You may have heard me mention mazato. I had to drink some the other day. Mazato is the famous fermented yucca spit juice that many of the jungle peoples of Peru drink. The villagers may be quite offended if you refuse their prized beverage. So I recommend taking at least a small swig.

Yucca, manioc in English, is a root grown and eaten all over Peru. Its texture is somewhat like a big potato. Most people boil it but we prefer it fried. In the jungle villages, the preferred yucca preparation is chewing it up and spitting it into a batán (a wooden canoe-shaped trough). There it sits for a few days and ferments into a powerful mash of manioc madness. When it's good and frothy, just add a little water and then guzzle it down.

Many of the villagers drink it as if it was Red Bull or some kind of energy drink. You don't have to get drunk on this stuff, but sadly, many do. Drunkenness has destroyed many, many lives in the villages along the Huallaga river. I often quote Proverbs 23:29-30, "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has redness of eyes? ...He who drinks [mazato in excess]". (MTT-Micah Tuttle Translation).

Here is a video of a woman preparing the mazato mash. Notice how she chews it and spits quite nicely. Only minimal saliva. It's not so bad. :)

Missions quote of the day by Robert C. Shannon:

"Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the action is — where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge."

Micah for the Tuttles

The princess baby Ellia and Queen Amy are doing great! The two other beautiful princesses, Bria and Mya are great helpers, and Amy's mom has also come to be a help for a couple of weeks. With things settled at home, I figured the time had come for the warriors of the family to go out and slay dragons.

Last week, Javen, Cullen, Josiah and I with a few other young men from the church set out on a long and dangerous jungle trek. We walked for 7 hours slogging through the mud, crossing streams, traversing mountains to arrive at the lake 25 kilometers on the other side. It was hot and it was humid. Lots of sweat. Lots of blisters. Lots of perseverance. We ran out of water. We ran out of food. We ran out of energy. But we toughed it out. This was a "man trip". We were out to conquer the jungle - to do hard things - and we were victorious.

When David heard the words: "Give me a man," (1 Sam 17:10) he RAN to fight the giant. (17:51)

Please pray for us as God helps us to raise boys who will become men who RUN to the Lord's battles, slay today's dragons, and through Christ are victorious!

Micah for the Tuttles

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!

Wednesday September 22

This morning I baptized the four people that placed their faith in Christ yesterday. Most of the village gathered around to watch and listen as I preached in the river. It was another good opportunity to preach the gospel. After the baptism we went back to the hut where we were staying and I preached from 1 John on four proofs of genuine Christianity. The believers were very attentive and we had a great question and answer time. Four of the men here bought the Emmaus correspondence courses that I've been pushing everywhere I go. They are showing a real desire to study and prepare themselves to lead this new work!

Three interesting things in this village are:

1. Good hunting: last night one of the men checked his “trampero” (Shotgun set up on a trip-wire) and found that he had shot a wild boar so we've been eating smoked “Sahino” meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yum! 
2. Interminable salt mines (click here, or see video below): The people harvest tons of salt and sell it down river in the “big cities” 
3. A pristine, crystal clear creek: the water cascades down a natural waterslide rock formation into a beautiful pool (just how I imagine the garden of Eden).

At about 3:00 p.m two of the brothers took us down river in their small paddle canoe. They guided us through a few difficult white water spots while Eber and I bailed the water that kept pouring in over the sides. After about an hour of sopping wet excitement we arrived in the next village (Ricardo Palma) where the believers were surprised, but, elated to see us. The message hadn't gotten through to them that we were coming but all the same they stopped everything to receive us. One brother went out to catch some fish for dinner, another went to mill some dried chocolate beans, the sisters got to work boiling plantains and cooking rice and the rest just gathered around as Eber and I sang hymns and read the Bible out loud. Praise the Lord for this opportunity to serve HIM.

This is some video taken on the last trip. [see previous post]
Micah took Bria for 5 days as he visited four of the villages on the Huallaga River.

Here's the video I got from across the street of the crazy bull.
I found a spot across the street and on the far side of a ditch where I hoped I'd be safe... :)

Micah has worked hard this last week and we'd like to share with you a video he made live from the river (literally)...

Dear friends and family,

Javen, Cullen and I got back the other day from our very exciting river trip. Our team of nine people visited five villages in five days as we tried to make the most of our time. In each one of those villages a doctor friend who went along with us set up his clinic and treated the sick form morning till evening. Each day’s ministry consisted of six hours of Bible teaching for the believers, hut to hut evangelism, a children’s meeting, a women’s meeting, a men’s meeting, an elder’s meeting, and an evangelistic open air meeting where most of the villagers came out to listen. There were several professions of faith and in one village I was able to baptized five new believers. Pray with us that they would grow in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The believers took good care of us feeding us their best foods: Wild jungle pig, armadillo, piranha, and big, juicy, furry worms called “Awiwa”. Yum! We slept comfortably (although not very much) in our tents for which I was very thankful. The tent kept out the rats which you could hear scurrying around all night long.

Javen and Cullen had a lot of fun swimming, hiking in the jungle and going on numerous boat rides. They even got to take a shower in a hot water spring waterfall! On the ministry side of things they did great job helping to plan and lead the children’s meetings and also working a bit as the doctor’s assistants.

Thank you for your prayers and your financial support which make it possible to do these things. Please pray especially for my voice that is now suffering the results of preaching for six hour’s each day for six days straight.

John Wesley said: “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go not only to those that need you but to those that need you the most. It is not your business to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance.”

Micah for the Tuttle’s

It was awesome! Have a look/listen:

We're advancing! After several weeks break for the holidays, this week we've begun again to work on the church building. We've received several designated gifts [THANK YOU!!] for that purpose and we're now able to put those funds to use! We should be able to finish the roof, and we're EXCITED! Have a look at the video:



Thanks for your prayers for this! We're hoping to have the roof on and perhaps move services there, even at this rough stage... by the end of this month!!

Are you excited!?


PS. we'll be posting a plethora of pictures muy PRONTO ;)

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

It's finally finished!

You too, can be on the river with Micah Tuttle! Here you go, click the link or copy and paste the following address into your browser bar:





Thank you for all your prayers for us over this last extraordinarily busy month. It will all be over after this weekend... until next month, that is :) heheheh.

Amy for all

Dear friends and family,

Things at the Bible Institute are going well this month. Lots of studying, lots of evangelism and lots of fun. I just finished up with teaching an Apologetics course in which we learned to defend the Christian faith when dealing with Atheists, the cults, and the false religions of the world. After class each day we tried to put things into practice and went into the streets to do some evangelism. In five days we were able to give out more than a thousand tracts and share the gospel with hundreds of people.

Please pray for the remainder February´s classes here in Trujillo and this upcoming week of classes in Yurimaguas while I´m away from Amy and the kids.

-Micah Tuttle

Here's a link to a video we just uploaded onto youtube of the Institute... CLICK HERE or copy and paste the following address into your browser bar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q4zZrG1TqQ

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

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tuttletidbits/