Earl Trapp has been a missionary to the Kayapo Indians for 64 years. Now, he and Jerry Walker, a deacon at First Baptist Church Aztec, New Mexico, are working on digitizing cassette tape recordings of each of Trapp’s sermons to the Kayapo. They have digitized 46 tapes and have 54 remaining.
At 95 years old, Trapp’s sight and hearing are failing. However, he continues his work with the Kayapo, pronounced Kah-yah-pah, a group of tribes in what is now called the Kayapo Indigenous Territory. The region stretches across the states of Matto Grosso and Pará in Brazil. The Kayapo Indigenous Territory is one of the most extensive unspoiled sections of the Amazon rainforest and is around 9 million hectares or 34,749 square miles. Kayapo.org estimated that there are about 50 Kayapo villages, and the current population is estimated to be about 12,000.
Ministry opportunity
The Kayapo speak mainly their own language. Trapp encouraged the Kayapo not to learn Portuguese but to worship in their tongue. “Imagine,” he said, “having to worship God in a foreign language?” The Kayapo have also expressed very little interest in learning Portuguese.
Very few people outside of the Kayapo speak their language. Trapp said he and one other are the last that he knows of, and he is working with Walker to digitize all of his sermons that were given in the Kayapo language so that the Kayapo can access them on WhatsApp, a mobile app that offers text, voice and video messaging via smartphones. The Kayapo have access to smartphone technology.
Some of the pastors of the Kayapo churches regularly contact Trapp through WhatsApp for advice and teaching.
Today, many evangelical churches exist among the Kayapo. Trapp said there has been a revival among them, but various denominations have also begun to move in, which Trapp noted can be a problem because the tribes become more dependent on them. Still, Trapp said, “It is a problem we have no control over.” However, he noted, “God is working mightily. The Word of God is having a free course among the Kayapo.”
Called to the Kayapo
Trapp first felt called by God in the 1940s while working to complete a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Illinois. It was then, Trapp said, that he saw a Bible for the first time. He started reading it immediately, and after completing his degree, he went to seminary. Trapp felt called to go to Indians. The situation looked like he might not be able to, but that changed. In 1958, he met the Kayapo alongside another missionary, Carl Burgher, and a Brazilian Representative.
By the time Trapp and Burgher came to meet the Kayapo, the Brazilian government had taken the Kayapo under their protection. Other missionaries had also come to the Kayapo, some in the 1920s and some in the 30s. A Kayapo war party encountered the missionaries in the 1939s and killed them.
A few years after Trapp came to the Kayapo, and unbeknownst to him, Ruth Thomson, a Wycliffe missionary and graduate of Tyndale University, also began to work with the Kayapo in the western portion of the Kayapo territory.
Trapp and Thomson translated sections of the New and Old Testament for the Kayapo. The Old Testament sections included the Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah and sections of Genesis. They completed the New Testament translation in 1996. Thomson, a graduate of Tyndale University, also worked to lay the foundation of the written form of the Kayapo language. Thomson passed away in 2019.
Trapp married Ivy Dell while he was in Brazil and remained there, off and on, until 2012, when his wife’s health difficulties required them to return to the United States. Ivy passed away in 2021.
Trapp now lives in Aztec and attends the First Baptist Church Aztec. He remains in contact with the Kayapo through WhatsApp. He said he tries to prepare a weekly lesson for them and send a message to them. He estimates that he has about 500 listeners. He often receives calls and messages, but it has become difficult to respond to them all.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Johanna Nelson and originally published by the Baptist New Mexican.
