By Bryce Whiting, Africa/Europe area director

TANZANIA – Last November, Pastors Johnson Odoyo and Amos Komanya of Tanzania journeyed to visit our new friends, the Hadzabe bush people. This trip issued many challenges, including a power-encounter with witchdoctors that ended with the witchdoctors falling into paralysis and blindness. Johnson and Amos laid their hands upon them in prayer and the infirmities were lifted.  Although the witchdoctors offered no allegiance to the God of the Bible, they did agree not to curse the newly established church.  

In February, our two pastors journeyed yet again to visit the Hadzabe. They learned that the witchdoctors, once restored to health, had returned to their old ways. Perhaps it was a result of this ingratitude that one of them died; we can only speculate. Rather than to receive the death as a warning, the surviving ones were stirred to avenge their fallen brother and challenged Johnson and Amos to a showdown. They dared our pastors to come to the witchdoctors’ encampment for the confrontation. Our Hadzabe friends tried very hard to convince Johnson and Amos not to go. “It is dangerous territory,” they said.  “We will not go there.” Finally, after much prayer, Johnson and Amos were convinced that they were called upon by the Lord to accept the challenge. Four Hadzabe reluctantly agreed to accompany them. They walked fully armed for five hours into the bush, but when they reached the borders of the camp, they stopped and watched from a safe distance leaving Johnson and Amos to proceed alone.    

The Hadzabe witchdoctors laid out the conditions for the contest:  

1. The witchdoctors would attempt two different spells to prove their superior power: 
2. They would transport themselves bodily to another location, disappearing before everyone’s eyes, something that they testify to having done numerous times.   
3. They would bring a deathly illness upon both Johnson and Amos.   
4. If through prayer to the God of the Bible those spells did not work, the witchdoctors would turn their allegiance to the God of Johnson and Amos. If the prayers missionaries’ prayers went unanswered, then the missionaries would obviously be dead.   

Johnson and Amos accepted the challenge, and the rituals began. For hours they chanted without success. The pagan witchdoctors travelled nowhere supernaturally, and Johnson and Amos remained standing before them joyful and healthy. Finally, the witchdoctors fell on their faces before Johnson and Amos, surrendering their lives to a God far more powerful than any they had called upon before.    

As I spoke with Johnson over the phone I had to ask, “How do you know they are sincere?”  To Johnson, the answer was easy in coming, “They begged us to tell their families about our God, and especially about the Son of God who gave his life because of his love for us.” For the next three days Johnson and Amos, along with four warriors, traveled five hours further into the bush to a Hadzabe village to tell families about Jesus Christ the Son of God. Ten hours of walking each day brought them to the brink of collapse, but there are no regrets, for Johnson said, “If it rains, we will have water to baptize16 new believers in Jesus Christ.”  

Subsequent trips are planned. Let’s be part of the victory as we pray.