People in the Amazon region are hoping that the synod will recognize that the more that Amazon residents can control their own resources, and the young are encouraged to stay and carry on traditions of preserving an ecologically sound way of life, the greater chance for the Amazon to survive.

San José del Guaviare, Colombia, is known as the "gateway to the Amazon," and in the forest there I stayed with an indigenous family in their traditional maloca house and learned about how they view their Catholicism, their customs, and a changing world.

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