Weeping, Rejoicing and Reaping in the Uttermost Parts of The Earth

Amazonian Wednesdays 🌴

I wrote up this family history in September 2002, a little over a year after my marriage to Israel:

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The children of the village, their brown toes stirring absently in the river bank mud, stand by curiously in the smoldering sunlight as the boatmen carry a dilapidated burden off of the boat. In a hammock carried between four of them is the weakened figure of a man. It is José Arimborgo, stricken gravely with malaria in the midst of his travels around the Peruvian Amazon. Little do these small gawking eyes know that this man has come to bring a message that will transform their lives forever…

1978, Lima, Peru. A very long, very arduous, and very rewarding journey began. Two young Peruvian Christians named José and Carmen Arimborgo felt the call of God on their hearts to preach the gospel in the Amazon jungle. Immediately, they sold their large house, new car, and two pieces of land, and gave most of the money to a church they had recently planted in Lima. Having been disowned by much of their family for their decision to serve the Lord, they set their faces forward. Soon they were crossing the Andes by bus and then boarding a cargo boat to arrive in Iquitos, the capital city of the jungle region named Loreto. An apostle named Samuel Five had promised to support them financially in Iquitos until they got on their feet.

Eight months later, Samuel Five died in a plane crash. Within a few months, the Arimborgo family was kicked out of the house Five’s organization had provided for them. They spent the night on the street and then moved into a makeshift dwelling that some compassionate but poor Christians bought for them. With a dirt floor underneath and a rusty tin roof overhead, the Arimborgos began working on their own for the Lord, convinced that He had sent them there in spite of finding themselves suddenly very alone. They began raising up a church in the unevangelized farmland area where they had been given their home.

Though the Lord later brought them into a less stressful living situation, life was not easy in those early years. When rainforest storms would flood the area, the family members often found themselves wading in a foot and a half of water in the midst of their home, chasing away water snakes with a broom and trying to avoid the sewage that seeped in along with the flood waters. They often suffered health problems related to overexposure to moisture, and frequently could only afford to eat a meager portion of rice, beans, and bananas once a day.

“Only the courageous inherit the kingdom of heaven,” the Arimborgos often told themselves. They would pull their four sleepy young ones off of their blankets where they were spread out sleeping on plywood boards and have candlelit devotions at four or five in the morning each dawn. Though they were often sewing with tears, the Lord began to prosper the work of their hands.

As numbers were added to the church they were planting, the members would ask José and Carmen to go to the villages where their family members lived and preach the gospel to them. José began to travel along the rivers of the jungle to these villages and evangelize. He began a system where he would spend two months at a time in a particular area of the jungle. He would find two men that were noticeably hungry for the things of God, take them along, and go door-to-door witnessing in all the villages in the area, discipling the two men intensely along the way. The three would invite all the villagers to an evening meeting, where they would preach the Word of God corporately. Soon a church would be established in each village and José would leave the two new disciples in charge of itinerating around the village churches in the area until pastors could be trained to lead each congregation.

Within five years, thirty churches had been born. José and those he was discipling would travel tirelessly to visit the baby congregations, building them up in the faith. He would hold seminars in as many places throughout the jungle as he could, striving to multiply himself in as many ways as possible. He would take his children with him, traveling for thirty days at a time, stopping in villages along the way. Often going by canoe, they would row for a day and a half, stop for a two-day visit, sleep in the canoe, and then row on again.

The Arimborgo team constantly faced danger as they moved from place to place: the possibility of drowning when angry Amazon rainstorms would surprise them during travel, of being bitten by poisonous snakes, and of being infected with tropical diseases. They narrowly escaped death more times than they could remember. At one point José had to be carried out of his boat in a hammock, gravely stricken with malaria. As soon as he was mostly recovered, he was on his feet again, working tirelessly to spread the gospel.

Another time he was cutting grass with a machete to clear ground for the construction of a new church building. His blade slipped and sliced into the center of his palm, nearly severing his thumb. An oil company doctor working in the area sewed him up, and that day he was preaching for the opening of the new church, his wounded hand tucked in between two buttons of his shirt.

In ten years, the thirty churches had grown to sixty. At this point, God began opening doors to ministry among the tribal people tucked deep into the jungle. One by one, He brought laborers to the Arimborgos who had a heart to specialize in working with these natives in their various languages and cultures. Since that time, the Arimborgos’ ASIEL (ASociación de Iglesias del Evangelio Libre, or “Association of Free Gospel Churches”) church association has grown to include around thirty tribal churches as well. Including those thirty, hundreds of churches have been born as a result of the efforts of the Arimborgos and those God has brought alongside to labor with them. Having sown often in suffering, they have returned carrying sheaves. Truly the team has much to rejoice over.

What has been the secret to the Arimborgos’ success? The power of God. As the Arimborgo team has traveled through the jungle preaching the gospel, signs and wonders have followed. When José would lay hands on sick people, nearly all of them were healed. The power of the Holy Spirit, working through him, would set many free of problems as small as a fever and as big as cancer. In an area of the world where many villagers look to witches to help them with their day-to-day problems, oppression by the forces of evil was common. José would frequently be called upon to cast demons out as well. As a result of José’s ministry, today two men who previously were completely out of their mind due to spiritual oppression are healed and serving the Lord as pastors in ASIEL churches.

You may wonder what José and his team are up to these days. Although he is fifty-six years old at this point, he is still going strong. His latest project, one he has been dreaming about for years, is a Missions School, situated about an hour’s drive outside of Iquitos. This school opened its doors on May 15th of this year, beginning classes with eleven students.

These students are being trained to go out into the jungle and start even more churches! At this point only about thirty percent of the villages of the Peruvian Amazon jungle have been reached with the gospel, so the Arimborgos’ hearts are burning for the Lord of the harvest to send out more laborers. José and his family are convinced that the school will grow quickly and soon will be sending out dozens of new church planters each year. As a result, dozens of very long, very arduous, and very rewarding journeys are soon to begin.