September 4, 2011
Hi All,
Hope this email finds you well. This past week has been amazing. The team left yesterday and I am still exhausted but I will be traveling again tomorrow so I wanted to get an update out before I leave.
A team of 4 men led by Pastor Bob Ellis fromSan Antonio, TX arrived on Saturday the 27th of August. They arrived a little bit too late to catch the slow boat so we had to take a fast boat to catch up to it. It was a little James Bond like as we climbed up from the fast boat to the slow boat and felt kind of cool. I heard one lady on the slow boat say that “these gringos didn’t have the money to pay the fast boat so they dumped them off here.”
The slow boat was filled to capacity—maybe overfilled due to the transfer of passengers from another boat that malfunctioned. We literally had to crawl on our hands and knees under all of the hammocks to get to the back of the boat. Right before we arrived at our initial destination, it began to rain. The water is low right now so the big boat could not get us to shore and we had to transfer all of our things into a smaller boat. I have to mention something really amazing here. We had never been to this community and really didn’t have a place to stay. Lucy had been praying about this as she was nervous since we had no place to go. She met a man on the boat and he said he had a big house and we could stay there. God is so good.
We got to the shore and it was a huge mud pit up a hill to the house. The guys made many trips carrying our heavy equipment up the hill. It was then named “the trail of tears.”
( Photo trail of tears 1 in the daylight) Little did we know there was a greater trail of tears waiting for us.
The next day, we got up and got on another boat which took us to a river bank. There we were met by some of the folks from Nueva Esperanza. They helped carry our things up “Trail of Tears 2”.
It was a very muddy trail that took about an hour to walk. We had 9 five gallon jugs of water, 2 coolers full of food, a generator, tools ect. I had to have help even walking at times to keep from falling. As we got closer to the village, Lucy told me to grab a stick. I looked down and there was a little alligator sitting there. The church leader had killed it for us that morning but it sure looked alive sitting there and scared me for a bit. At least we had our first meal given to us. (Photo: Trail of Tears 2)
When we finally got to Nueva Esperanza, the guys got right to work on building the church and had an amazing amount of work done by the end of the day and we ended up having a short service that night.
(Photo: Lunch)
We were so fortunate to have men on this trip who knew about construction. Edgar came from here and built the roof and the rest of the guys made short work of building a beautiful church including benches and a pulpit.
On Monday afternoon, Lucy and I had a two hour service with the children. Many adults came too and we had a great time. Tuesday night we had our first service in the new church and invited everyone to the inaugurationThursday night. We had a packed house Thursday night and after Pastor Bob gave the message, we played games and had snacks.
Some of the really neat things on this trip were that several afternoons Pastor Bob took time to teach the young leader of this church. The young man is 23 years old and hungry for the Word. It was really special to me to be able to see the interaction. Another neat thing for me was that the team got to see a little clearer what my life is really like here. Although every team has to face many difficulties when they come, we usually take private boats and even though they may be slow, we have them to ourselves. They also got to experience some of the little jungle walks and the rain ect. It just felt good to me to have some other folks experience the real life. There is so much more I could tell you about this trip but just let me say it was great.
I really hope this email makes sense. I am so tired even though I didn’t really help in the actual construction. Tomorrow Lucy and I are headed on a 4 day boat ride to go to the quinceñera of one of my godchildren. We are only going to stay 3 days and be back on the same boat. When we get back we are going to travel to Santa Ana and do some intensive discipleship courses. Please continue to pray for the work here in Peru and please email me. God bless you all.
In Christ,
Kayleen
You are receiving this email because you opted into our mailing list at our website,www.districtmissions.org. Click here if yo
No comments:
Post a Comment