Marianna Slocum – Bringing the Good Seed to Mexican Tribes.

Marianna Slocum – Bringing the Good Seed to Mexican Tribes.

Marianna Slocum was excited about her upcoming wedding to Bill Bentley, a missionary she had met two years earlier. The big date was only six days away. They had just returned to her home after Bill’s speaking engagement in New Jersey and an enjoyable sight-seeing in New York.

Romance

            They had first met at Camp Wycliffe – now known as Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) International – near Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, where they both studied in preparation for service as missionary Bible translators. Bill had already begun work among the Mexican Tzeltals in Bachajon, in the State of Chapas, and returned there after his training. Naturally friendly, he had become popular among the locals for his prowess on the accordion and his lovely singing voice.

Marianna accepted an assignment as a missionary to the Chols, about seven hours by foot from Bachajon. The Chol and Tzeltal languages are both in the Mayan family.

Bill visited Marianna’s station frequently, always by foot because he didn’t want to assume a higher position than the natives by using a car. She fell in love with him although he didn’t show any particular interest in her. “Everything about him attracted me,” she said: “his manly good looks, his lovely tenor singing voice, but most captivating of all was his complete dedication to the work of the Lord.”[1]

He made it clear that he was not interested in romance for its own sake. On January 6, 1941, however, he sent Marianna a letter stating that he was sure she was God’s choice for him. On Valentine’s Day of the same year, he brought a heart-shaped cookie for Marianna and officially proposed to her. They planned to marry on August 30 at her family home in Philadelphia.

That month, they spent a month at Camp Wycliffe, visited Bill’s parents, attended a week-long conference at Keswick, N.J. where he was asked to speak, took a short sight-seeing trip to New York City, then returned to Marianna’s home to prepare for the wedding.

Heartbreak and Rejection

On Sunday morning, however, Bill did not come down to breakfast. When Marianna's father went to call him, Bill was dead, probably due to a heart attack.

In spite of her shock, Marianna spoke on the phone with William Cameron Townsend, the head of the mission, asking if she could return to the Tzeltals and finish the work Bill had begun. Townsend agreed.

Marianna spent the next few days in a daze. “I walked in a cloud of numb incomprehension, doing all the things I had to do, allowing my family to make what plans seemed best. All the joy in the future had disintegrated,” she said. “In blind faith, I struggled through the dark days and nights, an ache which I could not describe. Night and day, it throbbed. But still, I remembered He called me, and He was with me.”[2]

Following Bill’s funeral in his church in Topeka, Kansas, Marianna went to Camp Wycliffe and then to Mexico, hoping to continue Bill’s work in Bachajon. The locals’ reception, however, was not welcoming, as someone had been spreading rumors about the Protestants. (or evangelicos, as the missionaries preferred to be called).

“’They will steal your land,’ they had warned. ‘They will poison the minds of your children. They will make you lose the old ways;’”[3] Marianna recounted.

This type of lies were common at that time. They were usually fueled by Roman Catholic authorities who saw Protestants as false teachers. Besides, Protestants, being mostly American, were often depicted as propagators of western culture aiming at political domination of South America. What’s worse, these rumors often escalated into all-out persecution.

She understood their reaction. “The Bachajon Indians had good cause to fear outsiders,” she said. “Previous white people had cruelly exploited them, taken their land, burned their saints. They had no reason to trust us.”[4]

Being officially denied permission to stay in Bachajon, Marianne and Ethel Wallis, another SIL missionary who had traveled with her, settled at a German coffee ranch near Yajalon, where she began her translating work. In 1944, they accepted the invitation of Mexican anthropologist Alfonso Villa Rojas to move to Yochib, among the Oxchuc Indians, “poorest of all the Tzeltals.”[5] Marianna learned the language and began to translate the Gospel of Mark and several hymns into Oxchuc.

Besides printing her translations, she took advantage of a method pioneered by missionary Joy Ridderhoff in 1944 – recordings of the gospel. There was no point in translating the Bible in the local languages if no one could read it. Joy and her friend Ann Sherwood arranged for the recording in Mexico City, where Marianna met them with her materials. Joy and Ann left a permanent studio in that city where Marianna was able to return with new translations.

Rough Beginnings

Life in the village was rough. Her house had no heating system, so she had to wear layers during the cold season. In the rainy season, she had to keep all windows close and move around in a poorly lit space. She also had a hard time eating the meals the locals were offering her because her “finicky stomach” could barely stand the unfamiliar food, especially since, with the river far from the village, the locals used very little water in their food preparation, as well as on themselves and their clothes.

“There would have been no reason for me to stay in that strange unwelcoming setting, but for this: ‘The love of Christ constraineth me (2 Cor. 5:14),’” she wrote. “And this love did fill me as I tried to identify with my Tzeltal neighbors. One by one, I learned to love them as individuals. It was a love that could have only come from the Lord Himself.”

She also suffered from loneliness. Ethel left her in 1944 and Marianna had only occasional partners until 1947, when a nurse, Florence Gerdel, arrived on a temporary assignment. From the start, Florence used her skills to heal the sick and instruct the local about hygiene and prevention. Soon people came from other villages to be healed. Florence ended up staying much longer than she had foreseen, and she and Marianne became best friends.

Coralito

In the meantime, in a nearby village named Coralito, an Oxchuc man, Juan Mucha, who had first heard the gospel from another Oxchuc. Martin Gourd, heard about the two women. Gourd and Mucha had already gathered a congregation of about 70 people, in spite of the opposition of the local priest.

After visiting the women, Mucha decided to take his congregation to see them. Marianne and Florence were surprised to see a crowd walking toward their house. The walk from Coralito to the women’s house took about two days in the pouring rain, but no one complained, even if Marianne didn’t have a fire where they could get dry. After a day of teaching and fellowship, 19 women and children stayed for the night in a house which was barely fit for two.

Upon Mucha’s invitation, Marianne and Florence moved to Coralito. They helped the congregation to connect with a nearby Presbyterian church, composed of locals, who sent a pastor to preach on most Sundays. Soon, 400 people requested to be baptized.

Presbyterians had been active in the area since the 1930’s, and the Presbyterian system of elders and deacons resonated with the local tribal culture.

Renewed Persecution

But persecution continued. In 1949. Guillermo Sozaya, Director of the Department of Indigenous Affairs, received a long list of formal complaints about Marianna and Florence: “That these women, as well as the other followers of that ‘protestant’ doctrine,  were preparing to burn the temple saints located in the Oxchuc Catholic Church; That those women are in reality men in disguise; That they wear rubber breasts to make themselves look like women; That as men which they really are, they are sexually abusing the best young Tzeltal girls; That they eat dead people, bodies of persons that they have kidnapped alive and then have boiled them in large pots in order to later eat them.”[6]

The persecution turned to violence when, just before Easter Day, the grass-roofed church in Coralito was almost entirely burned. And this was not an isolated case. A man named Sebastian T’sul, who had begun to evangelize his community in Tenango after visiting the church at Coralito, was shot to death, becoming the first Tzeltal martyr. Another man, Juan Espinoza, escaped an attack by armed men by tearing a hole in the back of his hut. In 1956, the Presbyterian congregation in Bachajon was attacked by a group of men backed by the Roman Catholic priest. In spite of this, the Tzeltal continued to grow.

God’s Increase

Marianna was able to hold the first edition of her newly-translated New Testament in 1956, fifteen years after her arrival. After this, she and Florence decided to accept a call to serve to the Bachajon who had previously rejected them. Her translation of the New Testament in their language was done in 1965.

Once again, Marianna and Florence moved on to begin a new work – this time in the Columbia Andes working with the Paez Indians and translating the New Testament in their language. This was the hardest move for the two women. Marianna described their pain in leaving their “Tzeltal family over whom we had yearned and agonized, with whom we had laughed and loved and prayed.”[7]

But they were able to return and witness with joy the growth of that church. “Florence unabashedly allowed tears to run down her cheeks while I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of love from these who had remained faithful to the Lord through all the years. Indeed, they had not only remained faithful in their own families, but they had spread His Word through all the Tzeltal region.”

“When we had left in 1965, there were 72 congregations of Tzeltal believers. Now, in 1985, there were 322. When we had left, there were over 6000 believers. Now there were some 44,000 on the church rolls, including children. ... Where once we had faced nothing but heartbreak and disappointment, now we saw one-fourth of the Tzeltals as true believers. ... Both Florence and I would willingly relive all those years we spent among them. We cannot. We must be content that we planted “the Good Seed.” Others who came after us watered it, but God gave the increase.”[8]