Arenas Gave His People School, Hymns, And HOPE
TO THE SOUTHEAST of Mexico City live a people named the Totonacs. They have an ancient history and belong to a language family unrelated to other languages of Middle America. Until the twentieth century their language was unwritten. That changed beginning in 1940 thanks in part to Manuel Arenas. He was a young Totonac boy when Herman and Bessie Aschmann came to Zapotitlán, hoping to translate the Bible into one of the three major Totonac dialects (see our February 18th story “Aschmann TRUSTED God to Turn $7 into a Useful Life”).
Aschmann recruited a boy named Fulgencio to help him learn the language. Arenas wished he had been chosen. He looked with longing at Aschmann’s books. Arenas had learned to read Spanish at the village school, but hungered for greater knowledge. His opportunity came through a tragedy. Fulgencio fell from a steep hillside onto some rocks and died of internal injuries. Arenas took his place.
Before embracing the Christian religion, Arenas determined to see if his mother’s household gods had any validity. He poked a long needle into one. When it did not bleed, he surmised it was a false god. His father expelled him from home when he became a Christian but the Aschmanns took him in.
It took nine long years to translate the New Testament into Totonac and three more to get it into publication. Arenas stuck with Aschmann, refusing to take a penny for his help. Often he thought of giving up and using his talents to make money in a big city, but his promise to finish the translation always held him back.
Arenas loved to listen to Bessie Aschmann sing in Spanish. He was especially entranced with her Spanish rendition of “The Church in the Wildwood.” After Herman Aschmann explained the words, Arenas arranged Totonac words to fit the tune and convey a similar idea, the first Christian song in the Totonac language. He would go on to write seventy-five Totonac hymns. Bessie recorded many of them and the Totonac people loved her singing. Some converted through listening to the hymns that expressed the gospel in their heart language.
Arenas saw the value of education, learned quickly, and prayed the Lord to educate him so he could come back to teach his own people. He did not swerve from that resolution. Working nights, he studied during the day at a business school in Mexico City. Later, when he wanted to continue his education in the United States, he was not allowed across the border for lack of $300. (American authorities insisted migrants show they would not be a burden to the United States.) At that juncture, the mother of a pilot he had befriended happened to come by, recognized Arenas, and invited him to visit her son. God’s provision was apparent when the pilot wrote him a check for $400.
Arenas attended the University of Chicago and Dallas Bible Institute. He learned German. When his chest was crushed in an auto accident, someone paid the hospital bill. While recuperating from a back injury, Arenas practiced German. It paid off when he was invited to study at Erlangen, Germany. He got a doctorate in education and turned down an offer to teach at the university. He was still committed to educating the Totonac people.
Back in Zapotitlán, Arenas opened a Bible school, knowing such training was key to the spiritual future of his people. Despite many difficulties and hardships, the school eventually got off the ground and prospered. Many pastors went out from it. Arenas introduced new garden crops and started a Totonac radio broadcast in which his associate, Felipe Ramos, taught not only Bible lessons but agricultural skills. The station played Bessie’s recordings of Totonac hymns. Hundreds of village churches sprang up as people began following Christ in a more deliberate way.
Manuel Arenas did so much to educate his people and improve their lives that outsiders likened him to Moses. He rejected the comparison, titling his autobiography I am Manuel ... not Moses. He died of cancer on this day 27 May 1992. He was about sixty years of age.
—Dan Graves