Last Sunday Hal
and other members of our history team went out to Amacari, a village on the
shores of Lake Titicaca and birth place of the first Friends church (INELA)
about 100 years ago.
(The photo is of believers from Amacari--the village is in the background--in the 1930s or 40s.)
The actual story
of this congregation is mired in the mists of oral history. Different
descendants of the original group each have their own version of how it all got
started, as told to them by their grandparents. The events take place sometime
between 1915 and 1924. As historians our strategy has been to collect all the
stories, then try to identify the similar threads and arrive at a reasonable
explanation of what might have happened.
Last week Hal and
I celebrated Thanksgiving Day with some old friends (and Friends), Bernabé and
Flavia Yujra. They actually live on land where the mission house once stood.
Now three generations of the Yujra extended family live in various houses
clustered around the large sunny patio.
Bernabé happens to
be the grandson of one of the original Amacari believers, a man with the Old
Testament Babylonian name of Baltazar Yujra. Bernabé told me a version of the
Amacari story I hadn’t heard before. (I have three basic versions, with
multiple variations.) He says his grandpa told him the story directly.
According
to this version, a foreign missionary showed up in Amacara around 1917 and
stood in the plaza playing his violin. But what attracted the people more was
something he carried in his little medicine bag—flea powder! He told the people
to sprinkle some in their beds to take care of their flea problem.
They
did and it worked! The fleas all died (and, thankfully, none of the people
did). People felt so grateful they were open to listen to the missionary’s
message. Several converted and so the church was born.
This
version of the story is so different from all the other versions—it has none of
the similar threads that weave through the others—that, if I include it in the
history book at all, it will probably be as a footnote. It makes me wonder if
old Baltazar had a sense of humor and a healthy imagination, if he might have
been pulling his grandson’s leg a bit. (He told a completely different version
to another grandson whom we had previously interviewed.)
Well,
I do have a healthy imagination, so I’ve tweaked the story further. I’d
like to envision this fiddling missionary standing in the plaza, playing a
Viennese waltz. Throughout the village, all the fleas wake up, enchanted by the
music. They all crawl out of the beds, out the doors of the adobe huts, and
make their way to the plaza. The missionary then turns and slowly walks out of
the village, playing his violin, while a stream of fleas follows him. The
villagers, thrilled at this miraculous liberation. all convert to Christianity
and, thus, the church in Amacari is born.
(I
won’t include this version in the book, not even in a footnote.)
Back
to Amacari last Sunday, 2017. The brethren were glad to receive so many
visitors, including members of the executive council of the denomination and
representatives from the New Jerusalem Friends Church in La Paz—all determined
to celebrate this milestone.
Actually,
the Amacari Friends Church is still very much a rural community, and the people
aren’t too wrapped up in dates and timelines. They hadn’t realized they were
celebrating their 100th anniversary. (And the date, 1917, is
somewhat arbitrary. People back them didn’t pay much attention to dates
either.)
But,
hey!, everybody loves a party. And celebrate they did!
Happy
Anniversary, Amacari Friends Church!
One
final observation: The fleas are back, but the church goes on.
Amacari believers at prayer in the 1940s
Celebrating their 100th anniversary
I hear a poem coming. I may use this story in the Evangelism: Living to Tell class this week. It's a form of "salty" speech, right? (Colossians 4:6).
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