At the annual celebration of the Church of La Palestina earlier this year, visiting members of Open Doors Colombia and Open Doors Germany heard testimonies of the church’s resilience in a region where indigenous Christians are persecuted for their faith.
More than 40 kilometres inland, the Church of La Palestina is the only refuge Christians have in the middle of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a 17,000km2 mountain range in northern Colombia.
The church awaited the visiting party with great joy. It was the week of their annual meeting, where underground and openly practicing Christians from the Sierra and surrounding regions come to celebrate Jesus and strengthen their faith.
Pastor Abraham*, leader of the church said, “This meeting is one of our strategies to stand firm because the challenges we face as a church are many.”
Threatened by Violence
In 2001, the mamos (traditional leaders) in the Sierra forcibly expelled Christians from their communities with the help of illegal armed groups. The groups supported the mamos in exchange for indigenous youth to join their ranks.
“The guerrillas came to the community and told us that we had to leave the same day. ‘There is enough land here to bury people’, they told us. This scared us so much that we had to leave,” Pastor Abraham shares.
For more than five years, the Church of La Palestina remained displaced. In 2006, the agreement between the guerrillas and the mamos was broken, and the guerrillas stopped pressuring the church.
Pastor Abraham and his family returned to the region in 2014 to lead and grow the church.
Trapped by Tradition
The Open Doors team met several believers from Niseme*, one of the most traditional communities in the region where Christianity is not only forbidden but punishable by law.
One believer, Martha*, was beaten and abandoned by her husband for not renouncing the gospel. “He told me he did not like that I was a Christian, and he was going to leave me,” Martha shares. “But I said, ‘the Lord will decide what to do with me. I will seek Him. I want to be His friend.'”
When her community learnt that she was following Jesus, they detained her for over three months.
“They took me in front of more than 200 indigenous people and told me ‘Renounce the gospel or you won’t be able to leave here. You’ll stay here for three years until you get rid of these ideas.'”
She was forced to perform ancestral rites used to cleanse the mind of bad thoughts and energies, including Christianity.
Martha managed to escape her community by using the excuse of visiting her ailing father.
She adds, “I ask you to pray for our families so that they come to know the Lord and for our churches, because the mamos are working against the church so that we stop following the Lord.”
Encouraged to Endure
The visit by the Open Doors team impacted the Church of La Palestina in a lasting way.
Pastor Abraham says, “The fact that they are visiting us gives us a lot of encouragement. It makes us understand how important we are to God. Many brothers and sisters have come and told me, ‘This is very good, the Lord is speaking a lot to us.’ We have many projects to carry out to continue fulfilling Christ’s mission here in the Sierra.” *Names changed for security purposes
please pray
Pray for La Palestina Church, that they continue to spread the gospel in the Sierra.
Pray for indigenous believers to find community after rejection from their own culture and families.
Pray that God brings guerillas and gang members to know Him as their Saviour.
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