Wycliffe writes: “Where we can not go in person, a book can go!”
“My name is Lelonki. I am a Maasai warrior trained to fight and protect our village. For many years, we have been fighting for water and grass for our animals. We would take our animals to other villages and we would force them to share their grass and water with us. This has gone on for a long time.
From my youth, I have been fighting. I was elected as an olengerisho, that is, a group leader. As a leader, I didn’t care what others did. My care was to provide grass and water for our cattle. This included even killing. I know that I have killed many people.
While we are in the fields grazing our cattle, we normally send one of us back to the village to get some food and to bring us news from the village. One day, one of our people came back with the news that there are some teachings going on in the village, and that the teaching even came with some books in our language. We have been reading these books and this is how we learned that grass and water were created by God.
When it rained, we went back to the village because we wanted to know more about what was in the books. We were directed to the church, and we joined the study of the books with three of my boys while the rest took care of the cattle.
From the books, we were taught that all people were created by God–including those from other tribes. We were taught that we were killing our neighboring tribes like Cain killed Abel, his brother. The teacher said we are just like Cain, that we belong to the family of evil, and that our reward is death in the lake of eternal fire.
This struck me deeply, and I felt ashamed of myself. I wanted to marry, but no woman was ready to marry me because of my wrong attitude. I found myself deep in thought, and decided that my life needed to change.
One Sunday, in the evening, I went back to the teacher and asked him to help me to change. He asked me to give my life to Jesus. He prayed for me, and I gave my life to Jesus.
God created all things, including the grass we fight for. This was what our teacher taught us. Our village used to be at war with the other villages just because of grass. I love these books as they are in our language, We now read them together as we graze and I believe we will not fight for grass again. I know that I have killed many people. I regret it now and I pray that God will forgive me.”