The Last Page

Author unknown

For nearly four years we had been without a committed language helper. We had hired helpers but they would only stick with it for a short while. In those days little was known of the grammar and structure of Himalayan languages. This meant that it was up to us to discover the unique patterns of the language. We desperately needed a dedicated helper, in particular, one we could rely on to help us begin Bible translation!

At the end of May 1973 our prayers seemed to be answered. Village leaders found someone whom they had assigned to be our teacher ... he would live with us in the capital city during the monsoon. This was great news until the man showed up! He was congenial, but otherwise someone we had known only for his gambling, drinking and carousing! I asked if another person could somehow be found, but no, Baju was the man.

I prayed strongly against Satan's plan to ruin our work. I asked God to let Baju become sick or whatever ... just find us someone else! But when the day came to leave for the capital there he was, full of energy and ready to go!

In those days we were very careful about sharing our faith. We could be reported and our organisation expelled from the country. (This, in fact, happened three years later.) Arriving back in the capital I took a New Testament and set it out. As Baju was surveying our house he came across the Book. 'May I read this?' he asked. 'If you want to,' I replied and opened it to Mark.

Baju had learned to read the national language as a soldier in the army. He could still do that, but ever so slowly. He would sound out each word syllable by syllable. Then at the end of the sentence he would go back and do it again, and then again, until he could read it fast enough to make some sense. Slowly moving his finger across the page Baju read for two or three hours a day.

Meanwhile, I was working on the grammar and would get together ten or so examples of a problem I was trying to unravel. Once I got it laid out, I would go over them with Baju. That took just a few minutes and then I would start another set. This gave Baju fifteen minutes or so to read, which he did, asking me questions along the way.

After perhaps two-and-a-half weeks, Baju was reaching the end of Mark's Gospel. Conditions in Bible times were familiar to him. He had been through famines and locust plagues. His own relatives had contracted leprosy. They had been expelled from the village and had died a wretched and lonely death. Plagues of smallpox, typhoid and cholera swept through the villages, taking the lives of young and old. His own Grandfather Aganda, whom he had lived with as a young boy, was the most powerful Shaman known in that part of the country. Fear and dread of witchcraft, demons, and evil spirits filled the lives of all.

Into their kind of world walked a man called Jesus. He healed the sick and cast out demons. He made lepers whole and fed the hungry. He gave life to the dead and the greatest of sinners found forgiveness. Without a doubt, this was the Son of God ... how wonderful it must have been!

But reading on today the story is different: The authorities have arrested him and given him a mock trial. Now they have nailed him to a post, something called a cross. He cries out to heaven, 'My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?' And now, he who gave life to the dead himself dies in wretched agony! 'No! No! This can't happen to the Hope of the World!'

Across the table Baju groaned in anguish as this immense travesty unfolded before him. It seemed ever so long for him to work his finger back and forth down the page. Finally reaching the last page he read on. What is this? He has risen? He is alive?

Not many days later I was hospitalized. We returned home and Baju went back to his village. There, he threw away his whiskey bottle and began sharing the Good News.

In the coming years a number of people in our village became believers, but it was always the same. One by one they recanted under the unrelenting pressure and constant threats. For fifteen long years 'church' consisted only of Baju, myself and Barbara! As the years wore on I sometimes became discouraged and felt tempted to think our work wasn't worth it all. But then, I would remember that day I watched Baju read the last page ... and I would be satisfied.

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