“Whatever it takes”: an interview with journeyman Jeremy Taliaferro

(FAIR WARNING: If you can’t deal with an in-your-face challenge, don’t read this!)

QUESTION: Jeremy, how did you end up in the Peruvian jungle as a missionary?

JEREMY: I’m from outside of Fort Worth, Texas. That’s where I grew up, where my home church is at. Actually I felt a call to work with indigenous people when I was in high school, and God has just kind of nurtured that call throughout high school and college. Through different mission opportunities, and just through my Bible reading and reading other books, He has just nurtured that call to work with indigenous people. Actually I was planning on going to seminary, but the Lord closed that door. Jesse Fletcher was one of my mentors. He’s the guy who helped start the (International Mission Board’s) Journeyman Program, like in 1963 or ’64. And he talked me into going. I prayed about it a lot, and I really felt like that was the direction the Lord was leading me to go in. I ended up going to eastern Peru to work with the Asheninka team and with missionaries Chris and Pam Ammons. And basically that was God’s saying, “I finally got you here.” It was just a cool feeling. Basically it was just a way for me to do what God had called me to do.

Q: Tell us about Peru, about the jungle, about the people.

JEREMY: I worked in eastern Peru on the rivers that feed the Amazon. The Asheninka people are some of the most generous people I’ve ever known, kind, loving. The Asheninka are people who are waiting to know who God is. And this has just been an incredible experience because I’ve gotten to be there when they realize and see who He is.

The jungle, it’s an interesting place to live. It’s an interesting place to visit, but it’s especially an interesting place to live. The animals, the atmosphere, it’s always pretty hot and humid. Travel is very, very difficult. You never know what’s going to happen. And in order to do the ministry that we did and we’re continuing to do, you have to have a lot of determination. The motto of our team is “Whatever it takes.” And that means if there is a bridge out, you have to find a way to get across it, because we’ve got to get out there and we’ve got to do what God has called us to do. That means if the river is low, you’ve got to pull the boat. That means if it’s raining, you get wet. The jungle is a difficult place to minister, but it also stretches you spiritually and helps you to see from a different perspective who God is and how much He cared about His people and how much He cares that the Asheninka would know God. And so it kind of stretches you to do a lot more than you would normally do. Because if God cares as much as He does, if He was willing to send His son to die on a cross, then I sure better be able to get a little wet and to get cut and scraped up and live in a situation that’s a little bit more adventurous. But the jungle is beautiful. It’s really cool to be able to look around and see God’s creation. Romans 1 was like everyday life. You look around and you see God revealing Himself to you through nature and through His creation.

Q: Tell us about your Asheninka friend Alejandro.

JEREMY: Alejandro left the jungle 15 years ago, went to sell some crops and he stumbled into an evangelical church. And while he was there he heard a gospel message. He heard about Jesus Christ, what He did. And he realized he was a sinner and needed salvation. With his broken Spanish, he said a prayer, received Christ, and then a few days later he returned to his village without a Bible. At the time, there wasn’t a Bible in his language. They had begun translating it, but it was still 15 years from fruition. So he lived for 14 years as a Christian without a Bible. I realize that God is way bigger than that. He can overcome that obstacle. Even though he didn’t have the written word, God’s Holy Spirit was still at work. And He can reveal Himself to mankind through His Holy Spirit, through nature and through all the things around him. When I encountered Alejandro, he was probably one of the most Godly men I’ve ever known—just his whole persona, his kindness, his love for the people. He took me out of the jungle and we were walking, and I began to tell him what we were planning on doing, the (Bible) stories that we were going to teach and how we wanted to train leaders to take the message to other people. Alejandro begged me to come and stay and to teach him the Old Testament and the New Testament. He said, “I’ve been a Christian for 14 years and I’ve always wanted more, but I’ve never had that opportunity to really be able to dig into the Scripture and know because I don’t have Scripture in my dialect.” He told me he had something that he didn’t know what to do with. Basically he knew God had told him to take the message of Jesus Christ and salvation to his people, but he didn’t know how to do that. He said, “I’m convinced that God sent you here and sent your team here to teach us and to teach me how to take this message to my people.”

Alejandro has the heart of Christ. He truly does. Every morning he wakes up at 4 o’clock in the morning and they start by singing praises. They sing of God’s works, what He has done in their lives, what He has done in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the sing Scripture, they sing for hours in the morning. When the sun starts coming up, he whips out his teaching materials and he starts teaching his family. He teaches his wife and his two daughters the Scripture. They work through the day. Whenever they come home, they do it in the opposite order. He teaches until the sun goes down and they sing themselves to sleep every night.

I had the opportunity to be able to teach Alejandro about Scripture. We really dug in and I had the opportunity to disciple him. But he also taught me about the life of Christ. I was able to teach the Word, but he taught me what it was like to really, really have that love for the people. He told me, “The first thing I think of whenever I wake up in the morning is that my people have to know what I know.” And the last thing he thinks about before he goes to bed is his people and his responsibility to Christ to get that message known. An incredible man, incredible.

Q: How does this Bible “storying” process help the Asheninka understand who God is?

JEREMY: Basically we use the “six truths” to teach them to really dig into the stories so they can see how God is revealing Himself. The six truths are: 1) God is Holy and just. 2) God is all powerful. 3) God is the fountain of all good things. 4) God hates sin. 5) God always keeps His promises. 6) God is all knowing. And they learned those, and it became like a part of their lives. Like they’d go out in the fields and they’d come home from the fields, and they would experience something out in the field. And they’d say, “Jeremy, you know what? This happened to me today and it really reminded me about the truth that said God is the fountain of all good things. It reminded me that this good happened to me and I have to know that that comes from God.” Or, “When I went down to the river and caught some fish today, I realized that those were a blessing, those were a gift from God.” Those little things that take root in their lives. It helped them to understand the stories and how God is in the stories, but it also helped them to understand God in their day-to-day life and who He is and how He reveals Himself to them.

See, for the Asheninka, for their ancestors especially, God is distant. They do believe that there is a creator god, but that he is distant and they can’t know him. When we came with the stories and with these truths about God, they began to realize that God is somebody we can know. He is someone who desires a personal relationship with us. And it totally blew their minds, especially with one woman, Maria. She was from the old school, and for her to realize that this God that she has always thought about as so distant actually wants to know her, I mean she was excited! You could see the light in her eyes. Like when we would be telling her the stories, we had these little picture books, and we’d show the picture books and she would just be gazing, just like, “This God actually cares? Look at what God did so I could know him!” It’s incredible to watch them because they are being taken from darkness into light. When the light was finally revealed to them, man, they latched onto it and they wanted to know more. Stories with the Asheninka were the way to go because they love stories; it’s so part of their culture.

And so it was just a blessing of God that that was the direction that we took. So it was cool.

Q: How many believers were there when you guys got there? How many are there now? How much harvesting has happened?

JEREMY: It depends on the community. Like in one community, I believe whenever we first got there, there were probably one or two believers. And now pretty much that whole community is believers. I’d say there are probably 30 to 40 new believers in that community. We built a church there that meets regularly. There are other areas that are in different levels of that progress. Some are just now starting and there are no believers or just a few and they are starting to learn and get interested. But it’s not something that we’re leading. That’s why it’s exciting. It’s not something that we go in and say, “We won so many people to the Lord this week.” I can’t keep up with what God is doing because I’m not there all the time. The movement is Asheninka-led, and so therefore it is having success. The Lord is blessing it. It’s way beyond what we could do as Americans, as missionaries, because they’ve caught the fire and they’re rolling with it. So is there a work going on? You better believe there’s a work going on. And it’s not because of the missionaries or anything like this. Because God has called a group of people to do His work and they are hard at work doing it.

Q: Does one person have the power to make a real difference in changing the world?

JEREMY: I think the question is not necessarily the power of one person, but the power of one called person, one person of God, one man of God, one woman of God who realizes they have a calling and have that determination to do whatever it takes to achieve what God has called them to do. Like I said before, Alejandro will not stop until the task is accomplished. He loves his people. So the power of one is that he has that calling and he refuses to stop, because he serves the same God that we serve, that is hard at work reaching these people. He has called Alejandro, and Alejandro is just one person, but Alejandro isn’t alone. He has the hand of God with him. He’s the one who called us, He’s the one who directs us, He’s the one who opens the doors for us. So the power is found in our Savior and we’re just supposed to do whatever He calls us to do. Sometimes it’s one person, sometimes it’s two, sometimes it’s 15. Regardless of how many people it is, just do what God tells you to do.

There were times when I was out there in the jungle by myself for four weeks, something like that. You start to feel alone. You haven’t spoken English in weeks and there is that loneliness that kind of creeps in. But God always seems to come back and remind you, “Hey, you ain’t here by yourself buddy. I’m right here with you. I’m the one who called you here. I’m not going to leave you alone. I’m guiding in everything. I’m here teaching you while you’re teaching them.”

Q: If you could say one thing to your generation, what would it be?

JEREMY: I’ll tell you, honestly, I’ve been really discouraged with my generation, because they are dropping the ball. I’ve seen the work that there is to do. I’ve seen that it’s a war going on, and I’ve seen people basically burn their draft cards and say, “I want to be a Christian, but I don’t want to fight this war.” Well, when you enlist, you enlist, and it’s time to roll. Because man I’ve seen it and I know that the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few. I know that if you don’t harvest, that harvest goes bad. People are going to die and never have the opportunity to hear. Honestly, it makes me really angry because I see these people wasting away, and here we Christians in the United States don’t give a flip. And I’ve got to join in with that because there were times when I was just as careless about my walk with Christ. But it’s like this generation is kind of without any kind of vision. As a whole, believers and unbelievers alike, they all seem the same. They’re just wandering. I’m sure you’ve heard the whole Generation X thing where they say that our generation hasn’t had anything to pull them together. They haven’t had the civil rights struggle, they haven’t had a great war, they haven’t had this, they haven’t had that. Well, if we’re believers, we have no excuse because we’re involved in the greatest war, the longest war that has ever gone on, that’s gone on since the beginning of time. And whenever we become believers, we enlist in His army and we need to fight and be involved in being a Christian, living life like you’re in a battle, not like every day life because it’s not everyday life. We battle every day. Our enemy is almost as hard at work as our Father and he is trying to bring us down and he is winning right now. You know what I’m saying?

(A lot of Christians) want to sit in an office and push numbers and stuff like that, but nobody wants to get out there and work. Nobody wants to sacrifice. And that really bothers me. Not because I’m something special, because I just did what I was asked to do. But we as God’s people, if we understand the calling, if we understand what Christ has done for us, you’d think that we would do whatever it takes to fulfill the Great Commission. And I think that our generation is falling down on that. We kind of do it lackadaisically. And I think that speaks for our love for our God. That speaks for how dedicated we are to Him. I don’t have a whole lot of good things to say about our generation. I know that there are people who are out there that are working hard. But the majority, they’re not doing much, and it makes me sad. I know it makes Him sad. So that’s what I have to say about that.

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