An Adoption Decision
The Canela chief and elders’ council made a significant decision during the first week that Jo, our pre-school daughters, and I lived in the Canela village. The next day, Jo was taken to one house and I to another, where we went through an elaborate ceremony. It took a long time to cover most of our bodies with hawk-down, glued on with sticky tree resin. The parts of our bodies not covered with feathers were painted with vivid red ochre. Then we walked to the central plaza, followed by women carrying pans of food and other gifts for the elders to share.

The chief made a speech, and although we didn’t understand much at that time, we did catch on that the two families in whose houses we were feathered and painted had adopted us as their son and daughter. We were now irrevocably citizens of Canela society, with all the rights and responsibilities of born Canelas.

Yet Another Adoption
Many years later, after we were fluent in Canela and had translated Luke, Acts, and a few epistles in a first draft, Jaco, a young man, surprised me, “I am a Jesus follower.” He was the first believer!
“How did that happen?” I asked him.
“Well, I was reading some of the carbon copies of Our Father’s Words that we translated, and I asked myself, ‘Jaco, how long are you going to just read this stuff? When are you going to believe it?’ So, I got up from my hammock, walked out to look up into the sky and said, ‘Great Father in the sky, I have been reading about the way you want us to live, and I realize I am in a terrible situation. Please do something for me.’”

“So, what did the Great Father do for you?” I asked.
“He adopted me into His family,” Jaco said, using the same term that described what Jo and I went through when our Canela families adopted us.
“You and I are now brothers because Jesus is our Older Brother,” I said.

We had not yet translated Romans and Hebrews, but I explained that Jesus is God’s Son, and he died and rose again so that God would adopt men and women who believe in Him (Rom. 8:15) and so that Jesus could call us younger brothers and sisters. (Rom. 8:29, Heb. 2:11).

The privileges and rights that Jo and I acquired when the Canelas adopted us were forever. They reminded us of Eph. 1:3, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” God’s spiritual blessings were forever, not having anything to do with wealth and health on earth, but of treasure and new bodies in heaven.

A Long-Lasting Effect
Jo and my adoption took place in 1968. We lived among the Canelas for twenty-two years to complete the literacy and Bible translation program. Scores of Canelas became Bible reading believers. We were away and out of touch for nineteen years. Then we returned for a visit, not just with our three now-grown daughters but with their husbands and their children—eight of them. When the sixteen of us walked to the central plaza, forty-one years after Jo and my adoption, to greet the chief and elders, they immediately received us all with great delight and ceremony. It was as if we had never left. Even kids and young people who had never met us greeted us as long-lost relatives, which we were. The Canela blessings, rights and privileges were still in effect.

In the same way, when God the Father adopted us as His Sons and daughters, making Jesus our Older Brother, he conferred eternal, unchanging blessings on us. Let’s remember that all the spiritual benefits we receive through our relationship with Jesus are forever, not to be confused with good health, a great job, a large bank account, and a pleasant life on earth.