Jungle Technology

A couple of years ago I began recording Shawi worship on my phone.  There were new church plants at the time and they were asking for help. When these new churches would meet they were unsure what to do. Can you imagine a group of new believers meeting together? Most do not know how to read or own a Bible and no one knows hymns or worship songs.  So one evening Lucy and I recorded a Shawi pastor and his wife singing a handful of worship songs and then the pastor gave a short message encouraging the new believers. We combined the content with some Spanish songs I had and began distributing it on USBs and SD cards. Here in the jungle most of the people own battery powered radios and all the radios play USBs or SD cards so it made it easy to distribute the music. The new churches could now meet, listen to the pastor’s message and worship along with the music. And they loved it.

From there it began to pick up steam. I continued recording music and messages in Shawi and they continued to ask for more. Many of the believers sit around after dark or early in the morning and listen to worship music on their phone. I often have people give me the SD card out of their phone so I can take it back to Yurimaguas and load it with worship music from my computer.

Yes the Shawi have phones. That is the world we live in now. There are more people in the world who have mobile phones than there are people with access to a flushing toilet. Technology is cheap. Toilets are expensive.

Thanks to Maple City Chapel we were able to purchase an awesome tool while back in the states, a pocket WIFI device. It is essentially wireless internet but you control the content. Now instead of swapping SD cards they can log onto the device and stream or download content directly from it. It is full of worship music, the Jesus Film, messages, and the Bible both in text and audio. The content is in Shawi and in Spanish.  Right now one of the devices is in a remote village two days up river where new believers gathered together to celebrate New Year’s. It is cool to think about all these new believers that are getting access for the first time to the Bible, or sitting around late at night watching the Jesus Film.

Anyway, I just learned the neatest part of the story this past week. About a year and half ago I was in a village for a church inauguration. A pastor from a remote village who rarely comes to town was there. He speaks very little Spanish and since my Shawi is not very good, I did not have much of a relationship with him. But he is faithful to visit other churches for events such as the inauguration and he always walks. He began to sing that night and it was really good. I had never heard him sing before so I recorded the song he was singing. The song was over 20 minutes long but sounded great so I added it to the content that I distribute. Since that time I have passed the song on to more than 50 people, have shared it with others, and listened to it in church gatherings. Hundreds of people have heard the song.

Last week, one of the guys at the discipleship center was listening to it over and over. I asked him to translate it and he began to tell me the meaning. Most of the songs are taken from an old Shawi hymn book and so I now recognize many of them and even understand some of them but when he began to translate it, I realized it was not from the hymn book. I asked him where the song came from.

He told me that the pastor singing the song had a dream one night. In the dream he could see himself in front of the church singing this song. Then God told him to write down the song and sing it to the churches where he visits. So the pastor woke up at 4:00am and wrote the song. It is a powerful song about God’s love for us. It has a message for men, women and children. It talks about a wide range of things and quotes scripture. It is a 20 minute sermon, put to song, given by God.

I was floored by the message. It was powerful and moved me. But then I thought about how God had orchestrated everything. He gave the pastor the song, he had me record it and now it has gone out and hundreds have heard it. And thanks to the pocket WIFI devices, hundreds more will hear it.

Only God can orchestrate such a beautiful thing. Only God can take a pastor of a small church in the middle of the jungle and use his voice to impact hundreds of people. Only God can give me the tools to distribute His message without me even knowing! He is sovereign and He has an amazing plan.

As Job said:

I know that you can do all things;

No purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Job 42:2