“We have words that can control the weather,” my local friend stated. I had read about this before. Historically, the Gogodala believed—and some still believe—that if certain words are spoken, they will bring a desired outcome, like catching fish, removing someone’s strength from them, winning a game, getting a good sago harvest, and yes, even controlling the rain and weather. The use of magic was common among the Gogodala before Christianity. Without the presence of police, magic was used to maintain law and order in the villages.

He went on. “Yes, we can speak certain words to bring the rain or make it go away. This is something that we can do.” I was a bit surprised because Christianity has been here for almost 100 years, and this man was a professed Messianic Christian. Recently, we have seen a lot of superstitious beliefs among different local religious groups. One group is literally looking for the rod of Moses in one of the local lagoons because of its “magical” powers. The other week, they tried to part the river as Moses parted the Red Sea and to breathe life into a clay form of a man as God did at creation. Apparently, while some still cling to traditional Gogodala animistic practices, others Christianize them.

Many believe that the first evangelical missionaries left the Gogodala tribe in the 1970s, not so much because they felt that they had finished their work, but because so many Gogodala Christians persisted in religious syncretism, practicing both Christianity and some traditional Animism. As a missionary, I need to help our local people think through the shift that must come from a traditional worldview to a biblical one. As we continue to pray for the outpouring of God’s Spirit, we also ask that you pray that we will be good disciple-makers, helping Gogodala Christians seek the pure faith and power of God so that they no longer need “magic words.”

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