Few have ever known the honor and mystique of growing up in the virgin Amazon rainforest. In the late 1950s, Paul Johnson's family of six chose to leave the comforts of Canada to disappear into stark isolation, three weeks travel by dugout canoe from the last outpost of Bolivian civilization. Survival was precarious due to unending encounters with the anaconda, jaguar, crocodile, and an unknown hostile tribe.
History shamefully confirms that so-called civilization conquered or annihilated many original Amazonian cultures. Even so, dozens of remote indigenous nations remained hidden in the vast jungle encompassing an area larger than the continental USA. The family's hope was to befriend and respect one of those tribes, equipping them holistically to face the onslaught that would inevitably invade their pristine world.
For Paul's family, learning to thrive involved harvesting the bounty of the jungle, carving out a primitive base camp on the riverbank, and tolerating a multitude of insects, intense heat, and fatal tropical diseases. After three years of unimaginable sacrifice, confidence was finally earned with a Stone Age people group, ushering in a tenuous first contact.
As book 1 of a trilogy of Rain Forest Memoirs, this narrative highlights the intentions and unrestrained power of God, as played out in the lives of a few ordinary messengers. Faith brought them to the forest. Perseverance kept them there. Peace that surpassed understanding sustained them throughout innumerable trials. Their legacy imparts compelling purpose and destiny for those yearning for far more in life today.