On Mule Back Thru Central America with the Gospel

by Mattie Crawford

I am just a brown-faced Indian girl, but I want to learn to read God’s Word. Will you send missionaries to teach us? There are thousands just as I am.

In Leon, which is the largest city of the Republic of Nicaragua, and where we have our work, there are between seventy and eighty thousand people and forty-two temples. And when one sees those old temples almost ready to tumble down, and covered with moss and grass centuries old, one feels that Rome is certainly coming to the end of herself in these countries. The people are rising up now and calling for schools, and for freedom of the press, and are crying, “Away with the Church! It has never done anything for us.” Many thousands are becoming free-thinkers.

Nicaragua is the only Republic of Central America that has Church and State united. A great fight is now on for their separation. There are over one million people in this Republic alone without the Gospel. Let us pray God to speed the day when these reforms shall be wrought and the Gospel be given the people.

Nicaragua saw her first missionary sixteen years ago. It has been the last of the Republics to receive the Gospel. The persecutions were so severe that the missionaries had to leave in a few weeks. But, thank God! some of the people accepted the glad news and have stood true through flood and flame. But there are very few missionaries there as yet, and thousands are without the knowledge of a Savior who died for them.

All these countries are being flooded with New Thought, Russellism, Christian Science, Theosophy, and Spiritualism. Many are coming into these things now, for the people are fast turning from Romanism. They are like little hungry birds with wide-open mouths ready to accept any poisonous thing presented. Are we, the true followers of Jesus Christ, going to sleep on and fail to wake up to this great opportunity? Let us go forth with the old-time Gospel of Pentecostal power, that will drive the enemy from the land, and give these dear people the truth.

At one place where we were having meetings the people asked us why missionaries had not come to them before. They said, “We saw the first one sixteen years ago, but he was so persecuted he had to leave us in a few weeks, and only a few heard the Gospel, and we have been in darkness for so long. Oh, if some one had only told us before the way of life!”

Many children were brought to us to be placed in school, so that they might learn to read and write, and study the Bible. But as yet we have been unable to open a school. My heart has been torn as I have seen the little children growing up in such ignorance, and especially the young girls. This country, like all other countries without the Gospel, regards the women and girls as no more than animals, and they are the prey to every horrible crime that anyone wishes to inflict upon them. The little girls are often sold into lives of shame by their parents for a few dollars. We knew one mother who sold her four young daughters. One of them found that she was to be sold so she ran away and hid in the mountains, but they hunted until they found her, then they bound her and carried her away, dripping with blood where she had been beaten with clubs and stoned with stones. The man that took her was, I am sorry to say, an American. “It is only the precious Blood of Jesus that can change the human heart, that is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jer. 17:9.

Many foreigners have come here for money, and do not care much how they get it. Some have gold mines, others have plantations, many of them are Americans. They are making every sacrifice for the gold that perisheth. Shall not we, then, who have the treasure of Heaven, break the Bread of Life to these dear hungry souls ere they perish?

There came to us early one morning a bright-faced Indian girl about thirteen years old. Her parents were dead, her sisters were living lives of shame and they had driven the poor little one out from them. She had been sleeping in the markets and parks and was crying in the street. Some one told her to come to us for we were missionaries and we would help her. She said she would be our servant and do anything, that she might have a place where she could be sheltered from the wicked men. She is only one of the many thousands that are here in this dark land crying for some one to help them. Unless we take them in they will be destroyed by sin. Many are found dead, having been killed to hide the crime of some wicked person. It is in behalf of these suffering ones that this little message is sent on its way in the Name of Jesus.