Long trips and lots of physical work are ahead for missionaries Barry Wingo and Andrew Ferguson over the next several months as they continue with house building and relationship building among the Tepehuan people.
After a 13-hour trip in a truck loaded with building materials, the two missionaries were glad to arrive safely and spend last week working on their houses and language learning.
The last day of their stay, Feb. 2, the missionaries observed a gala Tepehuan fiesta with dancers in traditional dress. Four bulls were killed for the occasion from which a beef soup was made.
While the fiesta itself was joyous, some 800 yards away at one of the houses, two drunks got involved in a fight and one was killed.
The fiesta was also marred by another death. One of the men in charge of supplying one of the bulls for the fiesta was gored to death by the bull he was trying to kill.
"How sad that they never got a chance, as far as we know, to learn of Christ," wrote Barry.
Next week a larger team is making the trip, including a dentist from Pennsylvania, Jim Boyd, and his daughter Kim. John Steinbacher, an NTM field leader, will leave Thursday with Andrew to attend a tribal meeting on Friday. Barry will leave Sunday with Jim and Kim, and John's wife, Linda.
Andrew wants to advertise a week-long, free dental clinic at the Friday meeting. The missionaries are praying that the "clinic will be a blessing and each person that we treat will sense the love of God. We hope that as the Tepehuans contemplate the reasons why we would offer such services free, they would begin to want to know why we are different, and why we care about them," wrote Andrew.
Continue to pray that the missionaries will make progress on their houses and be totally accepted by the Tepehuans.
Disclaimer: This personal ministry website is provided by New Tribes Mission (NTM) as a courtesy to its members. NTM makes no warranty regarding the accuracy of the information on these pages. Opinions expressed are provided by members in good faith, but are entirely those of the member and do not necessarily represent policy, doctrinal position, or opinions of NTM. If you encounter information that you consider questionable, please e-mail the NTM web team.
GET INVOLVED
_img.jpg)
_img.jpg)