Pray for Yao Kids
Althea Meyer, missionary to Malawi, specializes in training children’s workers to mobilize young prayer warriors. Meyer issues this challenge to the kids of the IPHC with the hope that it will teach them how to intercede for kids of the world’s many unreached people groups… beginning with the Yao people. Consider this challenge for the children of your own congregation and community.
Do you know about Yao kids? Stretch out your hand and wave toward Africa. Close your eyes and see 1.5 million people living near a lake 300 miles long. This is Lake Malawi. Now, picture boys wearing flat, cake-tin-like caps and long dresses. Imagine girls wearing scarves on their heads that cover their faces in public. These children belong to a faith group called Sunni Muslims. If any of them were to adopt another faith, such as Christianity, their families and communities would reject them.
“Pandanda Mlungu wapanganyisye kwinani ni chilambo chapasi.” If you read that sentence aloud, you have just spoken the Chiyao language, the language of the Yao kids. If the written words look like nonsense to you, most of the Yao kids would feel the same way. Their parents would agree, since most of them did not learn to read and write. The English translation of the Chiyao sentence is found in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Now imagine what it would be like if you had no Bible and were unable to read, hear, or know that God is your best friend and loves you. Yao kids do not know God loves them. Worse yet, in the absence of this unconditional love, they are expected to memorize their religious book, the Koran, by the age of twelve. If you struggle just to remember last Sunday’s Bible memory verse, imagine the burden of trying to memorize a whole book.
Yao kids also work hard to fish and plant food crops. They carry all their water from the river in large clay pots on their heads. Try balancing just a book on your head! After all their hard work, the Yao kids need refreshment, but the water they carry such a distance is not safe to drink. Without clean drinking water and nutritious food, they do not enjoy healthy lives.
Now imagine sitting at their table. The dining room is just a place around their fire, where you might sit on a rock next to a mud brick home roofed with straw grass. Instead of appetizing food like cereal, hamburgers, and ice cream, the Yao kids eat a thick maize porridge called ugali. The porridge is firm enough to roll in a ball, which they dip into a small amount of tomato relish, but it does not have enough minerals and vitamins to keep them healthy. They also eat pumpkin leaves or other vegetables and a small amount of fish.
What happens when they get sick? Take a breath and imagine smelling fire. Close your eyes and see the only doctor the Yao kids know, dressed in animal skins and bone necklaces, dancing around the fire, and bewitching people from sickness or cursing those who are disliked. All the adults talk to spirits they believe are the voices of dead relatives and worship animals as gods. The witchdoctor, as assistant to the village headman, helps rule the village and takes the boys through initiation rituals to make them strong men.
So why can’t the fathers teach boys how to be strong men? Because the fathers become strangers to their children after they leave the village to make a living and to take care of their other wives and families. Yao children might have brothers and sisters in other villages that they will never meet. Sadly, Yao parents often die young from diseases.
The Yao kids need to know their heavenly Father! They need prayer warriors who will intercede and believe that God the Father will intervene in their situation and meet their needs — and there are so many needs! Join with me and pray, “God, use me to help the Yao kids!”
Yao Ministry Update
Three years ago, Meyer was able to train 40 children’s workers to minister to the Yao kids. Recently, 34 additional workers were trained, enabling the outreach to include some villages in the mountainous area of Ntaja.
During this recent training time at the Yao training center, Meyer and her team of students met with other missionaries who coordinate the ministry work in the area. The meeting was fruitful, and both groups agreed on a start date for what will be a five-year-long project, translating lessons into the Yao language.
While at the Yao training center, the Bible Society asked students to read aloud from the recently translated books of Genesis and Numbers in the Yao language. Then megaphones were given to villages so the people could listen to the Word of God recorded in their language.
Ministry is being accomplished in the lives of the Yao people, but they still need more. We encourage you and the kids of your community and congregation to team with Althea Meyer and this faithful team of children’s workers to pray for Yao kids and other unreached people groups.
