Dear Friends,
Hi from Lajas! All is going well here. We’ve been out here a little over a week and a half. It’s been very busy with lots of visitors coming by. Barry and Candy have left to go up to the States to be with family and go to their son’s graduation. Our kids have basically finished up their schooling for this school year. Joseph and Julian have been busy trying to shoot a large rat in an empty house nearby. They want to kill it as they’ve heard that Indians eat rats, and they figure they have to see this for themselves. Sophia was playing with her friend and fell into a barbwire fence, she sliced her cheek open right close to the nose and so we stitched her up with some butterfly stitches. Its healing nice and there will be minimal scarring. Madeline has been teaching Sophia kindergarten to fill in her time now that she has finished school. I have been helping a few guys with their houses. I made some door frames for Rutilio and tomorrow will help Lucio put a tin roof on his house. There is a lot of money around right now due to drugs being sold and so there have been a lot of drunks around the village. There have been a few incidents, but no one has been hurt. No one has bothered us so it’s actually been quite peaceful.
Tomorrow we are planning to make an eight hour drive through the mountains down to the coast to a town called Acaponeta. The Tepehuan always talk about this town and to get there, we have to drive through the rest of the Tepehuan territory. It is quite a rough road but to be able to spend some time on the beach will be rewarding. A bunch of Tepehuan friends are coming along, so it should be an experience. We are looking forward to it as we have always wanted to see what lays beyond Lajas. We spend two days there before returning to Lajas. We’ll spend a few more days in Lajas and then drive into Durango.
Please be praying for Alma (Marselo and Emiteria’s little girl that had been suffering from malnutrition), she had gotten better, but now has gone downhill again, and this time she is worse. They have taken her to shaman after shaman and the shamans are saying that she won’t get better. This is the nicest way of saying she has been cursed and will die. They have taken Alma to La Cumbre which is a six hour walk away. Apparently there is a lady shaman there that can help them. The Tepehuan believe that “bad” shamans can put a curse on you and you will die and children are especially vulnerable. They believe a “bad “ shaman can in the spirit come to the child and steal her spirit and take it and place it in the cleft high up on a cliff. There is no way the child can get down, if they do they will die. Marselo says that in dreams he sees her up there, but there is no way he can climb up there to get her spirit back. The only way they can get the spirit back, is to find a powerful shaman, who can go and retrieve the child’s spirit. The good shaman will blow Indian tobacco smoke over the child, and try to suck out the curse. They will then use eggs and rub the child’s body with the egg and then throw it into the fire. The egg explodes and this shows that the curse is being taken out. The shaman can through his dreams, find the child’s spirit and bring it down from the cliff, and then the child will live. Marselo believes that the shaman in La Cumbre is doing this, but Alma doesn’t seem to be improving.
Our rational, scientific minds want to ridicule their beliefs as there is obviously a medical reason why Alma is sick, and the reason she has regressed is that she doesn’t get adequate food nor does she live in a clean environment. Unless God does a miracle, Alma is going to die in the near future. Our rationalizing does nothing to impact the Tepehuan mind, neither do they see the connection. They are absolutely convinced by their beliefs, even if they don’t always seem to work. They do not want to take Alma back to Durango to get hospital treatment, they believe her only hope is in the shaman’s cure. There is nothing we can say or do to convince them otherwise. I believe it comes down to who is stronger, Satan’s system of stealing, killing and destroying lives, or God’s power of healing and giving life to the immortal. I told Marselo that I knew God, that God’s power was far more powerful than that of any evil shaman. We could pray over Alma, and if God wants her to live, he will heal her. He got quite excited about this as he understood that I had the power to go and kill the bad shaman in the spirit. I told him I couldn’t do that, that was God’s business, but I can talk to God and ask Him to heal Alma. He said he’d keep it in mind, but for now they were convinced that the shaman in La Cumbre will heal Alma. Pray for Alma to be healed whether or not we personally get to lay hands on her and pray for her. Pray that God would begin to reveal His power to the Tepehuan. A God who can heal and have power over sickness is a God they would follow. Unfortunately with all the intuitiveness the Tepehuan have to the spirit world, they have no idea that they are absolutely cursed and destitute from God, and that their sickness is sin. Pray that while all their attention is on physical sickness ( albeit spiritually caused) that they would begin to see their evil hearts and yearn for spiritual cleansing and healing.
Thanks for battling with us in prayer.
For Jesus,
Andrew and Anne Marie
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May 2008 letter
