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Dear
Friends:
(I started this praise report three weeks ago. But sometimes
time does not permit me to sit down and get things out as fast as I would like.
I am on the road a lot and when I get home I spend all my time trying to catch up
with communications and whatever work fell behind in my absence. I started
this report the day after I got home from Brazil and I just feel I need to share
with you the awesome things I saw. My words will not do justice to what
happened in the Amazon jungles September 5th through the 10th, but I will try and
give you a little picture of what God did while we were there.)
Sometimes
after I return from one of my ministry trips, it feels like I have taken a good long
nap and had a good time of rest and now I am awake and feel that all that happened
on the trip was just an awesome dream. That is what it felt like last
Friday afternoon right after I came back home from my week and a half ministry trip
to South America. Some Native American leaders strive for a good
conference or a good time of worship in a church; I just strive for one more
opportunity to share the Lord and what He has done in our lives through the ministry
God has called me to do.
From the very beginning, the devil did everything he
could to keep us from going. The money was not coming in and we needed to
purchase our airline tickets before we could even obtain our visas to enter into
Brazil. When he saw that I was not going to back off because of the
money, he started to destroy the team I was taking. Our team was quickly reduced
from a possible six to only two of us. Most people would have given up
with just two people going, but all I could think of was the words of my own father
who died 39 years ago. He used to say, "Give Robert a toothpick and
he can conquer and destroy the world. Give Robert two toothpicks and he
can conquer and destroy the whole universe." So at the end there were
only two of us going, but I saw the two of us and said, "OK God, here goes the
universe."
So I and a young man named Homer Hinojosa (who comes from the
Mescalero Apache, Cherokee and Blackfoot people) packed up our bags and outfits and
off to Porto Velho Brazil we go. We did not know what to expect but I
knew in my heart that God was about to open doors that had never been opened before.
It
was so cool as we arrived at a YWAM camp in the middle of the Amazon jungle to see
Indian people slowly trickle in. I would look out the window of the
house we were staying in, and there were clusters of Indian people coming in with
small bags and sleeping bags. Later I found out that a lot of these
people had started their journey to the CONPLIE Conference on foot, using whatever
mode of transportation God provided for them on the way. Many of them
were camping out in the jungle, surviving on whatever food was provided to them by
God on the way. At the last Native American conference I went to in the
United States some Indian people were complaining that they did not like their bed
or that they missed a flight or that they had a flat tire on the way to the
conference. I quickly discovered that Natives in America are so
spoiled. But some of these people sacrificed everything they could sell
to get to these meetings. They were staying anywhere they could. As I
walked around the camp a day later I was seeing hammocks tied to trees or
wherever they could tie them. In one little hut, about 12 feet by 14
feet, I counted eleven hammocks tied up. These people did not care; they were
just happy to be there. By the time the conference started there
were over 2,500 Indian people from the Amazons jungles attending. What an
awesome sight!
Language at first was an obstacle because most of them only
spoke their tribal language and Portuguese. In a lot of cases, they only spoke their
tribal language. So the first two days was just spent waving at people and
asking them if they spoke English. I could tell the frustration in both our
parts as we wanted to talk to them and they wanted to talk to us, and most of the
time we just smiled and walked away. But all this was about to change. Our
frustrations would soon end.
I got to speak three times while there and every
time I spoke, God opened the hearts of our Indian people in South America.
All I can say is that three newfound freedoms were revealed to the Indian people
each time I got up to share with them.
Freedom number one: the freedom to
worship God with our songs and instruments. The first night I was not supposed
to speak or do anything. But I was asked by one of the missionaries if I could
help them with their worship music. He asked me if I had a CD of my music to
see if they could use it. I took the sample of my new CD. When the songs
came out of the stereo, his eyes opened wide. And by wide I mean wide since he
was of Japanese descent. He was so excited. He asked me to sing a couple
of them that night. We were told to wear our full regalia. As we
approached the large tent that was housing the conference, hundreds of Indian people
came to us with their cameras and started flashing away, taking pictures. It
took us a while to get to the stage. As we started singing and drumming the
Indian people stood to their feet. We had three large drums on the stage and
by the fourth time we repeated the song, the other Natives had picked up the melody.
So I decided to repeat the song four more times. By the time we finished the
song for the eighth time, I started to hear some of the Indian people in the
audience singing so I decided to sing the song four more times. As I got to
the twelfth time of repeating the song, I could hear almost every Indian in the
tent singing along with us. So I repeated the song four more times. The
more I repeated it the louder the singing would get; the magic hit the air. We
had over 2,000 Native Americans standing with great excitement singing the songs
with us. Can you imagine about 2,500 Indian people all chanting your song? I
looked at the other drummer and said, "Two more times." I knew for
just one moment, a tremendous freedom swept over 2,500 Indians and I knew I had died
and gone to heaven. One Indian pastor came to me and said through a
translator, "I have been set free tonight. I have been always been told
that my language was wrong and my songs were wrong; but tonight, God revealed to me
that it was OK to use our songs and our language for worship." The next
day, one Indian after another were going out of the way to find translators to tell
me how much they appreciated what was said and sung the night before.
The
second night, which was Friday, I spoke to the gathering for an hour. I asked
the Indian people to be free in their approach to ministry. I challenged the
Indian people to use all the gifts and talents and skills God had given them for His
honor and glory. As I spoke I could hear sounds of agreement. I could
see the change in their faces as I told them that God wanted to use them, as Indian
people, to reach their own people. At the end I pointed to the missionaries
and said to them, "Missionaries, let my people go." I begged the
pastors, "Pastors, let my people go." I challenged the church:
"Church, let my people go." I asked them to let my people go to use
all that God had made them for His honor and glory. Afterwards, one pastor
came to me in tears and said, "Tonight I let my people go. I let them go
to do ministry God's way and not the church’s way." But the awesome
part of this night was that I gave a challenge to all who did not know Jesus as
their Personal Savior. I gave them the Gospel and when it was all over about
100 Indian people received Christ.
The third and last night was full of
excitement as I challenged the people through our dances. To be free to use
our ‘tribal-ness’ and our dances for the honor of the Creator who gave them to
us. As Homer and I danced, the audience jumped in great excitement. When
I did the hoop dance with 25 hoops they cheered and clapped their hands with great
excitement. Each dance we did and gave its explanation, brought a greater
understanding of what they could do if they just allowed God to work through them.
After the evening was over an Indian pastor came to me and said, "I will go
home and start using our dances to bring honor to God."
What a blessing
it was to be with my brothers and sisters, both in Christ and as Indians, in the
Amazon jungles! I got so many invitations to come back with teams of dancers
do ministry. One missionary asked two men from the tribe he was from what he
felt his people would do if I came out of a plane unannounced, totally, fully
dressed in my hot pink, fluorescent yellow and periwinkle blue outfit with all my
feathers. He laughed and said, "I think the children would run and hide
in the woods and the adults would also hide, thinking a space alien had
landed." As we were getting ready to leave I heard from so many people,
"See you in two years. Please come back to us in two years."
One missionary said, "It took an Indian to get an Indian excited about what God
could do if they just allowed Him to work in their lives. We could never have
done what you did." Another missionary told me, "You will never know
the full effect of what you have started here." All I can say was that if
anything was accomplish in the jungles of the Amazons among our Indian people, it
was not me, but God moving in the hearts of the people. Thank you so much for
praying for us. It was a good day to bring glory to Jesus, the Savior of my
life and the ‘Author and Finisher’ of my faith. God
bless,
Robert Soto Lipan Apache
Warrior for Jesus
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