God is at work in Dao tribe of Indonesia. After six days of trying to think of a cultural way to explain some of the deeper truths of Ephesians 3, missionary Scott Phillips the Dao Christians if they understood what the passage was saying. God gave them the answer.

Here is the very exciting email from Scott recounting this eureka moment:

It never ceases to amaze me how the truths of God’s word are applicable in any culture! It wasn’t but a few weeks ago now that I was faced with the task of finding a way to explain to my fellow Dao teachers some of the deeper truths of Ephesians three. Specifically some of those hard to understand statements in verses two through nine like “By revelation he made known unto me the mystery;… 5 Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men…6 That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:…9 that all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery…”

We always try to come up with cultural illustrations of the things that we teach on so that the Dao believers can better understand what is being taught, but this specific passage was really posing a challenge for me. I thought “How can I explain to the Dao people that don’t even barely know that they are a part of the country of Indonesia because they are so far back in the jungles, that through a great ‘mystery’ they were once just Gentile people but have now been undeservingly given the place of ‘fellowheirs’ of the gospel and have become the same as Jewish people?!!” I was just plain stumped. I thought and thought about it for about six days and finally just kind of threw up my hands and said “God, I am just gonna try my best to teach this, but I don’t see how they will understand it unless you do something special this week to guide them to the right understanding”

When we gathered together the next day with the Dao Bible teachers to review the lesson I started by simply reading the verses and then I asked them “What do you think about these verses? Do you think you know what they are talking about?” They sat there in silence for a few seconds thinking about what I had read to them and then Daapoi was the first to speak. He looked at me with a sort of half-grin on his face and said “I think i get it”. I told him to go on an explain what he was thinking.

“Well, you see there are two types of pigs here in our lands. The domestocated pigs we call “ekena” but the wild pigs we call “tapiyaa”. When we are out hunting a wild pig, every so often after we kill the pig we find that it has a few young wild piglets. So we take these little wild piglets, put them in our string bags and carry them back to our house. When we get to the house we will take the pig and find the teeth that will eventually turn into it’s tusks and we yank them out. Then we put the piglet back in the bag and just leave it hanging on the wall of the house until it gets used to its new surroundings. We begin to mash up sweet potatoes and feed the baby wild pig by hand until it is used to our presence and understands that we take care of it. Then we teach it to recognize our voice and our pig calls so that when we call the other domesticated pigs, the wild pig will also respond to our calls and come running to us. We wait and watch and feed it until it learns and responds to our pig calls. Then at the moment it begins to respond to our calls and knows our voice and sees us as it’s caregiver we say ‘This is no longer a ‘tapiyaa’ (wild pig) but from this point on it is an ‘ekena’ (domesticated pig)!’” (Top center picture – Waiyoo with one of the young pigs she is raising)

The other three Dao bible teachers present (top left photo – Debatoma and Kogipiyaa and top right photo – Paatoma) began to take turns chiming in – “Yeah! That is exactly what God did for us isn’t it!”…” We Dao people are not part of the Jewish people but are Gentiles and so we were like wild pigs that had no place with God’s group of people.”…”But He has taken us from the jungle and transformed us and given us a place in His home”… “That’s right! and He has taken care of us and fed us by His hand, and He has taught us His words and now calls us His own even though we were once nothing but wild and undeserving!”… “That is what these verses are talking about isn’t it?!” they asked. And I couldn’t help but laugh out loud with joy at this awesome cultural illustration! I had just spent nearly six days wracking my brain for a way to explain this to these guys and couldn’t think of anything! And then God’s Spirit working inside them through His Word turned around and led them to this awesome truth in a matter of seconds. God is doing His work. Jesus is alive. God’s Spirit is still working in places like Dao and all over the world even today changing hearts. God’s Spirit Himself is the greatest teacher of all teachers, teaching people in ways that we missionaries never could! As the Dao people would say, “Taking people from the jungle and changing them from wild ‘tapiyaa’ into wonderfully transformed ‘ekena’.”