Sharing the Gospel with the Indians of the Venezuelan Rain Forest

By Gregory J. Rummo

“We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: We stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves:

We look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.” Isaiah 59: 9-11

The late morning sun is just now starting to burn through the remnants of last night’s thunderstorms, which lit up the night sky over the dense jungle. Tendrils of water vapor reach down from the low clouds, intertwining with countless spires of humidity rising up from the jungle canopy. One imagines a thousand translucent church steeples.

The thickness of the air - that’s the only way to describe it - muffles the occasional call of a Chichara - a large locust-like bug. A bead of sweat trickles out from under my hat, runs down my cheek and finally drips onto my soaked shirt. Another day in the rain forest has dawned.

I am sitting on a wooden bench in the home of Clint and Rita Vernoy. The Vernoys, along with their four children, are Baptist missionaries who, at the invitation of the Yekwana Indians two years ago, moved to the tiny village of Chajurana, located on the Chajura River, a tributary of the mighty Orinoco River deep in the Venezuelan rain forest.

I am an invited guest, myself, on this trip along with my friend Rick Placeres of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Roy Seals, the South American Missions Director of the Chattanooga based Baptist International Missions, Inc., asked us to pray about going with him to the jungle about a year ago. Both Rick and I are businessmen and members of the missionary-minded Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey. The church has a veritable parade of missionaries coming through its doors during the year and supports 48 missionaries in many foreign countries.

We jumped at the opportunity. The Vernoys live in a mud-clay brick building with a thatched roof and a cement floor. They have managed significant improvements in the past two years including a gravity fed shower, a generator for electricity during the evening and when clouds obscure their solar panels, and a four-burner propane stove. Rick and I slept on bunk beds shrouded in mosquito netting. It is a remarkable achievement especially in light of the fact that everything they bring into the jungle must fit in a space no larger than the cargo area of a Cessna 206.

Considering their surroundings, they have a very comfortable home. They are able to minister to the Indians in a variety of ways by providing medicine, food and other sundries, which they sometimes use to trade. Their presence also provides a reason for Mission Aviation Fellowship to land one of their two single engine Cessna’s on the 500 meter landing strip on a regular basis, bringing supplies to the Vernoys and providing a window to the outside world for the inhabitants of Chajurana. But most important is the Vernoy’s opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ among the 450 or so Yekwana and the 60 Sanema Indians living on the other side of the Chajura River.

“People think it’s all perfect harmony here,” Clint shares with me. “The secular anthropologists want the Indians to stay the way they are. They gloss over the nudity and the use of alcohol as if it is an essential part of their culture. They try and explain that the Indian’s yaraque - an alcoholic homebrew - gives the Yekwana a non-violent ‘mellow’ drunken stupor. They’re not here to help the Indian women after they have been beaten silly by their drunken husbands or to sew up the cuts from machete fights.”

“The Indians themselves have often told me that they do not want others telling them to stay the way they are,” he continues. “They want to experience progress, they want to be able to determine their own destiny.”

Our conversation is interrupted by Zoraida, a young Yekwana mother who comes into the Vernoy’s home and sits next to me on my left. (The Indians are constantly coming into the Vernoys home, or lined up outside, peering through the screens - there is literally no privacy - and the Vernoys accept this as a way of life in this culture). Zoraida is carrying her baby Chaves. Chaves has been suffering from a bad case of diarrhea. Moments later, Jorge appears at the door and walks in. He takes a seat on the wooden bench next to me on my right. Jorge has recently contracted Malaria. The rainy season has started here in the Bolivar section of the rain forest and disease is spreading through the small village. The rain showers wash over the jungle and into the rivers carrying with them the detritus and germs which have accumulated on the jungle floor during the month’s long dry season. This increases the likelihood of stream borne illness as the Chajura River is the lifeline of the village - the Indians drink and bathe in it and use the water for cooking. The rains also pool in low places in the forest, creating fertile incubators for mosquitoes, which carry Malaria, Yellow Fever and a host of other tropical diseases.

As Rita administers a small dose of pink Pepto-Bismol to the crying infant, Jorge explains that he has not been feeling well. Finally, he gets up and waves weakly, saying good bye to us in Mike - short for Maquiritare - the language of the Yekwana. It’s about time for his afternoon febrile seizure and he wants to go home and lay down. He thanks the Vernoys for another Mefloquine tablet and turns to walks away, the screen door slamming behind him. Rita explains to me that there are now four cases of malaria in the village - all in close proximity to the Vernoy’s home. I am not worried. I am taking Mefloquine myself as a prophylactic against the disease. But the Vernoys cannot take Mefloquine on a constant basis and there is the risk that they could easily contract malaria. Their oldest son, Joshua, had malaria the previous rainy season.

Tribal missionary work is exciting but can also be very dangerous for reasons other than diseases. Only four weeks before we arrived, five people - three missionaries, a passenger and the pilot - were all killed as a New Tribes Mission Cessna 206 crashed on a mountainside at 7,000 feet only a few miles from where we had flown just one day ago.

Missionary work among the Maquiritare Indians dates back to the 1970’s and the work of the Orinoco River Mission. But these missionaries moved on, leaving a spiritual vacuum in the village of Chajurana. The Vernoys, who are in the beginning stages of learning the Indian’s culture, are slowly being accepted by their hosts.

“Indian culture has been abused,” Clint says. “Miners have come in and raped the jungle for its gold deposits and the Indian women for pleasure. Anthropologists come here and try and tell the Indians how to live. Then they get on a plane and go home to the comforts of Western Civilization. We are gaining the right to be heard because we live among them.”

Last year, there was some concern that the Vernoys would be forced to leave Chajurana. At the urging of a group of anthropologists with an obvious anti- religious and anti North American bias, the Venezuelan National Guard was ready to order all non-Indians out of the jungle. The tribal leaders called for a meeting to discuss the situation. Hundreds of Indians converged in the tiny village for the three-day pow-wow. When Clint was given the chance to speak, it became obvious to all the Indians that the only ones willing to live with them were the missionaries. In the end, the chief stood up and said, “These people eat our food, they live here with us. They have brought their children into the jungle with them. They treat our sick with medicine. They comfort our dying. They have even paid the plane fare out of their own pockets to fly our critically sick people to the city for medical attention. They can stay.”

The Vernoys were recently joined by another missionary couple, Keith and Anita Brock. The Brocks have two daughters, a two-year old and a two-month old. Their house was in the final stages of completion when we arrived in Chajurana in April. Clint looks at his watch and announces that a supply plane for the Brocks is arriving in about 30 minutes. That’s our cue to make our way to the airstrip and help unload the MAF Cessna when it arrives from Ciudad Bolivar with about 450 Kg of supplies for the Brock’s home. This turns out to be no easy job and takes us almost two hours in the sweltering heat and humidity. The airstrip is several miles from the village and the plane must be unloaded, then each piece of cargo carried from the airstrip down a steep embankment to a 45 foot dugout canoe waiting for us in the Chajura River. From there, it is roughly a mile down river to the shores of the village. Then, piece by piece, the process is repeated as the cargo is unloaded and carried up a steep embankment to the missionary’s home.

On Wednesday of the week we were in Chajurana, the Yekwana held a banquet in our honor. Almost the entire tribe packed into a large, round, thatched roof structure called a churuwatta, the equivalent of a stateside civic center. They served chicken rice soup (only the men got pieces of meat), and a sour tasting bread called Casava made from the root of a plant grown by the Indians.

The night before we left the rain forest, the Vernoys decided to show a Christian video entitled “Perdona Nuestras Deuda.” Word got out and by the time we had carried the generator, the video player and the small, 9" color television to the appointed place outside under the stars, over 200 people were seated, anxiously awaiting our arrival.

Friday morning comes quickly and it’s time to leave the jungle. Although the rain showers prevent the MAF Cessna from picking us up early in the morning as scheduled, the overcast breaks around noon and we are finally able to fly out later in the afternoon, landing at the airport in Puerto Ayacucho on the Colombia-Venezuela border.

What makes a man move his entire family to a remote, “God forsaken” jungle? I muse over and over in my mind as the Cessna rolls towards the MAF hangar. Then I remember Clint’s words to me: “They are brilliant people here in the jungle. Their questions about God are just as good as ours and I love them very dearly.” As the prop spins down, and I realize I am back to civilization, I am moved by the sacrifices the Vernoys have made to be salt and light to the Indians of the Orinoco Rain Forest. The Yekwana and Sanema are hardly “God-forsaken.”

Saturday, February 4, 2012

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

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