Wycliffe missionaries Gene and Marie Scott gave nearly 40 years of their lives translating the New Testament for a small tribe in the jungles of Peru. Was it worth it?
THE DEDICATION
It took 40 years for Scotty and Marie to see this special day when the church
building filled up with Sharanahuas celebrating their finished task. There
was no relief from heat that Sunday morning when we ambled down the village
path to attend the dedication service. (I looked and smelled like a withered
flower, but I had to let go of it.) We carried chairs from the schoolhouse
to accommodate what would be "an overflow" crowd (members from other Sharanahua
villages up the river were attending). They came as families, or alone, wearing
hand-me-down Western clothes and sitting on the dirt floor.
The service began with Cusco leading simple choruses sung in Sharanahua.
Gus spoke in a monotone but used extravagant arm gestures—and his hearers
remained engaged. Cusco said that it was a sign of the end times that the
rest of the New Testaments couldn't be here. The single New Testament to
be presented that morning was hidden in Scotty's notebook, not to be unveiled
until the final moments of the service.
Scotty had asked my husband, who is a pastor, if he would bring a message.
So Bob told a story (as Scotty interpreted) about Charles Spurgeon. One day
Spurgeon encountered a "bad" and "sly" little boy who had a field sparrow
in a cage. Spurgeon asked the boy what he was going to do with the bird.
The boy said, "Play with it for a while, then torture and kill it." (This
evoked laughter from the Sharanahuas because some of their little boys do
that to birds, too.) Spurgeon asked how much the boy wanted for him to purchase
the bird. The boy mocked: "It's a worthless bird. You don't want it." But
the boy sold it for "400 [Peruvian] soles—$200." (The Sharanahuas ...
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