“Unripe Ones – From Fear to Faith” Part 7

“We were sad about our chief because even though he had encouraged us to listen, he turned away when he realized that we were no longer going to follow his dee-wah-tah spirits.

“He tried to scare us with threats from the dee-wah-tah, but it was too late. We belonged to the Lord now and we told him that we would not follow him or his spirits any more. He tried really hard to draw us away from listening to the missionaries.

“It wasn’t long before the Lord stopped him by allowing him to die of a throat disease where he could not talk anymore. He died without being able to draw anyone away from the truth. We were really sad but we knew that God was in control. Some of the spirits came back and tried to reclaim us, but when we called on the Lord they disappeared.

“We were really eager to learn more and so the missionaries continued to teach us. We were so excited about our new life in the Lord and it was not long before there were no more sacrifices in our place and no one was following the old ways. Most of the village shamans and spirit men had turned to the Lord so even if anyone wanted to follow the ways of the ancestors there was no one to lead them. Those who wanted to continue in the old ways moved away to other places where the people were still doing that.

“As we learned more about the Lord, we became concerned about our fellow Higaunon in other villages. We questioned the missionaries about why it took so long from when Jesus told His followers to take the message to the whole world to actually bringing it to our place. We wanted to know what happened to our ancestors who never heard.

“Anyway it seemed to us that 2000 years was a really long time to bring the message to our place and we didn’t want it to be a long time before it reached other Higaunon villages. So we began to discuss and pray about how we could take the message of salvation to the rest of the Higaunon people.”

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