NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

A young girl serves terere, the cold tea drink that is so popular in Paraguay

The day we arrived in the tribal village we were met by some grave news. An eight year old girl had died in school that day; she had complained of a headache and a while later began screaming hysterically before she suddenly became unable to talk and later died. All the parents were summoned to the school with these words: “Did you send a child to school today? Come quickly, someone has died!” No one knew the exact cause of her death, but already the rumors attributing it to witchcraft were circulating heavily. This was what one of the chiefs told Luci, the single missionary with whom we were traveling. 

   “What will they do when someone is accused of witchcraft?” we asked Luci.

   “Oh, it’s a very serious charge,” she replied. “If they think there is enough evidence, the person could be put to death. Usually the person they blame it on is old, or a woman, someone who cannot do much to defend themselves. Normally they run away, to another colony, before the punishment can be carried out. Most people here still attribute sickness, bad crops and many other things to witchcraft.”

   We knew that this chief was a Christian, one of the elders in the tribal church we had come to visit. So we asked Luci what he would do about this situation.

   “Oh, he will try to protect the person even though he faces so much pressure!” she told us. “I am always amazed at how the Lord gives him so much wisdom to deal with these kind of situations. First he will ask if she was taken to the doctor, and what the autopsy said, and then he will tell the others we have no proof of witchcraft. Also he will say that he could not punish an innocent person, if there was not enough proof, and he will drag his feet if nothing else works, and somehow he will find a way to avoid punishing them.”

   She also told us that probably the unbelievers would keep their children home from school for a long time out of fear of witchcraft, but that the believers are not afraid of this anymore and their children will continue to go.

   It was amazing to hear of this one man, a small and lightly built older man, leading his people according to his new conscience as a believer! What wonderful things the Lord is doing in the lives of the people of this colony! There is a church packed full every Sunday, five elders to shepherd the flock, and a room full of materials to the believers who teach their neighbors, once a week, to read and write and share the truth with them from beginning to end of the Scriptures!

   “There is so much to do, so many ways the believers need to mature,” said Luci who worked among them for 10 years, “but God has done so much in their lives and He is working through them to change so much, even in their weakest points!”