As a young woman, studying advanced art, Sophie Muller was introduced to Jack Wyrtzen through a teenage street meeting in New York. Through Wyrtzen’s continual witnessing, Sophie accepted Jesus as her personal Savior and surrendered her life to Christ. In 1944, Sophie accepted God’s call, and under New Tribes Mission, she ventured to Colombia as an artist for their Brown Gold magazine.  Sophie had hoped to enter into the jungles with a missionary couple, but through God’s leading, she walked through the jungle doors alone. Sophie would soon learn that God was guiding her every footstep after surviving the Indians’ poison soup test. God allowed her to live through this wretched experience to see Indians believe in the one true God.
Battling jungle life along with opposition from the government officials and her own people’s apprehension about a lone woman missionary, she began her work with the Curipaco tribe.  It was through these first fruits that God gave Sophie specific jungle methods to spread the gospel.  Traveling from tribe to tribe, she would begin by learning the language.  Next, she would translate books of the Bible and instructional materials for the villages, and would teach them how to read their language.  This remarkable ministry did not follow the world’s book of “this is how it should be done,” but in contrast her ministry was through the leading of “His Voice.”  Sophie plunged through the jungles as a single, American woman, not knowing the language, culture, or demon possession of the Indians.  She found that through literacy, Christ and His salvation could be given to the Indians.  As Sophie’s work progressed, her NEWS spread through the jungle grapevine by the new believers.  Soon other tribes were “ripe unto harvest” when she arrived.  She “unleashed the sharp, two-edged ‘Sword of the Spirit’,” with thought-provoking questions throughout the selected verses to be memorized.  Sophie said, “Some people say that it cramps the Holy Spirit to have everything written down in order for the services, but I know that it really cramps the Devil.”  As a result, she translated hymns and leader books that included order of services, how to conduct baptisms, funerals, the Lord’s Supper, etc.  Sophie diligently translated these booklets into the many tribal languages with the help of a few willing bilingual believers.  The modern conveniences of publishing were not available at the time; therefore, Sophie made duplicate copies with her hand-turn mimeograph.  After twenty years of jungle work, three different translated New Testaments were complete, two others had been started, and 200 churches were established and under leadership of the indigenous pastors.
The Indians across Colombia changed their lives so drastically that the government began to suspect Sophie of performing her own witchcraft.  Because she did not want the harassment to affect other missionaries, she left New Tribes Mission and became independent.  Although doors seemed to be closing at this point, a contact of Sophie’s led her to meet with the Major General of the Security Department of Colombia.  He was sympathetic toward Sophie’s work and made it possible for her to continue teaching the Indians.
In her last years, Sophie was completely cut off from entering Colombia, because of armed revolutionaries who are still in control of a large portion of the jungles today.  Nevertheless, by the time of her death, she had made alphabets and translated Bibles or at least a portion of eleven tribal languages.  Word of Life (the ministry which Sophie was saved under) founded the Sophie Muller Bible Institute on the Venezuelan-Colombian border to continue the training of Indian believers.
Here is a woman whose service for the Lord may not be recognized worldwide, nor appears in history books, yet, truly, she will receive many diamonds in her crown for the thousands of lives that she influenced for Christ and the priceless hours she spent translating the Scriptures, for some 55 years. God tremendously worked through the life of Sophie Muller to “Shake The Wilderness” of the Colombian and Venezuelan Indians. His Voice Shakes The Wilderness is a first-hand perspective told by Sophie Muller, of her struggles and blessings as a jungle missionary to the Indian tribes. To receive a copy of this autobiography, please write The Voice in the Wilderness, PO Box 7037, Asheville, NC 28802.