More than 14,000 people were reportedly baptized in Brazil's northwestern Amazon region in the first half of this year.
“I and my whole family grew up here. My grandmother, grandfather, my parents lived and died in this house. I was born in this house and I will die here,” said Ramos, 83, who lives in the Amazon. CBN News.
He also said he would rather live in his bamboo house by the river for the rest of his life than sell his house and move to another city in Brazil.
“It's much cooler here than in the city. You can't walk freely in the city – there are so many cars and people it's very dangerous. But here we are free. The windows are open. The doors are always open. I've never faced any danger at my age,” Ramos said.
More than half (60%) of the Amazon rainforest is found in northwest Brazil, spanning more than six million square miles in South America. The approximately 30 million Amazonian people who currently live in the region are experiencing unprecedented regeneration.
“God is everything to me. He is my Father and without Jesus I am nothing,” explained Ramos, who was raised Catholic.
“In the early days, it was definitely a lot harder than it is now,” Pastor Jose Bengtson of Belen Foursquare Church said of mission work in the area.
Bengtsson has been navigating the complex network of rivers for decades, first as a missionary and then as a pastor, spreading the gospel.
“When we first started our mission work in this region, there were only a few workers and in some municipalities pastors had to walk 10 to 15 kilometers to hold congregations,” Bengtsson told CBN News. “Today, almost every medium-sized church in the Amazon has a small boat.”
Bengtsson was instrumental in establishing the first Foursquare church in the Amazon, which now has 3,200 thriving Foursquare churches in the region alone.
“In the first six months of the year, we baptized 14,500 people. Our goal this year is to baptize more than 30,000,” he explained.
Ezequiel Santo, who spent 32 years as a missionary deep in the jungle, shared his experiences sharing the gospel.
“One of the biggest challenges has been the isolation and getting used to living among indigenous and riverine communities,” Santo said, “but God is with us and we have seen lives changed, many have heard the gospel and now we are seeing results.”
He also spoke about the challenges involved in sharing the gospel.
“I'm from Rio de Janeiro, but at the time I didn't have the money for a plane ticket so I had to take a six-day bus ride to Belém, then another six days by boat to the edge of the Amazon basin,” Santo says. “Once there, it took us at least 15 days paddling in canoes, not motorized boats, up the Solimões and Purus rivers to reach the remote communities where we were working. Sometimes it took us as long as 35 days just to reach these remote areas.”
José Eustacío Alves, a prominent Brazilian sociologist, said long-time pastors and missionaries like Santo have had a positive influence on evangelical churches.
“The Catholic Church has a very hard time training new priests, so we often see Catholic Churches in the Amazon lacking priests to lead their congregations,” Dr. Alves said. “Priests go to the Amazon once a month or once a term, often far from the communities, whereas Evangelicals integrate into the communities and train long-term pastors in a short time.”
Today, small evangelical churches are springing up in remote riverside communities.
“I think the recovery we've been waiting for here in Brazil is happening in the Amazon,” Alves said.
Damares Regina Alves, a Brazilian senator and evangelical pastor, believes the movement is a miracle that will reshape spiritual practice and build a sense of community and empowerment.
“For many years, people looked at the Amazon and saw only a river and trees. Today, people are starting to remember that there are people there who need to be cared for, who need to hear the Gospel, who need to have their lives changed. The Church is creating this revolution,” Alves said.
