Digging deeper - some of the extraordinary things experienced on our trip to the Amazon
I believe with all my heart that the trip to the Amazon has little to do with digging wells. In the story of the multiplication of the fishes and the loaves found in the gospels is the story primarily about 5 loaves and two fishes? Or does it have more to do with the provision of God, and the capability of Jesus to take a small offering and do great and wondrous things with it?
From the very beginning of our trip, again and again we heard prayers, and declarations that we wanted more than just to do ‘humanitarian’ work. We wanted not just physical thirst, but that the Lord would quench the deepest longings of the heart - the thirst for God.
But that is a spiritual matter, not one that we in our humanity can impact apart from the work of God in the soul of a man. We wanted out modest offering of fresh water to be multiplied and to become in the Satare people a well spring of ‘Living Water’. Many times through the days on the river we prayed and trusted that Jesus could take this small work and have it touch the people in a way that would open their hearts to salvation.
The man pictured here is a very important person. He is the chief of the Satare tribe where we dug our well. His word in this village is law. He has the authority among his people to open doors and to shut them, in so far as it concerns the tribe.
Our coming to this tribe was an extension of an earlier visit made 2 years
before. At that time we made a commitment to come back and to dig a well among the Satare. I didn’t realize at the time there were other ‘things’ at play. Unknown to me the Satare had stories passed down through generations about people who would come to help the Satare. Were these some kind of ‘prophecies?’ I can’t say. All I know is that the Satare have these stories… stories about white people coming, people who would come and help the Satare people.
Move the story ahead to this most recent visit. At a certain point in our time with this tribe Ben requested an interview with the chief and sat down with translators to ask him questions about the tribe and about their feelings concerning our visit and the well project. In the course of this conversation, either at this time or some time earlier we heard the chief express some things that were amazing. One of the things that the he told us was this - He believed that we were the people that his ancestors had told them would come. We were those people who would come and bring real help and change to the Satare people. Wow.
At a certain point in Ben’s interviewing of the chief he asked him what he thought about our having come to dig the well. Now remember that the team had been asking God to make the well something more than just a well, and that we had been thinking and mediating on the image of water in the Word (this is a backdrop to what I am about to tell you). The chief responded to Ben’s question in this way - ‘We believe that God has brought you here because Jesus wants to make sure than no one is ever thirsty without a chance to drink.’ We just about dropped our teeth. Remember, this guy is not a Christian. He was speaking without the benefit of a relationship with Christ. He was speaking the very thing we had been praying God would do with our simple offering - open the door to the deeper truth of Jesus, the living water.
We believe that God is opening the door for a church to be planted in this village. We still have some further
follow up work to do here, and some of that involves some improvements to the well we dug that will allow it to better serve the needs of this community. We have brothers and sisters on the ground, within reach of the village who can continue the work we began. We also have the ongoing opportunity to invest in this work, and it is an investment that will bring a return in new life and further opportunity to reach these people for Christ. In my next post I will share with you the most thrilling thing that occurred in our time in the Amazon, and how God has opened the door to raise up an indigenous leadership that will reach the Satare indians and beyond…
August 16th, 2008 at 12:03 am
dear God.