Six hours in an all-terrain vehicle, four hours in an overly loaded canoe and six more hours on foot got us to the remote jungle village of Santa Marta. The on-foot part involved lots of mud, extreme heat, suffocating humidity, torrential downpours, mosquitoes, spiders and lots of spectacular scenery. What a paradise! Each village we went through the Christians came out to greet us with fish, chicha, turtle eggs and bananas. After reading a passage in the Bible and praying together we continued on deeper and deeper into the jungle. After wading through a waste deep creek, swimming across a stingray infested river and tripping into a thorn tree I finally arrived at our destination point.


We weren’t the only ones that came from far away, there were believers from all over the surrounding region that were coming with great eagerness to this Bible conference. It was amazing to see how the people wanted to take advantage of every moment and soak up all the Bible teaching they could. We had meetings for 8 hours every day. If I wasn’t teaching, I was counseling or evangelizing. There was hardly time to eat meals. And when I did eat meals it was a real feast! Generally the meals consisted of: chewed up and spit out yucca juice, monkey meat, fried bananas, rice and beans.


Our time was not without opposition as a small group in town prayed to their god that our efforts would be frustrated, that there would be no conversions and that the whole conference would be ruined. Exactly the opposite happened. God worked mightily and the conference was a huge blessing.


One night, several people made professions of faith and for the next four hours I sat with them and tried to point them in the right direction for spiritual growth. The next day, I preached in the river to a multitude of people on the bank, several of whom came down to be baptized. It was extremely exciting to see God working in so many hearts.


On the last morning the mist was rising off the river as first light dawned. About 200 believers gathered on the bank to sing a hymn together and then we all set out in different ways to our homes. We prayed together and said our goodbyes. Many of the brothers were begging to be visited in their respective villages so that the gospel might be preached there also. Please pray for these people and that God would continue to work in their lives and ministries.


Micah Tuttle