SUICIDE LIFELINE AIMS TO BRING NEW LIFE TO JUNGLE TRIBE

THEN, APRIL 1990: A small team of missionaries were acting as a physical lifeline to a tiny tribe in the Amazon jungle that was threatening to poison itself out of existence.

Only by staying among the Zuruaha people, who lived in a remote part of the jungle near Brazil's Cunhua River, were the workers able to prevent outbreaks of ritual suicide.

Many times when members of the Youth With A Mission team had left the village to return to their sending base in Manaus, a two-week river journey away, several of the Indians had threatened or attempted to kill themselves by drinking the sap of a local vine.

The 100-strong Zuruaha, who hunted food with poison-tipped arrows, believed that by taking their own life they could gain spiritual authority in the afterlife, But the suicide tradition passed down for generations seemed to have slowed since contact was made by the YWAM team, to whom the Indians ascribed greater power than the spirits they worshipped.

"When we first saw them we were so happy that we started to sing praise songs," said team leader Braulio Ribeiro. "It was only later that we learned that according to their culture the one who sings has spiritual power. So from the start they respected us."

NOW: Three couples, one of them with a three-year-old child, carry on the painstakingly slow efforts to bring the gospel to the Zuruaha. They take it in turns to live with the small group for up to six weeks at a time, sharing the tribe's communal house and working alongside them as they hunt and fish. One of the men has worked among the tribe for the past 11 years.

The ritual suicides - which the YWAM workers now trace back to a prophecy after the tribe's spiritual leaders were all killed in a massacre, that the group's fate was general suicide - continue occasionally, said Ribeiro, who now directs teams working among more than a dozen Amazon groups.

Members of the Zuruaha team have learned the language and put it into written form. Evangelism consists of "praying, being a friend, no preaching. Most of all it is about learning". One member of the tribe has reported that he "saw Jesus in the jungle, naked like himself. Since then his life has changed completely," said Ribeiro.

"It's hard to figure out if something else is occurring," she said. "It is difficult to gauge any obvious progress, except that we trust and believe that Jesus is revealing himself to them in the way that he wants."

Although YWAM's Transcultural Ministries have grown, there are still some 100 different Indian groups in the Amazon region that are currently unreached, said Ribeiro. While access to some is restricted by the government, they are also often overlooked or ignored by the Church, she said.

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