The waters of the Amazon, Satalite Internet and the Dream Team

(Sorry spell check is not working)

First off, how cool is it that even though I am sitting in the village of Tamshiyacu, a medium sized village on the Amazon River in Northern Peru, that for less than I would pay for a candy bar I can use satalite internet to update the very peop
el who sent me to Peru on what is happening?

What do a 72 year old retired, car dealership owner; a 32 year old second generation American-Latino and a 14 year old science nerd have in common? They are all part of what I am affectionately calling the Dream Team. I am so impressed with the mission team I am currently with working in a town on the Amazon river. There´s really not even much I can explain to tell you why the team works so well, but it just gels. It is such a great opprtunity to be around so many people (13 on the team in total) that are so excited about getting out of their own culture and comfort and seeing what life and faith is like in another corner of the globe.

That said, our experience thus far has gone as follows-

• Team arrived Friday night at 1am. Micaiah slept through the 7 people staying at our house getting settled.
• Had a team breakfast at our house and then some team building exceriscises
• Flew to Iquitos from Lima Sat afternoon... good flight, all our luggage arrived safely...
• Spent the night last night in Iquitos at theWesleyan Ministry Center. Aslo got to participate in their Sat night youth service. The pastor spoke a great message on conuing to grow. I was able translate most of the message for some of the team!
• This morning traveled an hour up river to Tamshiyacu. Did not see any snakes... thank God almighty!
• Spent most of our day settling in here,
• had a dedication service at the site of the church we will be helping build.

Some highlights for me are, first of all, language. I have never felt so encouraged about my calling as a missionary or with my language skills. Granted the accent here is different and I am still missing some things, I am still understanding mountains more than I have normally been understanding. I have been translating constantly for the team as they begin to build relationships with kids they want to play games with, men from the church or just people we meet on the street. To top it all of, tonight at the dedication service, Jarvis, my mentor, gave a message in Spanish and I understood the whole thing! I have never understood a sermon in Spanish, the pace is different, the vocabulary shifts and I just haven´t been able to follow, but tonight I did. Sorry if I sound cocky, but I am pretty darn proud!

On a slightly different note, I definately have seen life different than I have seen anywhere else. People live not paycheck to paycheck, but day to day. The thing that happened today that I will most likely think about more than anything was seeing a little girl who was maybe 6 years old carrying around a child Micaiah´s age (1 year, 3 months) for literally hours. When I started talking to her she explained that the baby was her cousin, but both her mother and her aunt worked all day every day and so she takes care of that baby every day. Wow. What responsibility to be thrown at a 6 year old.

There is so much more but I should run for now. I hope to get more blogs up later this week, but if not, I will write soon.

Please pray for-

• Health on the team, team members often get sick on the Amazon and cannot work
• Leadership as we make desicions about future work in this area
• Safety as we begin work on the new church tommorow
• Openess in the hearts and minds of the team. I think most of them realize that they will leave having been more affected by the people and the Holy SPirit than they could possibly have affected the village
• Dena and Micaiah as they go through this week without dad