Full Throttle

On October 29, 1965, a young North American couple in their mid twenties invaded Manaus, Brazil. The city of 180,000 Brazilians took no note of these foreign folk who spoke not a word of their language and who knew no one in town. When the couple arrived, not one other person in the whole of the Amazon Basin knew anything about repentance, baptism in Jesus’ name, or the infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. Today, over 650 UPC churches, 40,000 saints, and 35 Bible schools cover many areas of that vast jungle basin. Missionaries Bennie and Theresa DeMerchant weep in humble thanksgiving over what the Lord has done as a result of their labor in Brazil, but now, 43 years later, they are still working the way they always have—full throttle.