worked on her bananas. She eyed Getulio in his corner and wondered why he was being so quiet and acting so strange and nervous. Then she saw the heap of hammock and mosquito net right on top of her young parrot! Racing over she uncovered it and screamed, “My parrot is dead! Getulio, my parrot is dead!” But Getulio was gone. He was racing down the trail and into the forest to hide. He’d face mother later.
Be sure your sins will find you out. Have you ever gotten yourself into a predicament like Getulio did? Maybe you didn’t kill a parrot, but you probably messed with something you were told not to mess with! If someone tells a child that a certain thing is hot and not to touch it…doesn’t he always want to touch it just to see if it really is? How many of my fingers did I burn as a young boy? The Bible says that God sees everything we do. He knows. Nothing is done in secret. Have you ever tried to hide something you did from your mother or father? Did you ever blame the dog for breaking the lamp that you accidentally broke yourself? Be honest. Admit your mistakes. Take your punishment when you really are guilty and deserve it. You can’t run from God and hide. So don’t try. Confess your sins, and He’ll forgive you!! Always.
The Aunteater
The following is a read aloud story for January 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 story is “made up”,not real, but it could have happened. Indians of the great Amazon forest live quite literally in a giant zoo. Animals are an intricate part of their lives. I have watched children playing with giant anteaters and wondered at the patience of those beautiful creatures. Our story tells of one such anteater who lost his patience with a lady…and became an “aunt-eater”.
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 women were sweeping and sweeping the village center. They had made their own brooms from long palm fronds tied on the end of a stick. It worked. Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. It was a big open space and soon the night singing would begin. It hadn’t rained in several days so the ground was sandy and dry and hard. The two Culina boys, Sapi (Saw-PEE) and Nani (Gnaw-KNEE), sat watching and talking to each other excitedly. “It’ll be a BIG dance tonight”, Sapi said enthusiastically as he ran his fingers stiffly through his dirty black hair. “Yes,” Nani agreed, “and a big full moon too!” Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. Dust roiled up near where they were sitting and they waved their hands in front of their faces as if they could clean the air that way. They were about to get down and run away from the dust and sweeping ladies, but it was just then that they saw it. An enormous long-nosed bushy-tailed anteater!
The curious looking creature was about two feet high and six feet long from the tip of his long snout to the end of his hairy tail. He had a shaggy gray coat and powerful front claws for tearing apart bark and rotten wood as he searched for ants and termites. And wanting to look very “dressed up”, he had a conspicuous black band on his coat. He was a tamandua (tah-mon-dew-AH) and very proud of it! But unfortunately he had been “anteater-napped” in the forest by a band of Indian hunters. They had surrounded him and then knocked him down and tied him up and brought him back to the village for the kids to play with. For several weeks now the tamandua had lived at the end of a long rope. He wanted so bad to get free and return to the forest. In fact he was very, very, very hungry. Ants were not in abundance in this village…at least the delicious varieties he craved from the rotten logs and forest floor.
“C’mon, Sapi, let’s go tease the anteater!” And as soon as Nani had said this the two boys were racing to the animal’s area. The tamandua had been pestered and poked and teased and pelleted by pieces of wood and hard clay. He was not happy! The boys found a stick and poked at the animal’s side. He bellowed in a strange sounding way and they laughed and laughed. Suddenly one of the women who had been busily sweeping the village center appeared at their side. “Nani, don’t get close to it! It has sharp claws! It could be dangerous!” It was Nani’s aunt Sarri (Saw-HEE) and she was scolding and scolding. The two boys were feeling mischievious, as boys will be, and they poked at the beast some more and the woman began to chase them. Round and round the anteater the three of them went shouting and laughing and carrying on. Aunt Sarri almost caught Sapi one time, but he wiggled free and raced to the other side of the anteater. The anteater, meanwhile, was getting dizzy from all the times it had to turn it’s head around and around to keep an eye on these enemies. And then Aunt Sarri slipped. She lost her footing and stumbled forward right into the side of the tamandua. And quick as a wink he took a big swiper with his claw and hit her on the bottom. His sharp claws ripped out a piece of her flesh. And then totally paralysed with fear she saw the beady little eyes and the long snout and felt the bite on her arm. OUCH! The anteater was angry and had become an “aunt-eater”!
The boys saw the plight of Nani’s aunt and they quickly grabbed sticks and moved in to draw the attention of the animal away from Sarri. She crawled moaning and hurting away to a safe distance beyond the anteater’s rope length! Her bottom hurt and her arm hurt and she was calling for help. People raced to get her and take her to a shelter. Sapi and Nani threw their sticks down and ran through the moonlight after the crowd. The anteater sighed in relief. He licked his mouth. “Aunts” were not nearly as tasty as ants!!
Bad situations. Have you ever gotten yourself into a “pickle”..a bad situation? You didn’t mean to do it, but, like Sarri, as things happened you found yourself in a dangerous place and you needed to get out FAST. When we do not follow the Word of God and do what the Bible tells us to do…we find ourselves getting into trouble. And then something begins to eat on us! Often it is the voice of God speaking to our hearts and telling us we sinned and did wrong. Our conscience. Do you feel like you are wrestling with a sharp-clawed anteater that will bite you? Run to Jesus! Go to Him and ask for forgiveness and stay away from those painful sins that want to eat you. Be a cucumber for Jesus…not a pickle!!
Candy’s Cane
Alright, Mr. Smarty Pants, just tell me…where did Cain get his wife? Aha, caught you on that one? Have you ever had someone say that to you? Well, oddly enough, we know more about Cain’s wife than you would imagine. The Bible says in Genesis 4:16 that Cain packed up his mules and left home and “he went out of the presence of the Lord”. He settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. He left God for Nod. Ironically, millions of others have done the same thing and have decided they’ve had enough of God and they pack up and move to Nod…and that sounds like a place where you just have “brain sleep” and get into a self-made dreamworld “nodding off”, it is not real and a sleeping sickness. No God in Nod! But he did have a wife. She and Cain went into real estate in Nod. The Bible says she conceived and had a son named Enoch (not the great preacher evangelist that was a son of Seth) and Cain built a city, occupied by his many offspring, and called it “Enoch”. She undoubtedly conceived and had many sons and daughters…they all did back then.
Cain’s wife was Adam and Eve’s little girl. Cain’s sister. She looked just like Cain only a female version. I imagine she was “some good looking” by any of our standards. She might well have been the first female baby born to Adam and Eve. Maybe even the next child after Cain. I’m pretty sure she grew up with Cain, swimming in the clear waters of the river and eating the fruit of the trees. Let’s call her “Candy”. Candy and Cain. That seems to go good together. Little Candy was cute as a bug’s ear. Have you ever seen a bug’s ear? She romped and played and giggled and tumbled and climbed trees and chased Cain all over God’s Creation. And as she got older she began to get cynical like Cain was doing! Candy was losing her sweetness. Somehow, inevitably, she began to follow Cain’s logic and arguments and soon was just as rebellious as he was. How many sweet little innocent precious girls have grown up and fallen under the spell of some “Cain” and as Jude later wrote in his short letter “they have gone the way of Cain, and they have rushed headlong into error”. Maybe it was Candy that influenced Cain to NEVER give in and sacrifice a lamb on that altar! They were the Anti-altar rebels of that day! Self sufficient, self made, self righteous and headed for self-destruction! They moved to Nod together. They never taught their children or grandchildren about God and that Adam and Eve were made and not born. The Bible doesn’t tell us how long Cain lived, or Candy, but since everyone back in those days lived into their 900s, we are safe to presume Cain and Candy also died over 900 years old. Bitter, sour old souls. Disillusioned. They both eventually did die. And on a very quiet night sometimes you can almost feel like you hear a great lament coming up from the pits of Hell, “SEND ME A LAMB TO SACRIFICE ON THE ALTAR!” It echoes through all Hell. But for Cain and Candy it is forever too late. How about you? Are you trusting the Lamb of God Who was sacrificed on the Cross to be your Savior?
East of Eden
Stories are stories. My mind has been dwelling east of Eden for the past months. I would have loved to have been there with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and little Seth. What did Adam’s house look like? Did he ride a horse? How did Eve wash the diapers? Or, for that matter, what did Eve use for diapers? Itchy sheep wool? Help! At any rate it was a wonderful world in spite of the newly added thorns and thistles that had not been in the Garden. So, this is just a story from the depths of a very fertile imagination. We simply do not know how it really was. I’m guessing and probably it was quite different from any thing I could imagine, but perhaps not. This is NOT Bible based theology. This is not meant to be taken seriously like doctrine. This is a story. Simply a fictional story with a moral teaching. Sit back and enjoy it!
Duane Howe, tribal missionary in Brasil and an old story teller
The roar of the waterfall was so appealing to the two little boys. They often came to the falls and played in the shallow pool at the foot of the falls. It was a wonderful world of green with big salmon-like fish darting this way and that. Cain was about ten-years-old and Abel was two years younger. There, of course, wasn’t another boy, or girl, in the whole country! Just little Seth who was going on six. They did not go to school because schools had not been invented yet. I suppose you could truthfully say they were the first “home schoolers” to walk on the face of the earth. And their dad and mom were students in that home school just like they were and God, who came in the cool of the late afternoon, was their teacher. Very quick learning little boys, but boys are boys and always have been!
“Abel,” Cain said hurriedly to his brother, “let’s go see the angel that guards the entrance to the Garden!” “Well, I don’t know”, said Abel seriously, ” we had better ask Dad and Mom first!”
“No way,” retorted Cain quickly and with a bit of anger in his voice, “we can make our own decisions and we don’t have to ask permission for anything! I don’t believe Mom’s snake story either! Boy, where did she make that up from? And Dad believes it! Talking snakes? Abel, have you ever seen a talking snake? All the snakes around here are pretty quiet. Does she think we are stupid or something to believe she talked to a snake?”
Abel often saw rebellion in his older brother and wondered why Cain just could not accept what he was told to do without arguing. But Abel was the younger and Cain always assumed the leadersip and made the plans, “OK,” Abel said timidly, “Let’s go see the angel…if he is still there!”
When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden after their disobedience to Almighty God their Creator, they had moved to a nice place east of Eden. They had not wanted to get too far from the Garden of Paradise in case God would someday change His mind and allow them to return. There was only one entrance into the Garden where Adam had been made from the dust of the earth and a short time later Eve had been made from one of his ribs. But the entrance was impossible to pass because cherubim were there. They were not cherub babies either, they were special guard angels and God had stationed them at the entrance giving them a sword that was a divine flame thrower and it sprayed fire here and there. Nothing entered the Garden.
The two little boys had to go through the woods quite a distance, but they soon got to the entrance to Eden and sure enough there was the fire! Cain had come other times and just sat and looked in amazement at the flaming sword which turns all directions shooting out long tongues of white-blue fire. But today he had Abel with him and he wanted to be tougher and show his brother he was afraid of nothing. Abel was just bug-eyed and shaking and nearly crying. “No, Cain, no! Let’s go back home! Dad and Mom said we should never come here!”
Cain stepped out into the clearing that made a little path towards the entrance to Eden and with a crooked smile he took a step forward. Then another. He could hear Abel crying and pleading for him to come back. Still another step closer. He felt the heat. He still could not see the cherubim through the fire and smoke. One more step closer. And just then SWOOSH the flame came leaping right towards him and as he turned to run it sent out a firey tongue that burned a spot on his behind! Just a tiny bit, but Cain felt the pain. And he cried too. Two little boys raced back to the safety of home. What would be the future of these two adventurous little boys?
How about you? Are you an adventurous person? Do you like to be daring and do things that are scary? Some of us are born timid…and others of us are born stubborn and with strong wills of our own. The important thing is that we submit our lives to God and walk and talk with him when He “comes in the cool of the day” to be with us. Have you felt God close to you? Have you talked to God in prayer? Do you read His Word in the cool of the day? Don’t disobey your parents or other people in authority! You don’t want to get burned do you?
The Bible In the Soup
Stories are fun. Finally I am back with some more tales. The next few stories for children will be about a strange, but actually wonderful, community of houses that are built high in the air on stilts. Every child’s dream house! For several months every year the river rises and swishes around under the houses. This year twice the river has just gone beyond it’s supposed limits…it rose and rose and rose and then walked into those high houses! And that isn’t good, is it? So, here’s a story of a brother and sister in their stilt house facing an invasion of water! This actually could be a true story! And we are glad now that we have a new, modern wireless e-mail system…and the stories can ZIP to you! Duane Howe, tribal missionary in Brasil and an old story teller
Her smile was wrinkled. Her hair was motley. Her shorts were too tight and she wore no top. She sat on the board floor of her house and poked a drinking straw down through the cracks into the mirky, brown water underneath. Tatiane (Tah-chee-ah-nee) was just 9-years-old, but she had never seen the water come up this high under their house before. It wasn’t actually scary, but it also made her feel uncertain about the future. A few more inches and they’d be wading in the bedroom! “Cleoson! Cleoson! Where are you? The water is still coming up! I wish mother would hurry and come home!”
Cleoson was dark complected and had very rebellious black hair. Of course, the hair was not to be blamed too much, it had seldom ever seen a comb. When it got impossible, Mom just whacked it down to size again! “Shush, Tati, I’m getting bites! You might scare the fish away!” Very quietly Tatiane walked into the small room where she and her brother slept on the floor on a mattress. Cleoson was fishing out of the bedroom window with a short nylon string and a small hook on the end. He jerked the line and pulled a sucker fish out of the water, but it freed itself quickly and flopped back in the darkish soup. Plastic bags and pieces of styrofoam were floating by. Someone in a boat had come close to their house and made waves and the water lapped up through the cracks. The kids had put their mattress up on the small kitchen table. Nothing was any longer on the floor, unless it was something that could get wet and didn’t matter. Like the bananas.
“Look, Tati, there’s something black floating by! It looks like a book!” Cleoson quickly ran to get the first thing that had come to his mind…a broom. He stuck the handle way out and actually touched the black object, which was sitting in a plastic container…for all the world like Moses in the bulrushes! Hadn’t that story teller young woman just told them about baby Moses being set out in a flood in a basket? Tati crammed her head through the same small window and the kids tried to get the floating prize. But it was bobbling and going by much too fast. “Hurry Cleoson! It is going to be lost!” He stretched with all his body nearly out of the window but the broom handle was just a bit too short. It’s lost, he thought.
SPLASH! Cleoson was startled! Then he saw his little sister in the water swimming to the container. She had ran to the living room and dove out of the living room window and there she was going towards the floating object. She grabbed it and smiled back triumphantly and swam back to the house. She could practically swim in the door! “Look, Cleoson! It’s a Bible! Don’t you think it’s a Bible?” The kids had never really seen a Bible before, not up close anyway. But, yes, it was a Bible! They pulled it in. No name and no address. Whose was it? They quickly carried it to the kitchen table and the two of them crawled up and lay on their mattress treasuring their treasure. Cleoson, who could read well, just opened it and the verse he saw was “THE LORD SITS UPON THE FLOOD! YES, THE LORD SITS AS KING FOREVER! THE LORD WILL GIVE STRENGTH TO HIS PEOPLE; THE LORD WILL BLESS HIS PEOPLE WITH PEACE!” Psalm 29:10.
Cleoson said in a strange calm voice, “Tati, that means God will be with us even if the water comes up through the cracks! He will take care of us!” They both just smiled and waited for Mom to come.
And what about you? Aren’t you glad you live in a secure house without water running underneath it? Well, maybe that would be fun for a while, what do you think? But there are dozens and dozens of boys and girls who live in extremely poor houses like the kids in Stilt City. They just never had anything better and if Mom is there…it is home! Few have dads at home. Pray for the Stilt City kids as we go several times a week to tell them about Jesus and His love. And the One who sits on the flood!
Cain’s Complaint
The first chapters of the book of Genesis are full of snapshots of the first family to ever live on earth. Cain Adamson was the first baby ever to come into the world! His mother, Eve, was tormented by her “mistake”. I’m sure when she and her young husband were expelled from the Garden because of Eve’s disobedience to a direct command from The Presence…and because she had listened to that Snake…both she and Adam were quite sure that they would soon be allowed back to Paradise, to the Garden. Adam had willingly joined Eve in the “disobedience” and therefore he was the more guilty and would forever carry the blame for mankind’s expulsion from the air-conditioned, bug-controlled, sinless, absolutely perfect, garden called Eden. They wanted back. A strange other-world creature called a “cherubim” stood at the one entrance to Paradise and he had a great flame-thrower that effectively kept anyone, or any animal, from entering the Garden again and eating from that tall majestic tree known as “The Tree of Life”. When Cain was born, Eve’s first words were, “He has been born! The “Messiah”, the Savior, has come! Oh, Adam, look at him…isn’t he beautiful? If you had been born a baby you would have looked just like him! He will crush the head of the snake! Soon, Adam, we will be allowed back in to Paradise! I have gotten a man from the Lord!” The uttering of “Lord” is the first instance in Scripture of the use of YAHWEH on the lips of a human being. But the years passed and now Cain Adamson was a young boy of 10 and had a smaller brother named Abel and “Adam and Eve had sons and daughters”. And thus our story begins.
Cain raced Abel down the hill and around the corner into the cleared field. The boys were bringing a few roasted fish to their sweating father. And some of Mom’s delicious bread. Adam hoed and weeded and babied the plants. When he lived in the Garden with his newly created wonder woman, he had never thought much about food…food was abundant everywhere and there was a neverending supply. Now it was thorns and thistles and the sun was hot and he felt thirsty and he often stopped to reflect on their previous bliss and now…THIS! He greeted the boys and a little sister who came late, but was always tagging along. We don’t know what Adam and Eve called their first daughter, but maybe it was “Candy”. She looked just like Eve and she was sweet. Candy loved Cain. The two were almost inseparable. Cain grabbed a hoe and began weeding his own plot of tomatoes and lettuce and carrots and “the fruit of the ground”. Cain loved to work in his garden plot, but he didn’t like tending to those sheep!!
“Children, gather around for a little bit!”, Adam shouted, “We need to discuss the sacrifice! Tomorrow we are going to sacrifice a choice lamb from the flock! Do you understand why we must kill the lamb? Why YAHWEH has told us to do it regularly?” And he explained to them once again about the altar of rocks and why there were blood stains down the side of the altar. The lamb was a substitute for a sin-bearer. Someday YAHWEH would send the One who would forever rid them of their terrible sin and He would be “the Lamb of YAHWEH” to be sacrificed once and for all for our sins. But, until then, they were required to kill a choice lamb as His substitute. “Do you all understand?” he questioned. Abel always seemed to comprehend, but Cain just seemed so disgusted with the whole idea.
“Father”, he said angrily, “it is not fair! It just is not fair that a small innocent lamb should lose his life for something that silly! I feel sorry for the mother ewe seeing her little lamb being killed! I think it would be better to sacrifice a tomato! Let tomato juice run down the altar side! The mother tomato couldn’t care less!” At this his brother and sister giggled, but his father was displeased. “No, son,” Adam explained, “it is the blood that redeems us! Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin!” Cain just scrooged up his face in disgust. Why was YAHWEH so bloody? He would NEVER sacrifice a lamb! The family could if they wanted to, but he determined that he would NEVER comply with this ridiculous demand from the Creator. Besides that it was his mother’s fault…why had she been so dumb to listen to a talking snake?? She needed to be forgiven, not him!
And the next day Adam and Even stood around the stone altar and the children were all there watching curiously. This wasn’t the first “sacrifice” they had attended, indeed there had been many, but it seemed as they grew older that the sacrificing of a lamb was becoming more and more significant, more meaningful. Abel put his hand on the head of the lamb and said, “Please die for my sins! Thank you for being my substitute!” and Cain and little Candy stood off to the side and just watched. Cain found it so repulsive. Adam drew back the sharp knife and it glistened in the sun light for an instant and then with a thrust he slit the throat of the lamb and the bright red blood burst out and ran down the side of the altar! And YAHWEH was there as The Presence and they could feel Him and they knew that He was pleased. But Cain turned and walked away mumbling, “I will NEVER ever sacrifice a lamb! Just forget that idea! NEVER!”
How about you? Do you know that Jesus was the Lamb of God who shed His precious blood on the Cross to save you from your sins? Have you, like Abel, accepted that great sacrifice as your substitute dying for your sin? Or are you stubborn and rebellious and, like Cain, not wanting to submit to “rules” and “religious laws” and the whole idea of blood being shed for the remission of sins? Cain has many followers even until today. Many people complain, as Cain did, that they can save themselves without killing a Lamb. But they can’t. The Bible says that only by faith in the shed blood of the Lamb can we be washed from our sins. What can wash away our sins? NOTHING but the blood of Jesus!