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You won't find Pucallpa, Peru—a jungle town on the Ucayali River—on the jet set's list of top-ten tourist attractions. Yet Pucallpa is the hub of evangelical missionary activity in the Peruvian Amazon. It is a jungle base for such major agencies as the Wycliffe Bible Translators—related Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the South American Mission, and the Swiss Indian Mission.

What they do in Pucallpa is coordinate jungle missions. Hearing those words, most Americans visualize deadly snakes, lurking dangers, and a fair-skinned missionary neck-deep in boiling water. Yet, while there are still snakes and dangers, jungle missions have become a lot more complicated since the pith-helmet days. I traveled there to update our stereotypes: what are jungle missions really like?

My host was a long-time friend, Roger Marquez, a native from the Peruvian Shipibo tribe, and a jungle missionary. Roger and his wife, Rebeca, serve as missionaries to the Shipibo church under a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation in Lima. After the 50-minute flight from Lima to Pucallpa, photographer Samuel Nieva and I spotted Roger just outside the airport terminal. He greeted us, apologizing that he needed to hurry back to the annual assembly of the Association of Shipibo-Conibo Evangelical Churches. Roger quickly loaded us into a "motokar," a three-wheeled motorcycle pulling a canopied carrier with room to seat three (thin) adults. "Motokars are a lot cooler than a car this time of year," Roger said, as the hot tropical air whipped in our faces in the rutted street from the airport.

The Shipibo-Conibo church association assembly was in full swing. About 80 church leaders from up and down the Ucayali River (which feeds the Amazon) sat on backless benches, fanning themselves while some nodded off in the afternoon heat. Newly elected association president Bernardo Vasquez said that his main goal was to involve Shipibo churches in missionary outreach. Roughly 100 Shipibo villages with 15,000 Shipibos are found up and down the Ucayali from Pucallpa, and Shipibo evangelists have preached the gospel in every one of them. Vasquez's comments overturned any notion that only Westerners were doing mission work in the jungle.

"We are finally getting over our complex of being looked down upon. The Shipibos have awakened to the fact that we are also children of God, and that we can also do things," said Rafael Ahuanari, a young Shipibo pastor.

PEKE-PEKES AND THE BEACH BOYS

The meeting would take awhile, so Samuel and I stepped out for a look around. We walked several blocks to a park overlooking the Ucayali River. Down by the riverbank, several large passenger boats were docked. Five days and 500 miles downriver lay Iquitos, Peru's major port on the Amazon, that amazing river stretching 4,000 miles from its source at 18,363 feet above sea level on Peru's Nevado Mismi mountain to its mouth in Belem, Brazil. The passenger boats dwarfed rows of dugout canoes and narrow boats rigged with small motors. Locals dubbed these craft peke-pekes, for the sputtering sound of the motors.

As Samuel and I walked at river's edge, a riverbank saloon blasted music from the Beach Boys. Coal-black buzzards hopped on piles of trash and dead fish, while men received cargo and passengers in their peke-pekes. Merchants hawked plastic gasoline tanks, replacement sandal thongs, and other jungle necessities.

In the park, we found an open-air evangelistic meeting in full swing. A dozen young people stood in a semicircle, zealously singing choruses. The oldest member, probably the pastor, stood in the middle, keeping time with his palms, eyes closed, body swaying.

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October 2 1995, Vol. 39, No. 11