One More Mountain to Climb

Paul and Dorothy' Smith's autobiography, One More Mountain to Climb, takes the reader on an exciting missionary adventure. that spans over fifty years. in this book, the Smiths share their hopes, fears, frustrations, and failures as they struggle to learn a complex tonal language, create an alphabet, and translate the New Testament into a dialect of the Chinantec Indian language of Mexico. Within these pages you'll find romance, marriage, family, faith, pathos, humor, suspense murder, triumphs of faith, and lives changed by the Gospel.

Read a sample from Chapter One:

CHAPTER ONE: Duelin' Down the Street

“Hey, you! Come here! Right now!”

I was being rudely summoned by a drunk Chinantec Indian standing on the other side of the narrow cobblestone street. Seldom could I make it from one end of this Mexican village to the other without being confronted at least once by an Indian who had drunk too much “firewater”.

My wife, Dorothy, and I, members of Wycliffe Bible Translators, had come to the Chinantec village of Ojitlan (Oh-hee-tlan) five years earlier. As the only foreigners in the village, we could not go anywhere unnoticed.

Usually I was treated with courtesy and respect in the village, but a small number of alcoholics made sport of trying to humiliate me whenever they saw me on the street where they hung out.

“Main Street,” as we called it (Ojitlan's only street), ran along the ridge of a hill for about a quarter of a mile. Beer and the potent white rum the Indians called “firewater” were sold at a number of homes and stores along the street where, typically, customers ordered drinks through large shuttered windows and stood outside on the sidewalk to drink.

Any wedding or fiesta was an excuse for some Chinantec men to drink themselves into a stupor. At times, especially on religious fiesta days, the sidewalks were crowded with men (some happy and some moody) who had imbibed too much! Many thought they had to defend their manhood, and many fights broke out.

Once I saw a young man pushing through a crowd, yelling, “I am a very tough guy who is not afraid of death! Get out of my way!” In my mind I can still hear the horrible sound as the young man’s fist impacted an unsuspecting victim’s face.

I couldn't just ignore these poor souls, because that might make a belligerent Indian even more abusive. Many carried razor-sharp machetes, and when tempers flared, weapons were often drawn. I doubted that I would ever be the target of an angry Indian's blade, but whenever an intoxicated individual called me, I did my best not to offend him.

Sometimes the men just wanted to hear me speak Chinantec; more often, they wanted me to buy a round of drinks, or to have a drink with them. The trick was to get a conversation going, and keep it going, until I could make somebody laugh. Then I could walk away. I thought of this as a sort of verbal dueling match. The frequent mistakes I made trying to speak Chinantec would usually be enough to start the men laughing.

Now, having been rudely summoned again, I put on my best “dueling smile” and walked over to a group of three or four men standing in front of a liquor-dispensing window.

When the man who had yelled at me tried to shove a bottle of beer into my hand, I smiled at him and pushed the bottle away.

“You are going to drink this “bitter water,” he said.

“But I don't drink alcohol!” I said, remembering to keep smiling. He kept insisting, and I kept refusing. Finally, tiring of the impasse, he withdrew the bottle from in front of my nose and asked, “Well, what do you drink?”

I might have said, “I drink coffee,” but, without giving it a thought, I said, “I drink milk!”

“Milk? Hey, guys, did you hear that? He drinks milk! Man, that is really funny! Only babies drink milk!” (The Chinantec word for milk is literally “breast water”.)

Everybody roared with laughter and I turned and walked away, leaving the men to contemplate the outrageous idea of an adult drinking milk.