Alcoholism Stronghold Broken in Amazonian Village

Amazonian Wednesdays 🌴

Today’s share is a field report that I wrote in August 2002:

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We stood in a circle, slapping mosquitoes and sweating, but extremely pleased. As we held hands interceding on site for the village of Nueva Esperanza, we had received word from a team member that all the laborers in the small alcohol factory behind us had prayed to give their lives to the Lord.

That night, the village church was packed out, fuller than it had ever been before. A spirit of celebration took a hold of us. Having been to this village perhaps ten times to evangelize and prayer walk with teams, I sensed in the Spirit that we had broken through to a much greater level of victory in that area.

My brother-in-law explained to me that the many stills in the area that had previously thrived making alcohol out of sugar cane are suffering greatly in their sales and production. What joy we felt to be seeing direct results to our prayers. One of the worst problems Nueva Esperanza faced was most of their men being lost in alcoholism. Jesus was breaking them free!

This celebration that we held was part of a trip up the Amazon River that we took with ten visiting American brothers and sisters from Arizona and around the same number of Peruvians from our youth ministry and Missions School this last month. We visited two small cities and two villages along the Amazon where we have churches in our network, two of them rather young churches. We saw wonderful fruit.

In the city of Nauta we had a tremendous time of praise, worship, and intercession following an evangelistic outreach. We experienced spiritual breakthrough in a place that has been hard to the gospel for many years. Then, in the town of Tamshiacu, we had a crowd much bigger than ever seen before in previous evangelistic campaigns. In all, we prayed with around 700 people that week to give their lives to the Savior.

On an equally encouraging note, we had two more teams visiting us between the end of June and the month of July, coming from the States of Minnesota, Georgia, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. These two teams focused on evangelism in the city of Iquitos, both in the streets and in government schools.

There is no concern about separation between church and state in Peru, allowing us open doors for ministering in the public school system. Between the two teams, we prayed with over 12,800 people, no exaggeration. We also saw some exciting healings, including the instantaneous shrinking of a tumor.

Loreto, the region within the Amazon jungle where we work, is ripe for the gospel!