Tim’s Blog

 

This alphabet chart which you see above, was created by the Piaroa who learned it from the missionaries. As you are aware, it was submitted recently to the Institute of Languages in Venezuela with the request to make it legal. Robin and I joined the work in 1989. As a newcomer, I observed the method of education which was in place. Small primers were printed by the mission and given to the people. Missionaries had literacy classes, but primarily what I observed was the people themselves trying to learn. Young and old, they labored in their huts to capture these visual symbols of the sounds their tongues made (imagine how hard it would be for you and I to learn the Chinese Hanzi writing system in our spare time). Education and knowledge is highly valued in the Piaroa culture. Parents would learn and teach their children, but the effectiveness of attaining a complete level of literacy was very rare. Some could read, but very laboriously. As I observed this I also noticed that in each Piaroa village was a government school. Piaroa who were ‘upper crust’ culture would go to school in town and learn Spanish at about a 5^th grade level. With this education, they qualified to become school teachers in the government indigenous school system which had a school in every Piaroa village. But the Piaroa school teachers would teach Spanish curriculum only, in their broken Spanish to the children of their own people in the village. I always wondered, “Why don’t they teach Piaroa too?!!!“, “Why don’t they teach these children also to read their own language?!!”

That question lingered on in my mind for years. I would talk to the school teachers personally and encourage them to teach P in school, but their blank look and lack of response told me that they were likely not authorized to do so and their job was on the line. Then this past year, as you are aware, I was introduced to Tomás, through my brother and his wife’s mission outreach in Venezuela. When ‘by coincidence’ I became aware that Tomás was the Director of Education in the state that he lives in I pursued the question with him. “Tomás, how can we get the Piaroa alphabet into the Piaroa Indigenous School System?“… and you know the rest of that story.

The added blessing of this, is that it preserves and protects our alphabet in which the Piaroa Bible was written. There were other alphabets developed by ‘want-to-be’, language experts which were confusing. It’s wonderful to think that in the years to come, children will now be able to read the Piaroa Bible. In fact, since it’s really the only published book in P, maybe they will use the Bible as a text book in the schools!

All for now, more to come,

t.

Yesterday I received a phone call out of the blue from a P man in distress. I’d never spoken to him before. His name was Manuel. He was calling via Starlink connection from deep in the Amazon State of Ven where the church at River of the Tapir is having a Bible conference. This is where E is from. He said, “A dark cloud has come over us. Dark spirits are attacking many who are in the same house. People are convulsing and foaming at the mouth. We don’t know what to do.”

I spent about an hour with Manuel on the phone. He and the other church leaders were listening to the conversation. The thoughts the Lord gave me were regarding the place of the human being in all of God’s creation. In the beginning God made mankind in His own image to be a channel of His divine nature into the physical world. That is why the devil attacked Adam and Eve. God had placed THEM over the works of His hands to rule in love over all the creation. I explained how it seems that the fallen spirits do not have a physical form in which to affect the physical world, so they want to enter into people who are not just body, but body, soul and spirit. But when Christ came, He conquered the enemy and began a new humanity, who together with Him as the head, have been given all authority in heaven and earth and therefore the dark spirits have to obey His command, just as the huge sea had to obey Him. This is the power we have in Christ, I said.

They were encouraged and asked me whether I could speak the following day to the entire church. So this morning at 8am I spoke a message here in my office which was heard live in the jungle there by the entire congregation. The Lord lead my heart to speak on Luke 4:14-22, where the famous passage our Lord fulfilled was read by Him in the Synagogue in Nazareth. “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

My emphasis was on the last part of that verse, “to set at liberty those who are oppressed“.

They were greatly encouraged by the words of the Lord and the power of the Spirit which Jesus walked in, and has also given to us. Below is a list of the people at the church there. The fourth one down on the list is named Gabriel. He is 17 years old and not a believer. I understood that he had come back from working outside and they feel the demon activity was released through him somehow into the people in the house in which he was staying. I think it’s important that we pray for all those on this list and especially for Gabriel, that they be “set at liberty” from the oppression of Satan. I think we should pray too for the leaders there to know how to handle this and grow in confidence in Christ.

Thank you,

p

t.