May 19, 2011
Hi All,
I hope this finds you all doing well. I can’t believe it has only been a little over a week since I left the USA. So much has happened since I left. First of all, I was only here 2 days when I found that my landlady passed away suddenly and unexpectedly after her surgery. That was such a shock as it was unexpected and my landlady was much more than a landlady to me as I have rented from her for 19 years. That had me a bit discombobulated for a few days thinking of and praying for her family and mine who also cared about her. I will miss her greatly.
Monday, Lucy and I left for Amazonas. To get to Amazonas, you normally have a 2 hour bus ride with a half an hour boat ride. Not too terrible unless you happened to get the bus we did. We started out at 10 a.m. and 4 hours, 2 flat tires and a bad motor that made this horrible sound every 7 seconds later, we arrived in Nauta. Everyone who lives here knows how difficult it is to find a boat heading down river after noon. They kind of looked at us with pained faces so we gave someone 15 cents to watch our luggage while we ate some chicken soup at one of the tables in the market.
(our boat to Amazonas)
As the rain clouds started rolling in, we thought we might be stuck in Nauta for the night but along came a man from Amazonas, also looking for a boat with 2 kids in tow. It was little Kayleen’s father. We kept searching for a boat and finally around 4:30 we found one. We got to Amazonas a bit worn out and went down to the river to bathe and wash our clothes. All the children also came of course and were jumping into the water out of extremely high trees doing dives and back flips. I just kept praying that no one got hurt.
Since we arrived so late, we just visited some of the people, ate dinner and went to bed.
(Lucy and I on the boat. I know, bad picture but I have not yet mastered the art of self photography)
I slept pretty well although even inside the mosquito net I was getting eaten alive. I found out the next day that it was chicken lice that was in the bed that was biting me. I am not sure how that can live there as the bed is just a board with no mattress.
The next day we went around visiting the people of the town and talking about the teams that will be visiting their village this summer. There is always a lot of preparation work to be done for each team and it has to start early. That night after the rain subsided we had a beautiful service. It was so awesome to see all these people that I care about so much again. I had to keep pinching myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream. It really was a beautiful service and afterwards we talked with the church regarding the upcoming trips.
Then it was off to bed so we could be up early to catch a boat to Nauta so we could get back to Iquitos as we have a 3 day class to go to for Sunday School training.
I hope you all are blessed and I will write more again soon.
In Christ
Kayleen (Lucy had the adults and children in stitches with her guava earrings)
Children from Amazonas
