Calleria: Up the Amazon River.

(If you missed part one and two... CLICK HERE!!!)

 To get to Calleria, you have to navigate all sorts of small streams, and open river water.  Since it is the rainy season the trip takes between three and five hours.  If it is dry season, the trip starts at seven hours and goes up.  It was surreal to be on the boat, talking and laughing, even singing some praise songs while we took in the newness of God’s creation around us.

(Photo by Anna Burgess)

 As we floated along the river, we saw pockets of mestizos (which means mixed people), and Shipibo communities that randomly pop up out of nowhere.  At one point I turned on the GPS for my phone to see where we were.  The river was so flooded, to the satellite I looked like I was in the middle of the jungle vegetation.  I have never been off the map before.

 

As we arrived, there was no grand welcome.  We just pulled up the boat, got the stuff off, talked with the Church leaders, and then we started pitching our tents. 

Mistake one: never go to a jungle community that lives beside the river during the rainy season.The mosquitos are horrendous. 

As the sun began to set we were told that it would be smart for us to get ready for bed and into our tents as quickly as possible, so we would still have some blood left before morning time.  As we had just jumped into our tents, all sweaty and tired, we got a knock on our door. 

“They are having a church service tonight to welcome you.  It starts at 7:30.”

That was in 10 minutes.

WTP.  Welcome to Peru.

After waiting a while for the service to start, (we were on jungle time), Amanda went back to the tent for a little bit to put on long pants. Upon her return to the church she looked like she had just seen something horrible.  She had.  A tarantula was under our bag.  What made the moment even better is that as we were worshipping, another tarantula was in the banisters right above the women.  Amanda jumped and screamed a little.  All the people got a kick out of that, as she grabbed me and made me switch places. 

Our worship time was lively on our part.  Not so much because the Spirit was moving, but more because we realized clapping our hands and stomping our feet keeps the mosquitos off.  (We were slightly distracted).  Although the Shipibo worship is very monotone, they do love to keep beat with a drum, so we didn’t look too crazy.  (For the record: it is a very emotional experience to hear a people group worship in a language that you have never really heard before.  We would completely recommend that experience). 

After the service ended, and our welcome from the spiders and the people were completed, we jumped back into our tents.  Literally.  The mosquitos were blanketing us.  We spent the next 20 minutes killing all of those that had snuck into our tent.  Then as we dozed off were were greeted by the sound of four bats and a rat.  Amanda did not sleep well at all.  Through the fits of my laughter, I dozed in and out, but all hope was lost for a good nights rest.

The next day after moving our tent and using the hole in the ground, we began our day.

Life is so simple there, and apart from the mosquitos, there is something very wonderful about the feeling of the community.  It feels close knit and safe.  The men were out working and fishing, and the women took care of the children, and made homemade crafts.  I went exploring for a bit, and go to know some of the people.

In our time there we did do some teaching and encouragement, and we did get to relax a bit.  However the highlight moments were the conversation time with the elders, the ministry times, and the medical campaign.

One of the things we learned from our time in San Juan was how to ask questions and explain things in a way that the Shipibo think and understanding.  Words like “feelings” are actually translated more like “thoughts.”  So when saying something like “what are you feeling inside?”  It is translated into “what are you thinking inside?”  So when we learned some of the nuances, it really helped us when we talked to the pastors and elders.  Apart from that, Marcial, a Shipibo man that lives in Lima, traveled with us to help translate the entire trip.  He was amazing. 

(Photo by Anna Burgess)

Our time with the pastor and elders was so satisfying.  We had an extremely productive conversation that was very clear and encouraging.  It started off awkwardly because they kept asking us, “is this the last time we will see you?”  They were really concerned.  We thought maybe we were complaining too much about the bugs but what we had come to find out is that the Church was used to people coming and going.  

 

The original church was planted about 60-80 years ago by American missionaries.  We don’t know what happened or why they left, but after they were gone, the Church was run by the locals.  Ideally this is great, but it ended up hurting instead of helping.  Unfortunately when the community was on its’ own, they had not been trained on how to encourage and grow a Church body.  What they explained to us is that slowly the entire community, 90% of which were once Christians, is now down to only a third of the people as believers in Jesus.  

The last pastor was very honest with us, and told us how burnt out he was.  They did not really know where to go with the community, or the church.  They weren’t sure what to do as individual leaders or as a team.  However, God had given them passion and a vision.  They were not sure how to get the results they could imagine in their minds.

We found out that almost the entire community can read at a relatively high level.  The women speak and understand Spanish and Shipibo.  The kids receive a secondary level education as of the past 10-20 years. 

After talking with several people, we have discovered that this is a jungle anomaly.  From our understanding communities like these suffer a great deal from illiteracy and language deficiencies.  So what we were seeing is that with the right resources and discipleship these people are primed to reach out to tribes even further down the river which would be unreachable for us.

I mentioned resources.  We also found out that only 30% of the Christians in the Church have Bibles.

Those that do have Bibles are currently using the Reina-Valera edition, which uses a type of spanish that most Peruvians don’t even use.  So for a community that uses Spanish as a secondary language it can cause some difficulty when they try and read and study their Bibles.

God put a conviction on our hearts after that conversation, and we are exploring how we  help them with discipleship, equip them, and get Bibles that they can read and study, into their hands.

During the ministry times, we were able to pray for the people as they responded to the teachings.  During that time we laid hands on people and prayed for the things that the Holy Spirit convicted us to pray.  This was especially necessary because although most people can speak Spanish, they are shy and self-conscious about their ability to speak, (we can relate to that), so they rarely talked.  

If God put anything on our hearts for people, we shared that with them, whether it was a verse, or images, or words of encouragement.

As I prayed for one woman, suddenly an image of a beautiful tree popped into my mind.  It was right by a river flowing.  It looked like the tree was supposed to be bearing fruits but it wasn’t.  However, it was really close to doing so.  The tree just needed a couple of things to make it fruitful.  I shared the picture I had in my mind, not knowing if God might be trying to share something with her.  Then later I found out that Mark also prayed for her, and God put on his heart to encourage her in her walk, to put aside the things of before, and to worship God with all of her heart.  Those things would yield fruitfulness, and would be example to the people around her.

Later we found out that the woman was the Pastor’s wife.  They just recently took on the role of leaders for the church, and it has been a real struggle for them to find the balance between work, ministry, and their personal lives with God.  That was definitely encouraging to see how God was using us to encourage them.

One other experience I had was when I prayed for an elderly man.  When I first saw him he  reminded me of the cartoon man from the movie “UP.”  Aside for the soft place I had in my heart for him, in my prayer time I was really drawn to him as well.  So I went over to pray for him.  As I prayed for him, I felt so drawn into the presence of God, I was humbled.  From head to toe, I just felt electrifying peace.  It was for a few moments and then left as I closed in prayer, but I felt like that man had been used to minister to me, more than I had to him.  (It had been a trying trip between tiredness, the heat, the planning, etc.)

We closed our time with a small medical outreach.  Haseena, one of the interns, came to Peru to love people, improve her language skills, and use her doctoral knowledge to serve.  Since she is a doctor, it is always helpful to set something up to encourage and edify the community.  We were able to pray for every patient, hug them, teach them about parasites, and meet any other needs with treatments that we could provide.  

Everyone on the team helped, even Anna who was watching the boys.  She was killing chickens and cooking for us (with the help of some other people).  She even got to spend some time teaching the women, which was a treat for them. 

Our time came to a quick close and before we knew it they were giving us a goodbye service.   They danced for us and sang, we sang for them, then we danced with them, and then we received a hug/kiss from every person in the building.

Then they opened up a mini-market for us, so we could buy some crafts if we saw something that caught our eye.   In minutes the market seemingly materialized out of thin air.  I wanted to buy all the crafts to help them, because it is their only source of income, but it was not possible for me or Amanda to do so.

The next morning we woke up at 5am, got all the stuff packed up and head back down the river.  We saw birds, wild monkeys, biting ants, oh and dolphins.  Actually we saw dolphins mostly on the way there, but I think one person saw one on the way back.

After our arrival back to the hotel we had our last team lunch together. In the evening we crashed, ate something, and then crashed again.  It had been a few days since a shower, and a good sleep.  It was a simple life, but one we were not used to.  Although I do miss drinking fresh coconut milk in the hot sun.

So where do we go from here? 

We are praying for that in 2012.  Both communities in San Juan, and in Calleria, are asking for us to encourage them and teach them about discipleship and  leadership.  What we are praying about is for Marcial to come back to Pulcallpa, and be our eyes, ears, and mouth.  We are praying that somehow we can raise enough support for him and his family to cover what he makes as a teacher, and get him doing what these people need, and what he loves to do. 

We are also looking into getting Bibles in both communities.  Audio Bibles, Spanish Bibles, Shipibo Bibles, and study resources will all go very far towards training these people up.

Finally, we are hoping to do at least one seminar a year, plus take a short term team there from America or the UK to help them build things a bit faster, and help equip the Body to go out and be Light. 

We are praying to stay in the Lord’s will, because we understand that “new” is always fun.  We just want to do what He wants, and we know if we do that, all the things we need will be provided for us!