The Amazon Basin is laced with small tributaries winding through swaths of verdant jungle. Along these secret byways live some of the Earth’s most isolated people groups, hiding away to protect themselves from outsiders and hostile tribes. These secluded peoples have not heard of life and peace in Jesus. It is difficult to find them, but Christ sends his people to seek them, as the shepherd seeks his one lost sheep.
Through your gifts to the Amazon Basin Ministry, IMB missionaries will travel into the Amazon with national partners on an arduous journey to find remote villages and share the gospel. They will travel by motorboat, prop plane, or canoe, sometimes several weeks one-way to find these people groups. Your partnership enables them to establish relationships, identify the language, and learn the culture of these isolated peoples, all to effectively communicate the gospel of Christ.
Your prayers prepare the way, and your financial gifts fuel the mission to reach the Amazon Basin’s 100-plus people groups who have not heard the gospel. In the picture of heaven from Revelation 7:9, there are people from each yet-unreached Amazon group within the multitude worshipping Christ Jesus, who spared no effort to reconcile them to God.
Opportunities Abound. Through your generosity, missionaries are training and equipping local leaders to share the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches. Amazon people are oral learners, meaning they prefer hearing information instead of reading, but most Bible training and seminaries are in literate formats. As a result, we have developed trainings specifically for oral learners.
Orality Transforms Evangelism. In one of the more recent orality trainings, 15 local indigenous people—some of the only believers among their people—took part in the training. They learned how to internalize and share stories from God’s Word so they can evangelize and disciple others. Seeing these participants learn so quickly using a format they understood was powerful. They were excited about this oral method and anxious to take the gospel to their people. One of the participants said, “It is time for us to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to our parentes (relatives) who have not heard the gospel yet!” Along with us and our IMB colleagues, many of you have prayed for years to hear a local believer say those words!
Here are ways you can pray for gospel carriers:
Pray for these 15 believers to continue to grow strong in their faith and obedience to Christ.
“As I sit in front of my computer to transcribe a recorded translation of the Creation story and anchor it to Scripture, I think about the person who sent the cell phone recording and the hours of preparation and training that led up to this point. The message was sent from an indigenous believer living in a small river community about 200 miles from my house. Getting there requires a regional flight and a six-hour boat trip. The last time I was in his village, I went with him to visit neighbors’ houses to test the Bible stories. I watched him work with others to determine which local words and phrases worked best and listened to encouraging words from church members as they heard him tell the Bible stories in their language.
I wondered why he continually works so hard on the stories and recordings. It’s because he knows that there are people groups in the jungle around him who have never heard the gospel. He knows that his language is the most similar to those spoken by those groups. So, he presses ahead in the Storying Project. He sacrifices time from his job and joins me in the work. He is one of 30 such indigenous believers from four people groups that partner with me. I am so thankful for the indigenous brothers and sisters who have joined me to develop oral Scripture resources for making disciples among the peoples of the Amazon Basin. I push play and keep typing to start the next step of the process. The unreached of the Amazon are waiting!
Prayer Requests
• Please pray that these stories from God’s Word will be sown in the Amazon and bring forth a harvest in God’s kingdom.
• Pray that the Indigenous workers have the strength and health to prepare the stories and that they will be faithful to God’s Word.
• Pray for those who have not yet heard the good news so that when these evangelistic stories arrive, they will fall on good soil that will bring forth a harvest! 
Andean peaks, Mayan ruins, Amazonian rainforest, Patagonian glaciers, and Caribbean white-sand beaches: South America is a land of exploration and diversity that commands your attention and captivates your senses. The people of Latin America and the Caribbean are known for their lively spirit. South America is home to thirteen of the world’s 100 most populous cities and these urban dwellers face challenges such as poverty, long work days, addictions, and broken families.
The Americas have a rich heritage of Christian missions, yet more than 550 million people here are living without Jesus. Indigenous cultures have intermixed so thoroughly with Christian beliefs that many traditional churches are void of any knowledge of the gospel. Of the 1003 people groups in the Americas, 178 are unreached and unengaged.
Ask God to give wisdom to IMB missionaries as they disciple local believers, develop leaders, and engage in human needs ministries to draw people to Christ.