I recently had the opportunity to travel to Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil. My work sent me to write a story about people who live in remote areas of the Amazon Basin. Many of them have no churches, Bibles or other believers among them. Through this story we hope people will pray that the Gospel will penetrate these hard to reach places. Here are a few photos from my journey. The picture above shows me in a village in Ecuador. This particular village has a Catholic church, but most of the people believe in spirits and visions that come from taking drugs and camping out near waterfalls. This may sound crazy to most of us, but this is a common belief among many remote people groups in the Amazon.
To the left you see the media team I went with (from left to right "Hollywood," "Billy Graham," Me and Guntherific). They were a great group of guys to travel with and did excellent work filming and documenting our adventure and the people of the Amazon Basin. 
We did a lot of traveling on the river. There were some of the prettiest canyons and waterfalls I've ever seen. Locals told us the water we were in (to the right) had a depth the distance of a football field. I'll never forget how green the mountains were and the blackness of the water. It was an incredible week. 
No we're not in the desert. We're on a sandbar off the Amazon River in Colombia. "Hollywood" took this shot to the left (and all but one of the photos I've posted from the trip.) This one has to be my favorite. I think it captures the challenge of getting to some of these hard to reach places. Our days were full of long hikes and hours on a boat. One day (after four hours of traveling up river) we had to turn back because the water was too low and the current nearly flipped our boat. It truly is a jungle out there. 
When we did get to the villages, we met amazing people. But most of them still are without the hope of Jesus Christ. Most were friendly and enjoyed showing us around their village and telling us about their culture and what they believe in. One day a couple of them wanted to ask questions about American culture. They asked us what Americans believed about religion and God. They were shocked to hear that there are many who do not believe in anything. This is a foreign concept to most of the people of the Amazon who believe in many Spirits and gods.
And of course you can't visit the Amazon without running into a variety of wildlife. On this trip we saw monkeys, pink river dolphins, Mccaws (I think this is how you spell it. Think parrot with lots more color), crazy butterflies with all the colors of the rainbow and bugs with pinchers the size of Kansas. It was a great trip, and I'm blessed to be able to tell stories about what God is doing around the world. Hope you enjoyed the pics.
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