Here is an account of a truly historic journey. We (Herman & Lena Friesen) set off on a trip following my sister’s wedding in ‘Cerro Grande’ – an idea that had occurred to us whilst we were on our way to the wedding on Friday. We were only familiar with the old colony of ‘Rio Negro’ (Grünland) because we know people there – people who are already believers. They had invited us on several occasions, so we set off on Saturday afternoon. From ‘Cerro Grande’, it is around 220 kilometres along poor-quality tarmac and an even worse dirt track. We also passed a number of rice fields.
From Santa Cruz, you have to drive a total of 570 kilometres north to reach Grünland – also known as ‘Casarave’ or ‘Rio Negro’. We arrived safely in the evening. So far, only old settlers live there. Nobody knew we were coming. But thank God we were welcomed as if they’d known we were coming. We were given supper and a bed. On Sunday we visited other people, where we enjoyed good spiritual fellowship and were welcomed with great hospitality.
The old settlers are very curious about the Word of God. There is a great spiritual hunger. At one of the homes we visited, it was already afternoon; the host had just read the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5 in a book, and I went to fetch my Bible from the car, leading to further discussion about Naaman, and this man mentioned that the sermons by Andreas Lemke from Germany had opened his eyes. That was the reason why, on Sunday afternoon, we drove to visit a few more people to share in spiritual fellowship and invite them to the Sunday evening Bible study. As a result, three families came together; not all those who came are believers. (We visited five families) and had a Bible discussion, singing and prayer. The passage was from Matthew 7:12–14 and Luke 13:22–30; they had suggested this passage (my wife ran a children’s session with the children there during the Bible study).
They wanted clarity on the narrow and the broad paths, and the question was: when does one get onto the narrow path? Or how? Because amongst the Old Colonists it is taught that this is decided at the moment of death, not now whilst one still has the choice to decide.
Almost every husband I met there had a serious question: whether there might be a possibility of setting up a radio station (radio ministry) there. So that question remains open.
And when we’d finished for the evening at 10.00 pm, the rain came pouring down; yes, and we wanted to go home, but we had 70 kilometres of poor dirt track ahead of us, and we had to decide whether to set off that evening in the rain or wait until the next day. We decided to set off that very evening – thank God we made it out, in the rain and thunderstorm. By the time we reached the tarmac, our petrol had run out, and it was deep into the night; we were already very tired. After some back-and-forth, we decided to drive a bit further along the tarmac to find petrol, and we did find some, but no hotel, and as it was 3.00 am, we unfortunately had to make our way back to ‘Cerro Grande’. God looked after us there: Peter Reimers, the leader of the local church, offered us – whilst we were still on the road – the chance to come there for breakfast and a place to sleep. We gladly accepted this offer with heartfelt thanks. So that’s how we got home on Monday evening. God protected us and bestowed His blessing upon us.
We are very grateful to the Lord for the wonderful fellowship we experienced in the Grünland colony. To protect our brothers and sisters, we did not take any photographs of them.
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Prayer requests:
- Give thanks for the visit there
- Give thanks that there are already believers there
- Pray for the brothers and sisters there, that they may grow in faith
- That a missionary may be sent there
- And that there may be an opportunity to set up a radio station there
Report and photos by Hermann Friesen
