Don't Make Us Wait
I looked up, startled from my morning devotions.
I’d thought I was alone, sitting on the steps of the small schoolhouse at the remote mission center. But there, staring back at me, was a man dressed like I’d never seen before—with beads across his chest and around his arms, and a black wooden stick in his hand.
He was smiling, speaking nearly unintelligible Portuguese and gesturing to his stick. After a few moments it hit me: the stick means he's a chief!
Grinning, he pulled me into a huge hug and, in broken phrases, told me how happy he was that we’d come to bring God’s Word.
Touchdown
The day before, pilot Craig Russell and I had flown a language surveyor to the “N” community of Brazil, where missionary planes hadn’t visited for two years.
As we neared the runway, “Jenny” came on the radio, her voice choked with emotion. She told us her husband, “John,” was waiting at the airstrip—and they were so glad we’d come.
Jenny and John have worked with the N for more than 40 years, offering classes, Bible studies and medical aid. They later told us how much the aircraft means to them. Traveling by foot takes five or six days during the dry season, and it’s often nearly impossible during the rainy season. Jenny has bad knees, and it can take weeks to recover from the trip.
The flight, however, takes half an hour.
After touchdown, we checked out the runway: length, side slope, condition. It has its challenges—it’s a one-way airstrip, 1,575 feet long, with a 3% upslope in the touchdown zone and a dogleg to the left 500 feet into takeoff.
Villagers helped lug our cargo down the river bank and load it into John’s dugout canoe. Fifteen minutes later we arrived at the mission station, where we hung our hammocks for the night.
A Challenge to Act
The N community is beginning to open up to the gospel, but so far, very few are committed Christians. They already have some key passages in their language—such as Bible stories and 12 chapters of Acts—yet no one has committed to ongoing, dedicated translation work with the group.
So during our stay, the surveyor called people together from up and down the river. He wanted to know: Could they understand Scriptures in nearby languages? And did they want a complete New Testament of their own?
Near the start of the meeting, an older man stood up. “I’m the head chief on this river,” he said. “I’m the oldest, and that means I’m in charge.
“And I say we need the missionaries here to give us God’s Word.”
He went on to say that his people didn’t know how to live to please God. They couldn’t read the “white man’s Bible”—in Portuguese. “We don’t know how to teach our children,” he explained. “I don’t know how to lead my people. How am I supposed to know unless I have God’s Word telling me?”
As the session went on, I heard those sentiments again and again.
The next morning, another chief came to the missionaries’ home and asked us to photograph him. “Why?” I responded.
“I came two hours up river early this morning, dressed in all this,” he said, gesturing to his beads and chief stick, “to get my picture taken with you, so you could take it to your big chief, so he’d know that we’re serious when we say we need someone to come to give us God’s Word.
“Don’t make us wait another month, or six months, or a year. We want this now.”
I was stunned. God was softening the hearts of this community, which had been resistant to the gospel for years.
Who will respond?
A few weeks later, during a dinner at the SIL-Brazil center in Porto Velho, I spoke about my experiences and the need for translation work with the N people. When I finished, I scanned the crowd. My eyes rested on a veteran translator—one who’d spent most of his life translating the New Testament, and had watched his children and grandchildren grow up in a remote village.
His eyes were wet with tears.
Afterward, he walked up to me. “I wish I were younger,” he said, “so I could go.”
—Jeremiah Diedrich, with Michaela Riley. Jeremiah has served as a JAARS-trained pilot in Brazil since August 2006.
Since Jeremiah’s visit, several N people have shown that they’re willing and able to carry out translation work for their own language group. The team will begin training this year.
