Traditionally, all marriages in the village were sister to sister exchanges. Here is how it worked!
When a family had children of opposite sexes, the parents would look around for a family from another clan who had children of opposite sexes of about the same age as their own children. Then the parents would go to the other family and say, “We will give our daughter to you for your son’s future wife if you will give us your daughter for our son’s future wife.”
And they did in fact have a daughter named Jaakurya. At the time of Jaakurya’s birth they promised her to her mother’s clan to become the wife of one of Jisaamwak’s nephews.
When this promise was made, there were no believers in our village. Since then Gevarina and his family have all become believers. Presently, based on the agreement of thirty years ago, before Jaakurya was even born, an older uncle from Jisaamwak’s clan named Waaru wants to marry Jaakurya. He is about 40 years of age, an unbeliever, and already has two wives. While he does not need another wife, Waaru does not want to lose the opportunity to “profit” from this situation.
Meanwhile, Jaakurya (26) has fallen in love with Willis, another believer in our church. (Both Willis and Jaakaurya have a strong desire to marry each other and raise a Christian family together.) Willis has asked permission from Jisaamwak’s brothers for Jaakurya’s hand in marriage. One brother consented but Waaru has refused so we are praying that Waaru will change his mind.
If they agreed, this was a binding contract. Often a young boy or girl knew who they would eventually marry but they did not have a choice in the agreement between these two clans.
The sister to sister exchange was the preferable way of obtaining a wife for a son. However, obviously, a sister is not always born into a family so there was not always an exchange. If this was the case, sometimes, a man married a woman with the agreement that he would give his very own daughter to the wife’s clan as his exchange. When this happened, the man had a binding contract according to this society. It became a debt to his in-laws that he would have to pay many years later when his daughter became of marriageable age.
About thirty years ago Gevarina incurred a debt when he married Jisaamwak. Since he had no sister to exchange, Gevarina, his father and his father’s brothers agreed that Gevarina’s future daughter, if he had one, would be the exchange for his wife Jisaamwak.
Please pray with us that the Lord will intervene in this situation so that Willis and Jaakurya can be married according to the Biblical principle of “not being unequally yoked with an unbeliever”.
Edna, Waaru’s wife, and her son
Jisaamwak and Edna
Jisaamwak
Gevarina and his blind deceased mother
Jaakurya reading the Gospel of Mark
Willis
Pray that they will present a righteous testimony before their families until this dispute can be settled without fights or a court situation. It is difficult for the new believers to break with non-Biblical traditions. While we do not want to be disruptive to the social fabric of this culture and change their many good values, we hope that the Wusuraambyan Christians will be able to marry believers.
Pray that, as a missionary team, we will teach clearly the principles of a one husband/one wife marriage as set forth in the book of Ephesians.
(See pictures of Jaakurya, Willis, Jisaamwak, Waru, Waru’s wife named Edna on the Photo Gallery page under "Church (new Jan 2008)".)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.