Latin America: Terrorists vs Missions: Paraguay's tribal areas infiltrated by Columbian guerillas from 1,200 miles away

This email newsletter/press release article does not yet appear on the website clickable above. - Owlb

Paraguay: Tribal Areas Infiltrated by Guerrillas



On their recent visit to remote tribal congregations, a team of native missionaries in Paraguay discovered that leftist guerrillas, apparently from Colombia, had been infiltrating rural communities with their ideologies. "The area has become very dangerous now," one of the missionaries wrote Christian Aid after the visit. "The Colombian guerrillas have tried to indoctrinate the population, and they are creating conflicts."

Because of the worsening situation, the missionary reported, few gospel workers want to visit this outlying jungle area. "But thanks to God," the missionary goes on, "we are teaching these tribal people the Bible and sharing the vision to continue spreading the gospel."

The reach of Colombia's guerrilla fighters into Paraguay, a country 1200 miles south, came into the spotlight earlier this year when the daughter of one of Paraguay's former presidents was kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by a combination of Colombian and Paraguayan guerrillas. Authorities say FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the infamous communist guerrilla group, uses Paraguay as a transit point for shipments of drugs and weapons.


Houston Chronical Special Report photo Marcelo Salinas, story John Otis

Paraguay's President Nicanor Duarte said at a news conference in March of this year, "We're sure there are FARC agents in Paraguay."


Colombia's concentration-zones of terrorists, and cities (underlined) where drug cartels launched


Columbia's FARC moves contingent 1,200 miles to set up operations among Paraguay rural poor

Communist groups often target poor, isolated communities, like the tribal ones reached by native missionaries, to recruit fighters. They play off of residents' hopeless poverty with promises of wealth, or intimidate and force them into joining their ranks.


Paraguay

Native missionaries are offering these tribal communities a different kind of hope through the gospel of Christ. Despite growing dangers, one ministry leader reports, "the truth is we can't stop preaching the gospel here because there is a great burden in our hearts for the souls that may go without hearing about Jesus."

In addition to sharing their faith, these missionaries provide food, clothing and medical care to poverty-stricken villagers. They also run an orphanage for tribal children and a vocational training program for poor adults.

Pray for safety for these brave servants of God. For more information, write insider@christianaid.org and put MI-623 290-PMC on the subject line.

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Christian Aid Canada I do not agree with all clauses and phrases of the Doctrinal Statement of Christian Aid Canada. - Owlb

Christian Aid UK I used to get my info from this source in regard to indigenous evangelizers and missionaries among their own people, most of them in rural areas of the world whose people were ignored by their own governments - this is the kind of info I used to receive from the UK's original Christian Aid organization. Since that time, the UK unit seems to have dropped news of these humble folk who spread the Christian message to other humble folk and planted little churches among their own people, often beginning the process of teaching literacy. Groups otherwise with no connection to the West, except when Christian Aid would step in with relief goods for all regardless of beliefs during times of natural disaster, bicycles for travelling evangelizers, and Bibles in the indigenous languages. These concerns and kind of news seem to have disappeared from Christian Aid UK's concerns. I can't find any news of evangelizers, church-beginners, or the persecutions to which the humble folk are subjected by extremist Marxists, Islamofascists, and Hindofascists in various places around the world. A sad realization came to me today in looking for a report on the Paraguayan situation reported in the Christian Aid USA press release. When will we realize that the story of the self-evangelizing of humble people of in dire poverty and often subjected to persecution is news info we want to share in the West, and also want to reflect upon inregard to the political aspect of their situation. I want to tell some of those stories here. I want to encourage reflection upon those stories and patterns of stories. Despite the growing paucity of sources which deign to report these, rather than macro-economic and state-political trends and contests, I with try to keep informed and report report from time to time on the more explicitly religious homegrown Christian movements among the world's poor, and the political aspect of their local persecution, sometimes torture, burn-outs of their homes, chapels, and villages. - Owlb