San Juan de Sinchi Cuy

October 2, 2009

Hi All

We just arrived back from San Juan de Sinchi Cuy. It was a quick 3 day trip just to check on how they were doing and to encourage them to come to the convention next week in Amazonas. It is about a 2 hour boat trip then an hour walk back into the jungle when the water is low. When the water is high, you can go all the way back to the village in a small boat. That hour walk makes you think about what you really want to take with you since you have to carry it all that way. Since you can’t really buy anything there, we did have to carry in several pounds of rice, canned milk, sugar, ect so that we would have something to eat when we got there.

We arrived in San Juan about 4 p.m. and walked around informing people that we would be having services that night. It gets dark early here and so we had to go get bathed before it got too late as there is not electricity so little Lucy, Lucy’s 6 year old niece, wanted to walk ahead of me in case there were snakes. I was kind of thinking—and if there are snakes, what is this little 6 year old going to do about it? We had the service in one of the people’s houses where you have to cross this dilapidated bridge. Lucy always tells me to cross in the middle as there is reinforcement but it is still scary in the dark.

We had an awesome service with about 25 adults and tons of children. San Juan is a very small village with no Christian church. We are just starting out with evangelism there and the people are very responsive. After the service, one of the men said, “I don’t like this going house to house. We need to have a church building so we know where we are going to have services.” The next day we went and looked at some land—shown here

and the man said he would sell it to us for $15 to build the church, so I put a $6 dollar down payment and Lucy’s brother put in $3. Three other people said they would donate the main support beams so now all we need is to have money for the chainsaw guy to cut the wood for the boards and money to make a big meal so we can all go trek deep into the jungle to find the trees that produce the leaves for the roof. The people are all very excited that they will have in their words “their own house to worship God”. It is very exciting to see how much this village is responding to the Gospel.

Lucy’s brother and sister-in-law were in the process of making charcoal to sell. It is so much work. First you have to find good wood, cut it and bring it all to one place. Then you make a volcano type thing with dirt covering the wood and start slowly burning it. Someone has to be there all the time or you could lose everything. It has to be kind of a smoking fire. They had made a little hut so they could sleep there and the next morning, while they had just come home for breakfast, one of the neighbors came running to say the hut was on fire—shown here.

We got the fire out and saved most of the charcoal and had to carry it back through the jungle—shown here. It was sad as they lost some of their clothes and other things but they could have lost it all.

In the afternoon we had a children’s service with about 30 children and afterwards played soccer. I am not in as good as shape as I used to be and paid for it the next day. That night we held another service and told them we were returning to Iquitos the next day as we have to get ready for the conference this Thursday and tonight, Saturday, we have a cell group with some children in Iquitos. We are

going to be doing a large children’s outreach the 15^th of November and are helping some of the children learn some drama’s and puppets. I better get going for now. I hope all is well with you and yours.

In Christ,

Kayleen