This morning I preached from Revelation 22. It seemed that the Lord really used it. Praise Him for the work He does in our hearts through the hearing of His word!
At breakfast we had turtle eggs that were mostly raw! Yum! No kidding they are quite tasty :)
Throughout the day I was able to pretend that I was a medical doctor. People in these villages are constantly battling with parasites, ulcers, and malnutrition. Because of limited quantities, I tried to keep it quiet that I had anti-parasite pills, vitamins and antibiotics but when the brothers realized that I was giving out medicine word spread quickly and soon the lines started to form. It was great to help these needy people :)
This afternoon I preached from Genesis 3-5. People listened well but I felt powerless as the seed seemed to fall on many hard hearts. Later that evening we moved the meeting out in the street, where I got up on a chair and preached from Mark 8:34-38. This time many seemed to be convicted of sin and drawn to the Savior. Only God knows what happens in the hearts of men! We finished the day with a video of Bert and Colleen Elliot's memorial service.
There are a lot of fish in the river right now. If you watch the shore at certain spots you can see literally hundreds of fish jumping out of the water at the same time. We even had two fish jump right into our boat as we motored along.
To give you an idea of what the convention schedule is like... Today went like this:
From 5-6 a.m Prayer and praise
From 6-7 I preached on knowing God (Lucas 10:39)
From 7-8 Breakfast
From 8-9 Brother Jairo taught on Daniel chapter 9.
From 9-10 Brother Neil taught against witch-craft.
From 10-11 We split into small groups, one of which I led (eschatology)
From 11-12 Question and answer panel
From 12-1 Lunch
From 1-3 Free-time (during which we played soccer and swam in the river)
From 3-4 Brother Neil taught against witch-craft
From 4-5 Brother Jairo taught on Daniel chapter 9
From 5-7 Dinner
From 7-10 I preached at the evangelistic meeting (Ezekiel 7:8-9)
That is what the hour by hour plan looked like these last couple of days. Pretty much every spare moment at free-time or meals was spent with individual brothers in mutual encouragement and council. We must make the most of every day! Praise God for these strategic moments with His key servants in this region!
The majestic Andes mountains sloping down into the Amazon Jungle is a spectacular sight to see as you dodge huge whirlpools and shoot the rapids of the Haullaga river. Fifteen brothers and I were on our way to the bi-annual convention of river churches. These conferences are always encouraging and looked forward to with great anticipation. Brothers and sisters come from the surrounding villages excited about the Bible teaching, worship and fellowship that takes place.
After a few hours in the boat we spent another hour or so in a 4x4. Mud flew, the truck lurched and we all hung on for dear life as our driver sped us down the bumpy dirt road. Finally, we arrived at the village where the conference was to take place: “Papa Playa”.
We made it safe and sound... but not without stiff necks, sunburned arms and a thick coating of dirt on our heads :) It was fun to be greeted by the crowds of precious brothers and sisters awaiting our arrival. We got cleaned up as fast as we could and went straight to the first meeting. I preached Mark 14 to about 300 riveted people. The Lord seemed to really work. We trust in God's promise that His word will not return
void!
Wow. So much has happened since we last wrote... where to begin...?
We kept on thinking of writing an update, but alas thinking about writing is not the same as writing and even though you were all constantly in our thoughts, and though perhaps it is mostly true that it's the thought that counts, sitting down to write is actually quite helpful in the process and that's where we kept getting stuck... no time even to sit... until this week. So, here I am... sitting. rambling. um... right. on with the update already. :)
[feel free to omit the above portion of this correspondence when publishing in church prayer letters... ;) heheh]
December brought with it all the normal holiday busyness, in addition to a regional convention of river churches, and the packing of our entire household for storage, and tying up loose ends at church as we'll be away for a good number of months (here in Trujillo and Lord willing in the US), and in the midst of all the rest, entertaining visitors from the coast for a week (our beloved co-workers from IBEM in Trujillo & family),... well, surely you can imagine how much homeschooling we accomplished last month... uh huh. :)
We had to be out of the house we'd been renting, as well as arrive in Trujillo for classes by the end of the first week in January. After some car trouble, which did necessitate spending the night at a hotel practically in the middle of no where, we did eventually arrive in Trujillo safe and sound. Upon arrival, we made up for lost time by eating Papa John's pizza right away. :) of course.
That first week, Micah taught a class on how to preach for the students in Capacitacion Biblica, and will be teaching a class on parenting to the IBEM students this coming week. The first weekend in February, he'll be traveling back to the jungle for two weeks to participate in the Capacitacion Biblica in Yurimaguas as well as to take advantage of visiting the church in Tarapoto.
Lord willing, we anticipate being able to travel to the States towards the middle/end of March. We look forward to giving a report of what we've seen and experienced of the Lord's work here as well as catching up personally with many of you. If you're interested in letting us talk your ear off hearing more about our ministry in person, please be in contact with us about dates and times. It's gonna be great! ;)
Until then,
Micah & Amy Tuttle {and family}
Last week I (Micah) spent five days in the village of Huimbayoc [wim-bye-YOKE] where we had the bi-anual convention. About 300 believers came from the surrounding villages to worship the Lord and study His word together. This is always an exciting, yet exausting time for me as I try to maximize my time with the brothers. I taught from the scriptures for 5 hours each day, had many personal meetings with leaders of the different assemblies, marked out time for one-on-one evangelism, preached open air a few times and corrected about 75 Emmaus Bible courses that the brothers handed in.
The assembly here in Tarapoto is doing well and many were encouraged as we just recently baptized eight new believers. We have had many ups and downs in this new work over the last two years but recently we've been encouraged that some of the believers are showing signs of maturing, including taking more responsibility. The building project is progressing little by little and in the last few weeks we have advanced a lot with the wiring, finish work and painting. We thank the Lord for this provision.
Our entire family is doing wonderfully well and we've all enjoyed the special events surrounding Christmas. We want to send a special thank you to all of you that sent us Christmas presents or money this year!
Lord willing, the following are our plans for the next few months. Many of you know, that the owners of the house we've rented for the past two years, have need of their house. So, we are once again in the midst of packing up and preparing our things for storage. We plan to go to Trujillo where I will be teaching some classes in IBEM, and then in Februrary the family will stay in Trujillo while I travel back to this area to help at “Capacitacion Biblica” in Yurimaguas. Somewhere around mid-March we plan to travel to the States and hope to be able to visit many of YOU over the summer!! We will be posting a schedule of where we'll be and when in the coming months. Or, you can get in touch with us by sending us an e-mail - thetuttletribe (at) gmail (dot) com
After 5 hours in the back of a 4x4 truck eating dust and getting burnt in the hot sun we finally arrived in Yarina where I promptly found tremendous relief by jumping into the river. Without delay our team of six believers headed down river in a canoe (two more hours) until we came to the village of Huimbayoc where our bi-anual convencion of river churches would take place for the next 4 days. About 350 brothers and sisters from 30 different villages showed up with great joy and anticipation (these conventions are a real highlight for the believers every six months).
Myself and two other expositors preached a total of 9 hours of meetings each day. It was an excellent time of fellowship and encouragement as everyone always comes with a real hunger to learn from God's word. I took with me 15 Bibles, 35 hymnals, 5 sistematic theology's, and 400 tracts to sell at a reduced prices and everything was sold out by the second day (the bretheren are always begging for Bibles, hymnals and any theological book that they can get their hands on).
At meal times we drank plenty of chicha and ate lots smoked majaz to go with our bananas that had been cooked in the ashes. On Sunday I had a great time preaching in the river and then baptizing 13 new believers. The whole time I was in the water there were schools of small piranas swarming me, all the while I could feel them nipping at my fingers and toes with their sharp teeth (if your not bleeding you have nothing to worry about, they just like to tickle you a bit). Thank you all who prayed for this event. It was a great time of learning and encouragement for all.
-Micah for the Tuttles
PS. Pray for us as we're leaving for our 2-day trip to Trujillo, right after I hit send! ;)
Micah returned Monday afternoon from June's river convention dirty and tired as is normal. He got back early while the kids and I were out on one of our very rare outings, so he broke into our house and was able to get all cleaned and unpacked before we got back. Surprise!
I've put a slideshow up in the sidebar with a lot of pictures, but I thought I'd give you a link here to the pictures taken on this latest trip. (Click here, or on the picture below to see the whole album.)
To see all our ministry photos online click here.
A few days before Christmas, Micah returned from the wild; that is, the bi-annual convention of the churches from along the upper Huallaga River. The conference was held in Yarina, a village of perhaps 1000 inhabitants. The aforementioned village being basically overrun for three days by more than 300 church goers from other villages around the area. Micah reports that his talks went really well. He says, “I started out by offending the fathers, exhorting them to love their wives more. I went on to offend the mothers, reminding them of their duty to respect their husbands. Last but not least, I offended the children by speaking to the parents of the urgent need to consistently discipline their children.” Quite despite this, they seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the topic!
Micah traveled with nine of the believers from the church here on Thursday, all of whom slept together in one room; Micah inside his little tent. Sure it's hot, but at least you can zip everyone out for a few moments here and there for some sermon preparation or momentary relief of constant curious onlookers! One afternoon, Micah jumped into the river and was bitten by a flesh eating fish! And he, of course, PROUD of this! I'm just glad he arrived home alive and in one piece. If you care to read some unsettling information about these fish – follow these links:
http://fishindex.blogspot.com/2008/06/candiru.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru
http://animal.discovery.com/fish/river-monsters/candiru-catfish/
At the end of the conference, there was a meeting of church leaders in which one of the official points of discussion was none other than our very own Micah Tuttle. Yikes. That's enough to make one squirm a little. One's mind tends to run with that kind of information. Even as Micah was recounting the story to me, I was on pins and needles to hear how the topic fleshed out. But, surprised and humbled, he told me that the leaders wanted to purposely acknowledge and publicly recognize our family's sacrifice and dedication to the Lord's work in this area. They expressed their deeply felt gratitude for us having moved here to work with and encourage the churches in this region. Wow. Praise the LORD. It was definitely He who brought us here. What more can we say, it seriously is not of ourselves... Life here is less than convenient, it's not comfortable most of the time, and we certainly have had some down days. But His mercies are new EVERY morning. Great is YOUR faithfulness, O God. How to express the awesomeness of a God so faithful, so true? He will never fail us.
Please continue to pray for the work here. We SO need Him to continue to equip us, weak as we are in many areas, so that His body will be fed and nurtured. Pray that He would knit us together in love, together with all the saints and foster in us a willingness to be poured out on His behalf. Pray that we would cling to Him, keeping our gaze fixed on Himself, for we cannot bear the burden alone.
Thank you for your faithful intercession, your loving thoughts and kind notes. Thank you to each of you who have sent gifts this past year, and specifically those for the building project. We are looking forward to seeing much new growth in the coming year!
Amy for the Tuttles
PS. Unfortunately, something has cracked inside our less-than-a-year-old point and shoot camera, and so Micah was unable to take pictures of this event! We're so very sorry! We know you love the pictures!
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
Dear friends and family,
The cold fog swirled in around us as we rode our horses higher and higher up into the majestic Andes mountains. Javen, Cullen, myself and a few friends from Trujillo were on our way to the mountain village of "Chonta Alta". This village is situated at about 11,000 ft. above sea level and has an absolutely amazing view of towering peaks, emerald green valleys and fascinating rock formations. It is in that setting that we would spend the next 3 days preaching, teaching and distributing Bibles, clothes and medicine. 
When we finally rode into camp we were greeted by about 200 brothers and sisters that had recently arrived from the surrounding villages (some having walked for more than six hours in order to hear the teaching). After we had shaken hands with countless people and eaten a fine meal of guinea pig and potatoes we quickly launched into a short five hour evangelistic meeting. That night we slept (tried to sleep) on hard boards in quite cold temperatures. The conference had officially begun!
The next day Steve Twinem (Canadian missionary friend) Ruben Quispe (Peruvian missionary friend) and myself (American missionary friend) took turns preaching in an accumulative 10 hours of meetings. Javen and Cullen had a good time being missionaries-in-training and helped in many ways. They participated by helping to teach the "campesino kids" a few songs, helped with the Bible story lessons, hiked all around the countryside with the other kids and ate Pringles and Oreos in the tent while I suffered through sheep guts soup in the church. It was a great time (besides the vomiting and headaches from altitude sickness) and the boys were saying that they want to go again at the next opportunity :)
Thank you for praying.
-Micah for the Tuttle's
See a video I made up there by clicking or copy/pasting this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCo3XLmd31w
More photos here:
http://tuttlekids.com/Gallery/chonta08
See pictures and a video on facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=543382702#/video/?of=543382702
To receive this message in your e-mail, join our electronic mailing list here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tuttletidbits/
**Originally posted on Manifold Musings of a Missionary Mom blog which has been moved here: A Pilgrim's Project My husband is very cool. He is a missionary. He knows Jesus. He LOVES to share. Micah is an evangelist.
Every couple of months Micah rounds up several young guys to accompany him, they load up the Tuttle Trooper, and drive several miles out into the Andes mountains of Peru. We're talking about some pretty isolated places, while some places you can get to with a 4x4 vehicle, others you could only arrive at by donkey. Out there in these places he finds a regular sized group gathered of poor campesino people who want to know more about following Jesus. These gatherings are planned ahead of time to take place several times a year in different places. Many of them are the leaders of their small isolated churches, while others are just people who are hungry for more truth from God's Word.
Once at the "conferences", they usually stay 2-3 days depending on how long it takes to get there. The sleeping arrangements are "roughing it" to say the least, and the food is quite simple. Sometimes they sleep on benches, other times on the dirt floor, or just outside. But every time Micah comes back, he is very encouraged by the men's response to what they've learned. What fun to see people excited to hear God's truth!
This time around, Micah told us about the plates and plates of rice and lentils they gave him. Just when he managed to down one plate... they gave him another. Their feelings would be hurt if he turned them down, so on he trudged. Let me vouch for him here, it isn't that the food is bad, it is just SO plain. No meat, no sauce, no salt, no lime, no flavor. Just rice, just lentils. He is so brave! As usual, he was astounded at these campesino men. They are much smaller than he is, and yet they eat WAY more!
Another interesting thing he told us was, while he was sitting next to one of the guys he took with him, his buddy found a scorpion in his stuff!! Yikes. The campesinos went on to tell him the scorpion's sting is about 5x worse than a severe bee-sting! Does not sound pleasant. After asking around, just about everyone who had come to the conference could attest to being stung by one of these scorpions. This news somewhat dissuaded my kids from wanting to go "next time".
This is just a little bit of what my husband does as a missionary, for those of you who are interested.
Amy
PS- our website: www.thetuttletribe.blogspot.com |
Monday, May 1, 2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by Anonymous (67.133.162.80) |
| Yikes! Scorpions in the food! Here in Colorado we have scorpions too but never in the food--just one on the kitchen floor last summer! |
Monday, May 1, 2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by nsremom (71.32.254.253) |
| I loved hearing about the every day workings of a missionary. That's something I obviously don't do but love hearing about....That sounds corny, but I'm inspired by stories of people doing the everyday things while all the while...those things are extraordinary if you dwell on them. Cool guy you've got. |
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 - Thanks for the enlightenment! |
| Posted by EEEEMommy (69.175.131.81) |
| I do appreciate hearing how mission work is actually accomplished! |
Thursday, May 4, 2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by CTdittmar (24.145.215.42) |
| Really enjoyed hearing all of this. It's wonderful to have brave and adventurous men who love to serve the Lord Jesus. What a gift to have a husband who is surrendured to Christ! How exciting to support him in his endeavors! |
Friday, May 5, 2006 - eating |
| Posted by Jimmie (222.210.199.121) |
| Yeah, how do they do that? Chinese folks are the same. Tiny, tiny, but man can they eat! And the whole forcing you to eat more. OH, man! I'm about to explode and they just keep piling it on. Here they will use their own chopsticks go chose food and put it in MY bowl. I'm used to it now. |
