The Snake Story — Otto Koning

Arrival in the Albu Tribe

Thank you. I didn't realize what I was in for when I reran this MAF plane and landed there at the tribe, the Albu tribe. My wife gave me that brand new baby and I got off the float of the float plane and into the mud and waded to the shore.

The shore was just filled with savages. There wasn't room even to get on shore. She handed me the baby and I got there. My wife followed behind me. The baby was about six weeks, I guess, and had been born there on the coast.

Anyway, I gave her the baby and I went back to help the pilot, but the suitcase was in the plane. As I got back to the plane, I see my wife fighting with those natives. They wondered what this was in the blanket.

My wife should not have put that baby in a blanket in that steaming hot jungle. She didn't know any better. They were all pulling. See what we were so carefully handling. They'd never seen a white baby.

They didn't know we multiplied like they did. She's shoving them away and slapping their hands. I yelled back, Carol, don't fight with them. They're headhunters. She'd forgotten. Oh, goodness gracious.

Cannibals at that. Anyway, we got the stuff up to the shore. The mission boat had arrived with Chuck, an older missionary. So glad because the pilot took off. He'd come up the river with our things. The natives were all over the boat, unloaded that thing, got them up to the house.

It was a house. Another missionary had lasted nine months, but he had built a house. Praise the Lord, we had somewhere to go. We got in the house. It was dark. We were dead tired. The natives were all over, but as soon as darkness came, the fear of the evil spirits, they left us alone, and we found some beds, and we slept somewhat.

In the morning, there they all were with their hands up to be paid for unloading the boat. I didn't know who to pay. I'm Dutch. Us Dutch people, we never pay people for not working. So I'm wondering. I'm looking at them, saying, which one of these guys work?

There's all 300 people in the whole village were there, men, women, everybody. You couldn't tell one from the other because here you can tell them by the color of clothes, the color here and there. It's all the same, no clothing.

No, I mean, all got curly black hair. I didn't know what to do. I stood there looking at these guys. They don't know my language. I don't know theirs, and I'm trying to figure out who to pay. The longer I hesitate, the more angry they get.

When I go in the house to find out, Chuck, after all, he was on the boat handing it to them. When I went in the house, oh, brother, they thought I shut the door on them, and they started their war dancing around that house with their nine-foot spears.

Unbelievable noise. By now I was shaking in my boots. I said, Chuck, who worked? He says, pay them all out of it. Pay them all. I said, well, I didn't have 300 pieces to carry. They didn't all work. He says, well, what are you saving it for?

I guess you get it. And all of a sudden I realized that Dutchmen can be generous. I was just about at the place that first morning to give everything I had to them, and they went away laughing and thought, we'll come back for the rest tomorrow.

Well, if you read the pineapple story, you'll know that eventually they got it all. Anyway, I should have saved myself the nervous breakdown and the problems and just given it all away the first day. But as Dutch, we hang on so tight.

Are there any Dutch here? You know, we just hang on, and we fight for it. People ask me if I like pineapples. No, I don't really like pineapples that much, but they were mine, and I was going to fight for what was mine no matter what it was.

But now that's not my fault. I got that from my father. He was that way. But, you know, when they didn't think they were going to get paid, Chuck says, pay them all. I'm not paying them. They laughed.

Now the guys that had really done the work, now I knew who they were, they stood there looking at what they got and what the others got. Man, they wanted more. And angry, possessed natives there in a row, standing there.

One had a little yellow belt on. I thought, I've got to watch him. He was about the loudest, but he hadn't, I don't know where he got it. He hadn't stolen it from me. I hadn't been timed yet. But I thought, but that belt made its rounds.

No, you never know who's going to wear the little yellow belt. I don't know what it was all about, but there was no way. And I pointed to the village, told them to go away, but of course they point with their chin.

I didn't know that. So they're looking at my finger. But anyway, I shut the door and I locked it, as if that was going to help. Now our house is on post. They could have burned us out, they could have made a fire.

And I met my wife inside the kitchen window and she says, Otto, what's happening? And I said, I think we're going to set a record, you know, martyred the first day in. Listen, you don't say, men, you don't say that to your wife.

That didn't help her any. As long as they think you're courageous, it helps them a lot. So watch what you say. Anyway, we had some breakfast I could hardly eat. I was as pale as a ghost. That was my first encounter with my people that I had been burdened to win.

Well, I didn't know what tribe we were going to be assigned to. But anyway, I think, I'm saying to myself, I prepared for this all my life. And now I don't know whether I want to be here. And Chuck was saying, the tide is down, I'm leaving.

He's going to take his boat, get out there when the water's going down. We're 100 miles up that river from the coast. And I wanted so bad to get on that boat with him. And I walked him down to the river.

That man gave me some good advice. He's really trying to help me. He says, Otto, be careful with every, every action, every undertaking with these people. He already knew I blew it on the first one. And he says, they're the most unpredictable people in the whole southern swampland.

He shouldn't have told me that. And I went back up to the house and said, Carol, this is the most, this is the worst tribe in the whole world. That's how it hit me. I shouldn't have told her that. But I just couldn't keep it to myself.

See, we're walking down to the river and all these natives come. That means all the flies and all the insects, they never bathe. And everything comes along. I mean, two white men, that's almost overbearing in a village where they've never seen white men, you know, except that other man had been there for nine months.

And so he said, let's pray. He's got the spiritual gift of mercy, and he's a nice guy. And his heart was going out to me. And he said, let's pray. Now, he, on the bank of the river, all these savages around with their spears, bows and arrows, what have you.

And this guy's got faith. He closes his eyes when he prays. I didn't. I happen to know you can pray with your eyes open. And I was looking around while this dear guy was praying. And, man, I don't know what I would have done if I'd seen anything that was dangerous.

But he's praying. And now he says, oh, God, please, somehow, somehow. He shouldn't have put all those somehows in there. As if he didn't believe what he was praying himself. Somehow help Otto and Carol.

He had to be careful what he was saying. I know what he was thinking. And he was weeping now. This guy, he's a big guy, much bigger than I am, a big, strong guy. And the natives were most touched, you know.

When he starts to pray to his God, they're all quiet. It's amazing. They sense something. They're spirit worshipers. They're animists. They sense things in their spirit. Anyway, he's weeping, and he puts his arm around me.

He gets on the boat and waves goodbye. His wife said to me, said to my wife, became one of her best friends. And ten years later, she said Chuck was weeping when he got home. And he said, Bernita, there's no way, there is no way those people are going to make it.

Not in that tribe. He says, I almost felt it was wrong for me to leave them there. That's what he said. And he says, and she says, and here you've been here ten years, and now your people are one. And she says, God sure knows what to do, what he's doing.

Spiritual Immaturity and Dependence on God

Because friends, there's never been a missionary more green than I was. I didn't know anything about the spiritual life. Can you imagine that? You're going to a demon-possessed people, every one of them.

The generation that you're ministering to can't be more wicked than the one before. They've already got the saturation point of evil. You know, there's so much evil a man can do, and he's got to start over again.

And I don't know what it is to be spirit-filled. And I don't know Romans 6, the Lordship. I don't understand what crucified life is. And most of all, I don't understand what it is to have authority in Jesus' name.

Now, you say, how in the world can the American church send you over there? I was the best Christian in my church. That's what they said, anyway. I knew better. What they don't know, they won't hurt them.

But anyway, I was solving it, all right? So you think, yeah, this guy's going to convert the whole island flat. We sent him over there. I guess that was the idea. But, friends, I didn't want to be there.

When Chuck left, I wanted to go with him. I was acquitted the first morning, and I could hardly believe it myself. But, friends, I came back. If I was not a missionary, I'd send another missionary in to help me get started.

Okay, he was in the other part of the Awiu tribe. So two or three weeks he was there, and he encouraged me and showed me what I'm supposed to know and what I'm supposed to do, how to get started. And then we were on our own.

Now we had to prove to the whole world that we were good missionaries, you know? And we weren't even anxious to prove that anymore. Now, about a couple of months later, my wife got hepatitis. And I called the doctor on my two-way radio, and he says, keep her down.

Don't let her get up. I mean, if she gets up too soon, she'll get a relapse. She'll be worse. And so then he goes on furlough. Now, I didn't think that was right. So now I just hold my wife down to keep her down in bed.

And there was only two of us in this whole tribe of natives, you know. And so I don't know how long. She was in bed nine months that first year. Now, my turn was to wean that baby. And my wife had these Playtex bottles.

Men, don't allow those in your house. Don't confiscate them at the door. You cannot be a Christian and have a Playtex bottle at the same time. Well, Christian, yes, I was a Christian. But you know what I mean.

They had these little plastic sacks in them, you know that? And they had a contraption. You had to put that thing on there. That's a trick in the first place. And then it has to transfer to that plastic cylinder.

The bottom was lost. And so the baby had pinched the bottom of it. It's leaking on both ends. There's no way to get it. Well, one of the problems was that we had this powdered milk. It came from Australia.

It had been a long time coming. And it was hard. I mean, I had to pound it with a hammer. Now, I don't know if you've ever. And I'm pounding the milk every morning to get that to go through that bottle.

It was quite something. And I didn't believe it myself. It could be done. Then we had this. Have you ever had a screamer? This baby was a screamer. You know, he wakes himself up screaming, everybody else.

And he doesn't stop until you get something in him. So while I'm fighting with this bottle, he's screaming at me. Terrible. Then I got this old kerosene stove. It was leftover from the other missionary.

Rusted, dirty kerosene, gravity-fed. It was a temperamental thing. Either all the kerosene would come at once or it wouldn't come at all. You know, one of those things. And I fussed with that stove. Friends, I would have traded all of my theological knowledge for some mechanical ability at that time.

I took that stove apart and tried to fix it. It was terrible. It had more parts. A simple kerosene stove shouldn't be that complicated. But unfortunately, it was a Dutch stove. Oh, that thing. Phillips.

Some dumb Dutchman made that thing. That made me so mad. You know, it had three burners on the top and two in the bottom. It actually had an oven there, five burners. It had more washers and screens and pipes and tubes and all kinds of, I don't know what you call it, in there.

And I'd take it apart and I'd blow through the tubes and I'd clean it out and I'd try to get it back together again. I never could get it back together again. Well, those dumb engineers had not left enough room for all the parts.

That's what they were saying. And so I'd leave out what I thought was least important. And I had fires. Oh, man, did I have fires. It was terrible, terrible, scary to death. I finally had this 55-gallon drum with rice sacks all soaking wet in there, just ready to blanket the whole stove.

I mean, I had to do it. It was terrible. And I'm fighting with the stove every morning. I'm fighting with this baby. I'm fighting with this bottle. And, oh, you young mothers, don't let your baby push you around.

I've learned this. I've learned this. If he gets hungry enough, he'll take it cold. Just bypass the stove. Forget the whole thing. He's six foot three now. He's a basketball. He's as tough as you want him to get.

And so I did that with the solids, too. I asked my wife one day, when do I start him on solid? This kid is hungry. I mean, he's a big baby. And I said, I just wanted to see if I was doing it right. I had already had him on solid.

I was giving him a can. She says, start him with half a can of this and half a can of that. I was already giving him two cans at the time. And I wasn't even warming it up. I mean, just cold. I mean, he'd scream between every bite.

So you just shovel it in. You've got to shovel it in as fast as you can. And make sure you burp him after that. Oh, man, but that baby got to me. I never needed an alarm clock. He'd scream every morning.

Defeat, Temptation, and Spiritual Warfare

The whole scenario. And just about now, Satan says, you didn't have your devotions this morning. See, everything's going. I mean, how can you expect anything to go right today? And I went for that line.

Don't let Satan get you like that. He wants you to feed that baby first, okay? And he'll eventually slow down and go to sleep. And then you can pray. But then he got me. It was so easy to have devotions in the morning when I was single.

You know, but things change. The more kids you get, the more at least time you got. Anyway, but I took that stove apart again. I took it apart three times. No good. Oh, that stove got to me. I kicked that stove.

Well, I hadn't had my devotions. I mean, I kicked that stove. I kicked the baby. No, I mean, I kicked the I wanted to kick the baby too someday. You better believe it. I threw that bottle at the stove.

I got them both at once. I threw the bottle at the baby. Once I threw it at my wife. Friends, I'm talking about being defeated. I didn't know what to do. I'm praying. So I have my prayer time by the stove.

I lay my Bible on the stove. I thought maybe something would rub off. Maybe there's a spirit in this thing. I've got to get this stove right. I let my tears drop on the stove. I once laid my hands on the stove.

I didn't have to anoint it with oil. There was oil all over the place anyway. I tried to heal, but no good. I went outside with this big black pot. It had no lid. I don't know why. The natives would bring me some firewood in exchange for some of the rice.

So I'm cooking this rice, and all these dirty native men, they were all with their disease, you name it. I'm standing there trying to get my rice cooked, and they're all coughing and spitting all around me.

I'm getting like my wife. She's a nurse. I'm starting to see germs too. I always thought she saw too many germs. She made life miserable for all of us. But I said, quit spitting around, Mike. They get their sticks in there.

They're going to get some of that, and they get their dirty sticks in there. It started getting out before it was cooked, and no wonder the cooking wasn't all that good, and my wife stayed sick. Then the radio.

The two of them, every morning, they call us, Jufo, Jufo, Santani here. I'd say, Jufo standing by. How are you doing? I'd say, fine. They couldn't believe that. Since I said it every day, they started believing it.

Amazing, amazing, this missionary. Just brand new. I'd lay that thing down. I'd say, why did I say that? Do you ever do that? How are you doing, man? Fine. You know what? I see it now. I cut myself off from the prayers of all the missionaries.

Now I'm hitting it alone. Christianity was never meant to be like that. We're part of all the members of our bodies. We depend on each other. We can't make it alone, nobody, and unless we humble ourselves, we'll go on.

We cannot make it spiritually alone. It was never designed that way. I tried it. It doesn't work, but I wasn't going to confess that I wasn't making it. I was having a nervous breakdown. My wife was sick.

The natives are all mad at me. My baby's screaming, and I say I'm doing fine. Every day. Then finally that radio gets, that battery needs to be charged. Well, I had this Briggs Stratton battery. Don't ever get a Briggs Stratton.

It doesn't work. I pulled that thing, would never start. So my battery gets weaker and weaker, and I worry I know I'm going to have it one of these days. I'm going to be off the air. Man, great deal for a worrier, you know.

They're slowly getting worse, and that voice on the radio is getting softer each day, and finally I'm off the air. I'm pulling that charger, and the natives are all standing around me watching everything I do.

They're starting to talk to me a little bit. They said, why don't they send us a smart missionary? The other missionary pulled it once, and it will go. You've been pulling it all morning. Tell them we want a smart missionary.

Hey, when I, when I, I told them I had a BA degree. They didn't know what it was. I start to write words. They said, wow, he carves fast. They called me dumb, and I'm defending myself. I said, ridiculous.

But we finally went off to air, and the plane came three days later, and he said, what is it? What's your problem? And I said, that battery charger. Well, he had another radio, he had another battery charger and an antenna.

He said, I'd hoped it was one of these four things. And he took that, he took that battery to the guy on the coast with the boat. This fellow, Chuck, you won't believe it. He can look at the thing and make it go.

Makes you mad. And he came back. He had, he sent that thing back three weeks later. He had this little note on the top, stuck it right on the spark plug, and it said, Otto, don't touch anything. Just start it.

I wonder if the natives were right. And then, well, I had this motor boat, little fiberglass boat, supposed to be for evangelism, and Evan Rood Motor. Don't get one of those. Never would go. I was glad it wouldn't go.

I wasn't interested in evangelism. I was interested in survival. Yeah, we got letters. I hope you don't read, write letters from home. Otto, how are you doing? How many churches have you planted? How many souls have you won?

Hey, I haven't even fixed my stove yet. Don't write letters. Hey, give us a chance, will you? Tell us, hey, even though you don't think you're doing any good, we love you and we're going to keep supporting you.

Write them something like that. Help them out. But friends, don't say, how much good are you doing over there? And friend, then the medical work was terrible. My wife had started a clinic. Now I'm saddled with it.

Medical Ministry and Human Limitations

Can you imagine? They came. They said, you give us medicine. You're eating all the pills yourself. I said, no, I'm taking vitamins. They're looking in the window. Sure, I'm eating vitamins. Even when you worry about things, you eat vitamins.

So my wife, she says, you don't know anything about medicine. I said, I know it. But I'm losing all my, there's no, I mean, they're not going to, they're all angry at me. So I carried the box in to her bedroom, and she took the potent stuff out, like codeine, you know, things that I could kill people with.

She's smart. And she sent me out there with aspirin, you know, and sulfa and bandages and told me how to give shots. Oh, that was quite something. Now I'm out there every morning. See, they're at my door at the crack of dawn yelling for their medicine, and the baby's screaming for his milk, see?

And they're yelling at me from the inside and the outside, and I don't know what to do. I don't know who to shut up first. I don't know who wakes who up. But anyway, I'm out there first thing in the morning with this box of medicine out there, and there's a hundred of them.

They never come in single. I mean, from other villages. They come a whole group because they're enemy villages. They're not going to show up alone. They have a whole gang with them, you know. And they all come with their tropical ulcers, and it's terrible.

And diagnosing, this is a hard thing for me, you know. You can't even tell where he's got a ration on in that culture. And I'm looking in their eyes, you know. I'm looking, and they say, What are you looking for, John?

I said, I don't really know. But that's the way you're supposed to do it. So I'm doing it. They said, Well, just forget about looking down our throat and just give us the medicine. They had favorite colors.

I said, I don't know what to give you. They said, Well, I like those red ones. If I'd only listened to them, I could have simplified this whole thing so much. And so I had given them all these pills, and they don't like what I give them.

And they're yelling, oh, they're yelling. We're not communicating hardly at all. And so I said, We're not going to do this anymore. I said, From now on, you all line up. And I said, When you get to this table, you don't say a word, and I won't say a word.

All you do is point to where you're sick. I couldn't do it with a chin. I said, Put your finger. And if it was from the belt up, I'd give them aspirin. If it was from the belt down, I'd give them sulfa.

And that's all I used for years. I mean, I just dumped those bottles right over, and I just had a pile of medicine there. And I say, Point, man. There you are. And my wife couldn't believe how fast I could get this medical work done.

She was overwhelmed, amazed. And one guy, he said, Well, this evil spirit, the horse, shot me up here, and it went below. He got both. He got both. And this worked good for a while. I don't know if I saved any lives, honestly.

I know I lost some. That's tragic. But the thing is, doctors here lose some too, so what's the difference? I hope there's no doctors here. I haven't met any yet. Anyway, after a while, they said, We don't want those pills.

See, the tropical ulcers. We had penicillin G, that thick, and you had to have those big needles. And you had to really shake that bottle to get that out. And so that was a miracle. That just dried up a tropical ulcer in four or five days.

And they said, We want that medicine with the big bite. And we don't want your pills. I spit out the pills. I hate waste. I said, Man, you've got a headache. You don't need a shot. No, I don't want a shot.

Man, and they're fighting with me now. They stand there with these huge spares, nine-foot spares. And I've got this little syringe, you know. What would you have done? Man, I shot him up with water. I always get shot in the eyes.

Listen, listen, listen. Unless you get me wrong. I wasn't hurting him. Yeah, well, I got the big needles for everything now. I never use the small ones anymore. I thought maybe if it hurts a bit, they won't come back.

I was trying to cut down on my workload. Oh, man, it took me until noon, friends. I was worn out by noon. I was finished. And I've got to start learning language yet, you see. And so I shot him up with these big needles.

I never sharpen those needles anymore. Man, I just, especially those guys who stole my pineapples, man. I hit him right here, you know. Right? There's too many wires and veins, whatever, back here. That's where my wife shoots them up.

If you do it right here on the calf, make sure you don't hit that bone. Just get them and leave that mark. They know they've had medicine. They know they've had medicine. Now they've got to know that.

Friends, this is unbelievable. I didn't know this until years later. That they, you know, Satan had their minds. He had them, when they were sick, they were going to die. And he had them believing that.

And I've seen people just suicide. They wouldn't even come. I'm going to die. But when I shot them up, they said, I've got the powerful medicine in me. I'm going to live. And it's all in the mind, isn't it?

They were hearing Satan so strong, you're going to die. And now this missionary gave them that medicine with that dull needle, the big one. And, I mean, they knew they had it. There was evidence. If it had been us, we would have said, Satan, see, look.

Evidence. I got it. I believe in you now. But, friends, just that, and that saved lives. Can you believe it? A missionary so green, doing everything wrong. Not even praying anymore. He hasn't got time to pray.

And then he's doing something, and he's saving lives. For some of them to be later saved. Much, much later. I stood in front of one missionary conference, and this couple came forward to dedicate their lives to be missionaries.

And the lady shook my hand and said, you know, Mr. Koenig, we never thought we were good enough to be missionaries until we met you. And I said, hey, isn't it neat that even God can use your failures for his glory?

Man, there's nobody here that doesn't qualify. Hey, maybe somebody sitting right here is like, man, I couldn't have done that. Hey, isn't it, God gets a bigger challenge out of using a guy that isn't so smart than some of these smart people.

Don't you think? Pretty smart, isn't it? And God wants to show himself strong. So you people that aren't too smart, you're, hey, God sent you. And usually, well, anyway, friends said medical work, oh, is a thorn in the flesh to me.

I just didn't like it. I hate medical work. And I had to do it every day, and the more I frustrated them, the more, the longer my wife was sick. And when finally I realized this and I said, okay, God, if this is all you want me to do out here, if you want me to do medical work the rest of my life, all right, finally you surrender, right?

And that's when God heals your wife. You can pray with all your heart, God, heal my wife. We were praying, God, either make her sick enough so we can go home or make her well so she can do the medical work.

And she was never sick enough. See, because I want, she was praying that she'd get sick enough to go home. Because we weren't making it, folks. The other couple lasted nine months, and the lucky guy, she got so sick, she got home here to Wheaton, Illinois, to the mission.

They never found anything wrong with her in America. So you know it wasn't wrong. And that village wasn't fit for a Christian to live in, unless that Christian had something that we're learning here these days.

But most of us weren't trained that way. And we didn't know anything about it. And so she never got sick enough. I'm too proud to quit. I said, God, I'd rather die than quit. I'll never quit. I'm a Dutchman.

We don't quit. And so I thought I was going to die. I really did. And Satan had me convinced that. See, I'm believing his lies. Satan didn't want me there, folks. Isn't that right? I know that now, now that I went back last summer and saw the ten churches operating without seminars and without books and without Christian radio and without anything but part of the Bible.

Hey, man, you say, how can that be? Well, they only got God. When they get sick to God, when they get hungry to God, they pray all day long. Maybe that's when we can learn some lessons on faith. But, friends, God knew that.

Fear, Worry, and Listening to the Wrong Voice

Satan didn't want me there, and God wanted me there. I'm sure he did. He said, go into all the world. And I didn't want me there. Now, who am I siding with? Now, I didn't do this consciously. That's the way it was.

Isn't that right? I'm siding with Satan against God. Now, then Satan says, you put your mind, they're going to get you this time. I had a quarter-mile track around my station so I could get away if I needed to, as if I could outrun those savages.

But I thought I'd do the best I can. And fear, you're not always going to make it. My mind is full of fear for my baby and for my sick wife. And he says, Jesus says, fear not. And Satan says, fear. Now, who am I listening to?

All right, the same with worrying, anxiety. Jesus says, don't worry about anything. Satan says, hey, they're going to get you. They're headhunters. So I'm worrying, right? And Satan says, they're stealing all your stuff, man.

You've got to get back. Fight for you. I mean, you've got to stand. You can't let them walk all over you. And Jesus says, hey, turn the other cheek. Don't be angry. And friends, that's what you call giving place to the devil.

And my whole soul, my mind, my thinking was Satan's thoughts, my emotions, my will. See, we can give our whole soul area and can be controlled by Satan. Now, I am a Christian, and my spirit of God lives in me.

There was no doubt about that. But friends, see how he can manipulate us until we're thinking his lines. And then, as a man thinks so easy, and then the walk starts following, you wonder. You come to a place where you wonder whether you're a Christian yourself.

And everybody else starts to wonder. But, you know, friends, it went on. Then they said, possessed people. Oh, they were the hardcore ones, we'd call them. That was just our term. The ones that were always possessed.

And then the others would just be possessed when the battle came on. They'd cry out. Demons come in. And, man, you ought to see it. They'd go, wow. They'd dance themselves into this thing in these night ritualistic dances and so on.

And they're all possessed. But I tried to avoid these guys that were always permanently possessed. These witch doctor guys. And I was scared of them. I didn't know what to do with them. Now, this boy would always fall in the fire.

We called him the epileptic. And fall in the water and fall in the fire. His dad would save him, and we would save him. Banished him. And I set those banishes. And every day, when he came around, I left him to the end.

The others would all go away, and I'm fighting with this kid. Trying to get banished. Anyway, I gave him everything I had. Finally, he gets better from his spurns. Just about time he's done. He falls in the fire again.

I'm scraping burnt banishes off this kid now. There's no end to this thing. All the time. See, we was at him. We had a clean water drum outside, and he'd get in that drum and take his bath. They don't take baths, these people.

But Satan had him break the rules. It's good to take baths. Satan doesn't have him take baths. But to ruin the missionary, to get in the missionary drum, he has him take baths. See, Satan will break his own rules when he can destroy the missionary.

And so he stole a piece of soap. He said, Don, look, I'm taking a bath. He's soaping himself in my clean water. Oh, man, I was so angry. I told him, get out of there. I had to dump that precious water and clean that drum.

And, man, you don't have enough energy to clean the drum. Anyway, I prayed, God, we need water. And that afternoon, we had to just fill it right up, man. Thank you, Lord. Next day, he was in it again, next morning.

So, man, we go through this whole thing. I'm even angry now. And the third day, he got in it. The Lord filled it up again the second day. Prayed. Rain came down. Full down. And the third morning, he was in there.

I hit him. He couldn't run. See, he was in that drum. I hit him square in the face. I shouldn't have done it. Please don't tell me afterwards that missionaries shouldn't hit their people. Please. Anyway, I hit him.

But, you know, when I hit that boy, a fire came out of his eyes. I'd never seen anything like it. I was so scared, I ran away from that drum. By the time I got back, he was gone. Yes, can this be turned up any?