May, 1945 175 JUNIOR KING' S BUSINESS "LOSHA"
By ETH EL W A L L IS
L OSHA is a little Indian girl who lives with her Aunt Maria in 4 Mexico. Their home is a tiny thatched hut in the small village of Nabenchauc. This pretty little town is bowl-shaped and cuddles down at the foot of very tall, pine-covered moun tains. There is a beautiful lake there, and when the rains come, it grows to be large and clear like a great mirror. But in summertime it almost disap pears. The people of Losha’s village are called Tzotzil Indians. Many of them raise sheep. The winter days are cold and the people weave warm clothing for themselves from the sheep’s wool. If you should go to Nabenchauc you might see Losha out by the lake, tending her sheep. Some of them are white, and many are black. Until Losha was eight years old, she did not know who made the village of Nabenchauc, nor who made the woolly black and white lambs who are her playmates. She had never heard of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. One day God sent some messengers to her,
stood that she needed someone to help her, just as she helps the little lambs over the rocks and fallen logs on the mountain paths. “Would you like to learn to read the Book of God which 1 am writing in your language?” asked the missionary one day while Losha was helping her to make the charcoal fire. “Oh, I’m very stupid. I couldn’t learn to read,” protested Losha. “If she wants to, any little girl can learn to read,” was the reply. How surprised Losha was to find, several weeks later, that the paper upon which the missionaries were writing the “words of God” really “talked!” She could read the words which her Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus, had left for her. She was happy, too, to find that some of these same words were in the songs which the missionaries t a u g h t her to sing. Losha’s black eyes were wide with wonder at the good things which she heard from the Book of Heaven. God has not only sent missionaries to tell Losha and her people of Jesus, but He has also done something else: He has helped a boy who speaks Tzotzil, and who has accepted Jesus as his Saviour, to make some phono graph records in Losha’s language. Some of the r e c o r d s sing, and others speak. They all have lessons from the Bible. Soon the records will be ready, and Losha will be playing them on her p h o n o g r a p h out in the little village of Nabenchauc. She will call her playmates, and tell them that she has good news for them. Would they like to listen to the story of the little lost lamb that Jesus found? They will want to hear, and some of the mothers and fathers will come to listen too, and many of them will learn to love Jesus. Losha will be one of the Heavenly Father’s mission aries.
some missionaries who learned her language so that they could tell her the story of the Saviour who left His home in Heaven and came down to the earth to die for Losha’s sins, and for the sins of everybody in the world. “We have never heard words like these!” exclaimed Aunt Maria when the missionary was telling her of Jesus. “Nobody has ever cared for us enough to come and tell us of this Saviour.” “Aunt Maria,” asked Losha one day as she sat beside her aunt who was weaving, “is it true what the for eigners say about this. Man who was great and rich, but who loved us and came to die for our sins?” “Yes, Losha,” answered Aunt Maria, "those are true words. There is a Book which these foreigners are put ting in our language, and this Book is from God. It has true words. It says that God has a Son, called Jesus Christ. This Son looked down from Heaven and saw all of us like sheep, lost in the hills. You know how it is, Losha, when one of our sheep or lambs gets lost In the mountains at night. It cries, and sometimes it falls down into a deep ditch and dies. This Book says that all of us are like lost sheep. We cannot find our way back home. But someday Jesus, the Good Shepherd will take us up in His arms, and carry us to Heaven which is really our Home. He is getting it ready for us now.” "What good words those are,’’ said Losha. "But how can we see Jesus? Surely if there is such a good Man we could see Him. Will He ever come to visit us?” "Let us ask the missionaries about that,” suggested Aunt Maria. Little by little, the missionaries learned enough of Losha’s language that they could tell her all about Heaven and about Jesus. Losha under
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