The Amazon jungle is a distant, large, wild place. Yet even along the banks of the Amazon River, Jesus is moving among the people there. Author and speaker, Kelly Minter, has had the opportunity to serve there many times and in this video, she shares some of the lessons she’s learned from the believers living there.
Kelly Minter is an author, speaker, songwriter, and singer. She is passionate about women discovering Jesus Christ through the pages of Scripture. Whether through song, study, or spoken word, Kelly desires to authentically express Christ to the women in a culture where so many are hurting and broken. She is driven to share the healing and strength of Christ through the Bible’s truth.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
I have been to the Amazon jungle almost twenty times in the last 10 years. So I have the opportunity to go at least once, twice, sometimes even three times a year. And it has been so good for me because there are believers that live up and down the Amazon.
The Amazon is over two-thousand miles long. There are thousands and thousands, countless people that live along the banks.
I’ve had the privilege to interact with many of those believers, in particular, a lot of jungle pastors and their wives. These are people that live in total obscurity. And you talk about social media, these people do not have social media accounts. They’re doing ministry in places that most of us don’t even know exist.
It has been so refreshing for me to be able to spend time around them. Probably what has stood to me the most is their prayer life.
You know, here in America so often times we have the opportunity to fall back on our resources. We have money. Or we have doctors. We have lawyers. Or we know people in places that can help us out of situations. Or we can go to the internet. Or we can just go to our own education or what we know.
But when I’m over there, there are so often times where people are up against situations where there is no one who can help them. And so they go to Jesus. They go to Him in a way that is honestly beyond ways that I normally would experience Him. It has been such a challenge to me because they really see Jesus as the answer. They see Him as powerful. They see Him as Savior. They see Him as Healer. They go and they go passionately. And they don’t just go once or twice. They go persistently.
In fact, something that they talk about all the time over there are these prayer campaigns. And they talk about how they get together for prayer campaigns. A prayer campaign might just be that you get together every Thursday from six to nine o’clock at night for a month. Or maybe you get up every morning from six to seven in the morning for thirty days. Any sort of set, focused activity and time of prayer.
It’s just been amazing to see the different things that go on in their lives. It’s been such a challenge for me and has helped step up my prayer life here in the U.S.
I also really am always encouraged by their joy. They have so little and yet they have so much joy. It’s been a conviction for me to realize that the resources and the things, that our media and our culture tells us we have to have to be happy is not true. Yes, there are things that they need and there are things that we need to bring them, but they find an incredible peace, an incredible joy in their relationship with Jesus and in letting other people know about Him.
So it’s been really, really cool to get out of my comfort zone and see how believers live in difficult and impoverished places like the Amazon jungle.
Want to see more from Kelly? Check out some of her other LifeWay Voices posts:
6 Essentials for Spiritual and Emotional Health
When God’s Blessing Takes You On A Different Path
Check out more of Kelly’s resources here.
