Our Witchdoctors are Too Weak

A missionary’s tale with a difference. Davey Jank tells with disarming frankness of his trials and tribulations while learning the language and culture of the Amazon tribe he and his fellow missionaries have been sent to teach the Good News. He writes with a lightness of touch that does not disguise the difficulties he faces though the way he tells his story raises smiles. Not only has he to learn the language with no prior help or knowledge but he and his team have to turn their new found skill from speech into the written word. Not till they can teach the tribe from a printed book can they start to teach God’s word. Not only have they to create a written form of the language they will have to teach their pupils to read and write. The importance of learning the tribe’s culture is stressed. What is familiar to us is a completely strange concept to them and wrong impressions can easily be given which give rise to distortions of the truth. Now, many years later, there are many Wilo believers and the witchdoctors are losing their hold and even coming to faith themselves.