The Sacrifice

Emil attended a convention high up in the mountains in Peru in 1984. During preparations he was looking down into the valley far below and saw someone coming up. Later when he looked again, the person was halfway up, and in another hour and a half she arrived at the convention place. It was a girl of 22 and there was a sheep following her. One of the local workers told Emil she had been a shepherdess from the age of 10, caring for the neighbor's sheep in the mountains every day, but she was very poor.

When she arrived she said, "This sheep is my sacrifice for convention, for meat."

The worker said, "We know you can't afford to buy a sheep like that. Where did you get it?" She explained that two years previously a ewe of one of the sheep owners had three lambs. The third one was so weak and sickly it seemed it couldn't live, so the owner told her that she could have it, if she could bring it through. She said, "This is the sheep." It had grown very fond of her and followed her everywhere she went.

The next day the sheep was to be killed, but she couldn't bear to watch. She put her arms around the sheep and hugged it for a while, and then quickly disappeared behind the building and over the hill. Emil said it took him and the other worker all they could do to hold the sheep from following her. An hour later she came back and saw the skin already spread out on the ground. She stood and looked down at it and a few tears fell. Then she quickly pulled herself together and went into the kitchen and helped cut up the meat. Near the end of the convention she went to the elder worker there and said, "When I came to convention, I brought a sacrifice, but now I want to be a sacrifice."

She was offering for the work and that is where she is now, laboring with the workers in Peru.

B. Simonton