Society set for role in ministry to people of the Copper Canyon

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — With their traditional lands suffering decades of incursion by outsiders and, more recently, the severe effects of drought, the Tarahumara people are facing widespread poverty. Tourism in their Copper Canyon homeland is growing, but it is the government and private investors, not the indigenous people, who are reaping the profits.

n Copper Canyon, in Chihuahua, home to the Tarahumara people

The pervasive drugs business is also creating new barriers to evangelism in the region.

“Drugs are grown in the canyons,” says David Borja, an experienced missionary pastor serving with Four-Square Ministries International.

Drug lords

“When you drive through the towns, you can see the big new houses the drug lords are building. Money from drugs is everywhere. Sometimes it is even offered to churches. And small children are employed as drug runners.”

To meet these challenges, the Evangelical Council, recently formed from 12 different churches and missions, has developed what Mr Borja calls a four-step ministry.

“The first step is physical ministry – keeping people alive,” he explains. “The second is spiritual – bringing them to Christ; the third concerns literacy – teaching them to read and write; and the fourth is productivity – giving them the job skills to prepare for work.”

In steps two and three the Evangelical Council sees the Bible Society as its key partner.

From their meeting with the Opportunity 21 (O-21) team came a proposal for a three-part project under the terms of the O-21 project Hope for the Marginalised. This will include translation and distribution of the Scripture Portion entitled The Greatest Gift (a publication of the Canadian-based WorldServe Ministries) and an illustrated book entitled Animals of the Bible, designed to help children learn to read.

At the moment the entire New Testament is available in one Tarahumara dialect and some Portions are available in others. Later there may come a plan to produce a complete Bible in Tarahumara. Mr Borja is hopeful of this and favours the idea of a diglot Spanish and Tarahumara edition.

Government support

“A diglot version would be helpful to the missionaries as well as to the Indians,” he says. “It would also be useful for teaching the Tarahumara people Spanish, and the government is very supportive of it for that reason.”

n A Tarahumara mother and child

One potential obstacle to such a translation is the fact that there are at least seven dialects of the Tarahumara language.

“Campus Crusade used a combined dialect for the local version of the Jesus film, and that is what we want to do in the translation,” Mr Borja says. “We also want to produce other things like children’s materials and illustrated Bibles – because the Indians respond well to illustrated material.”

He cites the Scripture Portion, The Greatest Gift and The Illustrated Bible as items that would be especially useful in Tarahumara.

But even with the best of materials, work among the Indians of the Copper Canyon country is hard. Many of those who become Christians come under threat of death if they do not give up their faith.

Witch doctor

This was the experience of one young man, the son of a witch doctor, who became a Christian when he was 19.

“They burned him, tortured him, and threw him onto a fire,” Mr Borja recalls, “ but he lived. He would not renounce Jesus and he is still proclaiming the Gospel today – and more than 100 people have come to faith in Christ because of his witness.”

Mr Borja says he himself has been threatened but he remains devoted to his work. When he first arrived in 1972 he went to live among the people he wanted to reach.

“I lived among the Tarahumara for two years,” he says. “I wanted to feel their hunger and to know what they were going through.”

Such dedication may explain why he has stayed while many others – foreigners, missionaries and Mexican pastors alike – have not.
“This is very difficult work,” he emphasises. He believes the only prospect for long-term success lies in training the Tarahumara to be pastors, leaders and missionaries to their own people.

“There is one native pastor among the Tarahumara – his name is Eliseo Arvizu,” says Mr Borja. “He is well respected and his work is growing – his church has 10 missions nearing church status. Our only hope for success among the Tarahumara is to train others like him.”

Mr Arvizu is already training others, but for his discipleship efforts to succeed he needs Bibles.“These Christians want Bibles,” Mr Borja declares. “More than clothes or food, they want Bibles! And the pastor needs Bibles, too, because he is trying to make disciples.”

Spiritual warfare

“This is spiritual warfare,” the former military officer explains, “and you can’t win a battle without ammunition. The Bible Society supplies very specialised ammunition for special operations.”