BELEN & Iquitos, PERU

Along the banks of the Peruvian Amazon, nearly 1,000 pastors and their wives gathered from many small towns and villages along the Amazon, some traveling days by peke-peke boat, to attend their very first pastors meeting ever. Many were so poor, that they testified that this was the only formal training they had received in their lives; and we were able to distribute 300 Bibles to those pastors who never owned a Bible.

Belen is not without a Savior.

While holding a pastors’ school in a neighboring town, God opened our hearts to the little village of Belen, a primitive village along the banks of the Amazon, an intake town for native Amazonians to learn to survive in modern civilization. Belen is abject poverty at its worst, with no adequate clean water supply, widespread hunger and rampant disease.

Everyone had a pretty emotional response after seeing the level of poverty in existence at Belen. You would have to see it to believe it.

There is rare opportunity for education or employment. God assigned SCHAMBACH FOUNDATION to unite the pastors of Belen into weekly prayer meetings, and in just 4 months, together we celebrated “Christmas in Belen.” God used SCHAMBACH FOUNDATION to bring 600 pairs of shoes for the children, a celebration in the center of the town with Christmas bread and hot chocolate, and 6 outboard motor canoes called “peke-peke” boats to help the pastors reach their children when the Amazon overflows.

SCHAMBACH FOUNDATION is now welcome there at any time to minister the Good News of Jesus, because Belen has felt the mercy and compassion of Jesus touching their community.

It's amazing how the citizens of Iquitos wanted the flyers we were handing out. As we looked out over Iquitos we were taken back as we saw the poverty all around. Little did we know what we thought was poverty was actually a middle class area.