The Mystic Power of Red – Our story continued, #16

In October of 1966 our family increased to five! Mary Helen took Debbie and went early to the Multan Mission Hospital to be in plenty of time for the delivery. Debbie enjoyed all the attention she received living in a compound with the Miss Sahibs who worked in the hospital. (Miss Sahib is a term for single ladies.) The hospital was very short staffed but they served very proper meals. Debbie remembers the china dishes on linen with finger bowls and all the trappings. Debbie thought the finger bowls were really neat and wondered why we didn’t have them at home. Stephen and I followed them about two weeks before John was due.

But John was reticent to leave the womb. He arrived two weeks late and only after the doctor had administered pit drips. The family always teased him later that this explained his easy-going laid-back nature. That fall, it took some time for Mary Helen to recover from complications. But with the Innigers off on a well-deserved furlough, the work had to carry on.

The mission had begun an outreach to a scattered tribal group, the Marwaris. In a prayer letter from that time I describe one visit I made with Pakistani co-workers.

“We engaged the four-wheel drive as we slithered and bounced through the rutted sand. Dusty and tired we finally lurched to a stop in front of a cluster of huts surrounded by an enclosure of thorn. The huts stood at a distance from the main village as if these “idolaters” might contaminate the Muslim villagers.

We were welcomed warmly and seated on beds spread with colourful quilts. While the children and women stared at us shyly, one of their holy men, a khad, consented to play a few of their haunting religious ballads on his sitar. Against the background of this oriental tune, I reflected on this strange island of people in the great ocean of Islam.

John Ranah and his wife

The proud Marwaris and their cousins, the Meghwals, are distinct tribes of very poor nomadic people scattered through the southern Panjab and south into the forbidding Sindh desert. They have distinct dress, language, customs, religious beliefs and folk-lore. No one seems to know their origin. They are quite distinct from another ethnic group, the Muslim Reositi people of Bahawalpur State and lower Panjab who have lived here in their walled villages for centuries. Nor are they related to the Panjabi settlers who flooded the area after the development of land along newly opened canals.

Some maintain they are an offshoot of the Mar-Thoma Church of South India. Biblical allusions in their ballads and the ceremonial red cross they paint on new-born infants and brides lend some credence to this claim. However, the cloth streamers on poles, the crude wooden god in a wall niche wrapped in red cloth, and the incense sticks indicate they owe more to animism and Hinduism.

Red is predominant in their culture. They believe that it has a mystic ability to ward off evil. The men wear turbans and dress somewhat like the Panjabi farmers in long shirts, qamizes, and baggy trousers, shalwars. Their women wear distinctive red dresses with green highlights that often have little mirrors sown into the hem. Although shy, their women do not follow the Muslim custom of hiding their faces from men.

As we drove home, I rejoiced that two men, James Moro and John Rana, recently converted, were hard at work evangelizing their tribe. They had been touched by the ministry of Domji, a dynamic Marwari convert from the Conservative Baptist ministry south of us in the Sindh province.”

Whenever we conducted training sessions, James and John—tribal disciples of Jesus—joined our Panjabi pastors to study the Word. I came to really appreciate them; James Moro for his love for Christ and desire to learn English; John Rana for his hearty laugh and powerful use of Isaiah’s descriptions of idolatry to challenge his people with the folly of idol worship.

Teaching in a Marwari village

We would often schedule a short-term Bible School to help deepen our co-workers in their understanding of Scripture. After the Innigers departed for a well-earned furlough, I was tasked with teaching these sessions. During my first opportunity, I chose an exposition of the book of Deuteronomy to lay a foundation in the law as our schoolmaster leading to salvation. It might seem a strange choice, but it is a foundational recording of deliverance from slavery and preparation for entrance into the promised land.

We met outside under some shesham trees. The heat was still intense. In spite of the inhospitable environment, I enjoyed immensely my personal study of this little read book of the OT. It became a joy to share my passion for the importance of the Old Testament. I’m sure the help I felt at that time was another example of the undergirding grace of God. The pastors and evangelists who attended seemed to appreciate the study. (To be continued)

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