Jesus, the Motilone

I am reading Bruchko, a story about a young missionary man who travels into the jungles of South America looking for a tribe of Indians who call themselves the Motilones. I haven't quite finished the book yet. I can tell you though if I didn't have children I would have read this book in one sitting. It has been hard for me to put it down. Finishing a chapter, excited to see what the next chapter holds. Wondering is the next chapter going to be the one that Bruchko finally has the opportunity to lead them to Christ.

You have to know first that as Bruchko went into this tribe he went in with not wanting to change their way of life to ours. He didn't see himself better than them. He introduced everything building upon what they already knew or did. He used their way of life as a tool in sharing the gospel.

I was finally at the chapter I had been so anticipating. As I read the pages tears of joy fell down my cheeks. God arranged the perfect opportunity for Bruchko to share Jesus.

Bruchko began with a Motilone legend of a man who became an ant. (He had been sitting on a trail after a hunt and had noticed that some ants trying to build a home. He'd wanted to help them make a good home, like the Motilone home, so he'd begun digging in the dirt. But because he was so big and so unknown, the ants had been afraid and had run away.

Then, quite miraculously, he had become an ant. He thought like an ant, looked like an ant, and spoke the language of an ant. He lived with the ants, and they came to trust him.

He told them one day that he was not really an ant, but a Motilone, and that he had once tried to help them improve their home, but he had scared them.

The ants said their equivalent of "No kidding? That was you?" And they laughed at him, because he didn't look like the huge and fearful thing that had moved the dirt before.

But at that moment he was turned back into a Motilone and began to move the dirt into a shape of a Motilone home. This time the ants recognized him and let him do his work, because they knew he wouldn't harm them. That was why, according to the story, the ants had hills that looked like the Motilone homes.)1 The lesson being that if you are big and powerful, you have to become small and weak in order to work with other weak beings. It was the perfect parallel for what God had done in Jesus per Bruce Olson aka. Bruchko.

Bruchko continues on every time using an example, story, legend of their world and paralleling it to the Word of God. The next day his pact brother approaches him and says, "Bruchko, I have tied my hammock strings into Jesus. Now I speak a new language."

To fully understand what his pact brother is saying you have to read the book. I don't think you will fill it is a disappointment.

1) excerpt from pg 123 and 124 Bruchko