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.