This story was on my heart a lot last month. It’s one I’ve told a few people in person, but for some reason, I feel it needs to be posted here. I think because living this was when I realized just how personal God is, something I’ve been re-learning these past few months. So I think this is a story I’m supposed to share.
So I hope you enjoy it!
Three weeks after college graduation, I woke up where the Southern Cross lights the night sky, the insects are larger than my head, and toilets, if found, swirl the opposite direction. Just shy of the Equator, I was co-leading a team of 20 for 2 months in the jungles of Peru, on the Maranon and Chambera rivers, both offshoots of the mighty Amazon.
In all, our team would go to 9 villages and stay in each for 4-5 days. While there we did home visits, Bible studies, VBS, sports ministry, and 3-5 hour church services every day (depending on if there was a generator or not).
It took several days to reach our first destination. Travel ranged from flights to buses and finally, a 2 day boat ride against the current of the Amazon River. The sun was hot; I learned when I fell asleep one afternoon on the roof that the Equator demanded respect. The bugs were many and varied, differed according to each village, all with a very loud, somewhat tone-deaf song, and liked to buzz anywhere I was.
It was the most wild and the most alive I’ve ever felt.
*On the river; middle photo is of our boat as we travelled from one village to another.
Other than a satellite phone where we could call out once a week for 5 minutes, we had no contact from the outside world. We lived on, bathed from/in, travelled on, and ate from that river, learning where it was okay to swim and where to avoid sticking limbs in due to biting fish or strong currents. I learned to predict the weather based on the river itself and kept my eyes peeled for pink dolphins, became a master at tying hammock knots, an admirer of different mosquito net configurations, and learned to see in the dark.
I knew I’d made it as an Amazon woman the night we left the jungle and I transversed a path of logs like a balance beam to the river, luggage on top of my head, path lit only by the stars.
Adventure-wise, this was the best trip ever.
*View from first village in Ollanta. My hammock is front left. There’s a triple rainbow in these photos.
Our team had a lot of sickness. More than I’ve ever seen on a trip. And longer lasting injuries. As the leader who couldn’t speak Spanish, I stayed back most of the time.
It started as an accident.
A participant who hurt her knee came up to me on her way back from the bathroom the first day of ministry. “I’m bored,” she said.
I was in the middle of something and suggested the participant pray.
“I already did,” she said. “During quiet time this morning.”
“Good,” I said. “Now, pray for the team as they are out right now. Pray for each person by name. If you are still bored after, you can come back and hang out with me.”
She looked a little unsure, but climbed into her hammock, propped her knee up, twisted the mosquito net around her, and pulled out her Bible. I congratulated myself on saying something I thought my own leaders the year before would have told me.
A little while later, the team came back. We debriefed what happened, and Katie* lit up. “I prayed for that!” she said repeatedly.
Which gave me an idea.
I mentioned it to my co-leaders at our next meeting. We had so many sickies who weren’t mobile but wanted to be in ministry. What if we started an intercession team?
“Perfect,” Ed said. “You get to lead it.”
Crap.
How was I going to lead a 3-hour prayer time when I’d never done that myself?
The next morning, I sat with 5 other people on the floor of our hut and looked around. I explained what we were going to do and told them nothing was off limits. Reading the Bible out loud, singing, being quiet, praying, journaling – we were in this together, whatever it looked like. I opened my Bible to read a Psalm…
…and what seemed like 5 minutes later, heard the footsteps of the team returning.
I can’t tell you what happened in those 3 hours other than that God was worshipped, people at home, on our team, and in the villages were prayed over, the Word of God was read and prayed, songs were sung… the time flew. And again at debrief, we discovered specific things we’d prayed happened.
I was hooked.
One afternoon, my co-leader, Crystal, taught the girls about what it means to be the Bride of Christ. She encouraged them to ask God what it would mean to have that Song of Solomon love for God. I had no clue if anyone else was listening, but that spoke to me. When everyone else went off to ministry, I went and journaled, telling God that it felt weird to ask that but if it was okay, then, please let me love him as his bride.
So, the next few weeks were same same. Village after village. New challenges, new insects, the river telling me when it was going to rain. The same six meals over and over. I smelled like the river; I stopped counting my bug bites and instead focused on honing my ninja-mosquito-killing reflexes.
And every day, more prayer.
We spent 4th of July in a village named after flying ants, where we had to watch for vipers on the way to the squatties (sorry, Mom). A few participants and I spent the better part of a morning filling water balloons through a contraption I rigged (just call me MAcGyver), so as to surprise everyone coming back from ministry.
*Watching VBS from Ollanta and Santa Rosa
Then, Mundial.
Up until now, all of our huts didn’t have walls and most of the roofs were thatched. Yes, this meant creatures lived in them (just don’t look up at night while wearing a headlamp and you won’t see the eyes glittering back at you – simple solution) and there was no privacy, but I had the best view in the world. Being surrounded by the jungle on 3 sides and the river on the 4th, I knew where the team was at all times. Not to mention the much-needed breeze. The hut in Mundial had walls and a tin roof. It was like being in an oven on the Equator. After being stuck in the hut the entire first day, I was miserable.
I never thought I’d be so thankful to not have walls.
*Home away from home in Mundial
That night was even worse. I was sick and kept having to get up to go to the bathroom. Every time I did, roaches scurried around my feet, and at one point, there was a spider with a torso bigger than my big toe on the wall in the walkway (Shelob’s offspring?). I was relieved to see he’d left on the way back, but then I wondered where he went. Our huts were up on stilts and animals lived underneath. This village had dogs who violently fought at all hours, directly underneath our hammocks. I couldn’t sleep, so I pulled out my journal and wrote the hours away. It started with frustration, just how awful and helpless I felt. And it turned into me telling God how much I loved him. What I’d learned through the weeks of constant prayer. How much I longed for him. I wrote and wrote and wrote and still couldn’t say what I was thinking. I didn’t have the words.
When morning came, my co-leader, Crystal, took one look at me, sang a Psalm while rubbing my back, and sent me to the river. “Go be with God,” she said.
Sitting on the bank, I watched the village come to life around me. People fishing, washing clothes and pots, brushing their teeth. Listening to the soothing sound of the water and the questionable sounds of the jungle. Finally I opened my Bible and found the Psalm Crystal had sung over me – Psalm 62. Then I kept going into Psalm 63. And read this:
“Oh God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
On my bed I will remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
VERSE 8: My soul clings to you,
your right hand upholds me.
Psalm 63: 1-8
That was EXACTLY what I spent pages writing the night before – about the depth of my love for him, my dependence on him, my desire for him. It was right there all along.
It took 3 more weeks for me to put 2 and 2 together. I re-read my prayer in Ollanta asking God to let me love him like his bride. And then the night of prayer from Mundial and Psalm 63. It was then I realized: He did it. He answered my prayer!
Back in the States, my mom picked me up from the Atlanta hotel. She dropped me off at home and went back to work. I walked tentatively into the living room and sat down on the carpet. My poodle stared at me quizzically from the couch (after two months of primitive living, the idea of a couch was too much for me) and I looked around, listening. The ticking of the grandfather clock, appliances humming, a neighbor mowing his grass. Talk about culture shock/sensory overload.
On the wall were the posters my brother and I gave my mom on Mother’s Day our kindergarten years: a big white poster with our silhouettes pasted on it, our names below it, the meanings of our names, and a Bible verse.
I stood up to read my brother’s, then looked over at mine.
Kristen – “Follower of Christ” – Psalm 63:8
It was one of those “stick-a-fork-in-me, I’m-done” moments that I’ll never forget.
I was raised in church, went to a Christian school, through an entire Awana program, and graduated from a Christian college. I’d read through the Bible at least 2x. I’d became a Christian as a small child. But I had no memory of that entire chapter, let alone that verse. It took me going to the jungle, spending 8 weeks in intense intercessory prayer, and a pretty cool moment by the river after the worst night of my life… only to find out that this verse had been spoken over me as a 5-year-old and had been on my living room wall for 18 years.
A verse that answered the deepest prayer of my heart in a way only God could.
I think that was the moment when I realized for the first time what it meant that Jesus loves me.
People often ask me where is my favorite place I’ve been. I can’t answer that completely. There are trips that were incredible, teams that rocked, ministries I’ve connected to and feel committed to for the rest of my days on earth. There are cultures whose food I could eat every day, languages I would love to learn, places I’d love to return to, countries I’d love to live in, nations constantly on my heart because of their need for Christ. Memories I still laugh at; stories I love to tell.
But for me, the Amazon Jungle, Peru, is where I met God in a definitive, life-changing way.
In the old Testament people placed markers or altars in places where they met with God. In my life, there is a marker by the bank of that river. My relationship with him changed dimension there; became a part of my very breath.
Well, actually, that verse says it best – my soul clings to him.
And of all things – He wrote it on a wall.
