Poza Verde

Last weekend I was invited to travel to the Ayoreo village of Poza Verde where church members from 5 different Ayoreo communities were gathering to worship, study scripture, and share with one another. It really isn´t far from here. About an hour east, across the Guapay River to Pailon, and then a 7km motorcycle ride south down a bumpy dirt road.
I travelled with the son of the pastor who had invited me. We arrived at around 3:30pm on Friday and walked into the village meeting house where a group of others who had arrived earlier were sitting in their typical circle on the floor, sipping maté, talking quietly, the ladies picking stuff out of each other´s hair. They treated me about the same as other Ayoreos as I have now grown accustomed, basically as if I were not there. One get´s used to being able to communicate with those arround you until you can´t any more. The interesting thing in this case though, is that practically all Ayoreo in this part of the country are bilingual, yet they never chose to speak in Spanish and would give me very short answers if I asked anything. However, there were a couple young men who did have a little more interest in talking and we conversed for a while.
Later, I went to look for the pastor of the village. By now more people were arriving and the sun was setting. I visited with the pastor while helping get ready to serve dinner-- a cup of coffee and two buñuelos (fried dough). By dinner time there were around 50 people. I ate pretty much alone as everyone was catching up with each other since they were getting together for the first time in a while. After dinner we moved to the church and they invited me to speak. An Ayoreo church service is sort of like a Quaker meeting. Any person when so moved by the Spirit to do so is allowed to stand up and pass to the front where they can sing, tell a story or testimony, read scripture, or interpret scripture. This went on for a couple hours and we then turned out for the night. By now it was about 10:30pm. Some decided to start a soccer game and the rest of us watched, passing around the maté and cheering on the players. We finally all went to bed at who knows what hour, each person staking out their piece of ground in or around the common building.
The next morning a group of us got up at 5:30 to pray and later to help make breakfast, which was two pieces of bread and one hard-boiled egg. At 9am we started another service which many people participating. When they sing I got a little taste of Tennessee since all the songs they sang were translated straight from the old baptist hymnal, thanks to the first missionaries here. Each of the pastors from the different communities had prepared a topic to talk about and the firs two went this morning. at 10:30 we took a half-hour break, then we went again until 12:30 where we stopped to eat lunch and have a long afternoon to relax and play. As soon as lunch was over, people gathered around in circles underneath the shade of the trees as they always do and began to talk and pass around the maté. The children went to play and others sat with their mothers. As I sat and observed (all I really could do was observe since I couldn´t understand anything) one of the old men stood up and began telling a story (I only know a little about what he was doing because I asked the man next to me to help me understand). It was amazing because as he told his story he began to relate it to the morning´s Bible reading, and then he pulled out a maraca and, shaking it, began to sing. But this singing was not old-time English hymns-- it was a real Ayoreo song. I asked what he was saying to my friend next to me, and he responded that he did not know.

How could you not know? Is he not singing in Ayoreo, or does the chant make it hard to decipher?
No, I hear his words, but I don´t understand. It´s like he is speaking in dreams. . .
You mean, like poetry?
Yeah!

After the old man finnished, everyone continued with their conversations and such until another old man stood up and repeated the same sequence, singing his interpretation of the scriptures. And later another did so as well. They were singing in a metaphorical language that in times not too far past everyone would have learned to interpret and understand by the time the were adults since they would have heard it and listened since childhood. But today the more urbanized Ayoreos no longer pay attention to the songs of their elders and the church, while giving the elders a space to sing in the service if they wish, has only devalued and rejected this Ayoreo way of doing theology buy insisting that they sing English hymns and that their pastors speak only the Word as interpreted by the missionaries who teach them in the seminaries (each pastor who spoke this week has been trained in a missionary school and they all spoke from books on the topics they had been given which were written by the missionaries). I was hoping to see how Ayoreos do church, and here I realized that the real reflection and the real worship and the real church happen outside the building!
Now, I believe that the missions and the seminaries have real, valid, needed truth to share with the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, but it was apparent to me that we have not allowed them to listen to the Holy Spirit inside themselves and we have not allowed them to speak into our own lives and show us the truth the God has revealed to them. Ayoreos do theology too! In the process we have invalidated their own way of expressing their adoration of God and we have tried to squeeze them into a Western church box, crushing their spirit in the process.
Lord forgive us. But it´s not too late to listen to what they have to say and it´s not too late for them to be able to develop their own, autochthonous church led by the same Holy Spirit that has led the Euoropean and North American churches into the truth that we claim. But time is running short.

Back to live action. . . after a while someone went and found a volleyball net and they dug some hole posts and strung it up. The women all jumped up to play, and they are really good! The whole group gathered together to cheer and joke and play along. Then we went back into the church around 5 and had another service until food was ready at 7. Then it was back to the church from 8 to 11 and then we all went to the soccer field where everyone got into teams and we rotated around playing and sitting, sipping maté and talking until late. I went to bad at around 2am, but others stayed up until 4. I was up again at 5:30 to pray with the men in the church and we were back to our church service routine after breakfast. They invited me to speak again and it was a very special time. After talking, 12 people came forward to be baptized! We went outside to talk about it together while the service continued and when we came back they were baptized and we celebrated by EVERYONE shaking their hand and hugging them. By that day the group had grown to about 130 people too. After lunch they played volleyball again and one by one people began to pack up and go home. They decided to do the same thing next month in another community.
It was a good experience for me. It helped me see how long it will be before really gaining their trust. It was a delight to see the Spirit move, both through their many expressions of faith and praise and through the word that was preached and the people who were baptized. Lord know´s what the next step will be. . .