In Iquitos

We are in Iquitos. It was very muggy when we arrived yesterday! Today it is raining and hopefully will refresh the air a bit.

We applied for our Brasilian visas today. Please continue to pray that all will be in order. We hope to leave by boat on the 29th and return to Iquitos on the 4th. Pray for safety. We will write more on the 5th. Internet here is extremely slow.

Please Pray!

Sorry that I can't give you many details at the moment. We just ask that you will keep us in prayer as we travel to Brasil. Pray that the "enemy" will the thwarted and not allowed to interfere and for safety. Thank you very much!

Palmiche Revisited

Celina in the front

I will probably never forget the words of the Palmiche pastor's wife, Celina, in 2004. As we were in a gathering of women she said to me, " Don't let this be the first and only time you visit us." That promise was finally fulfilled in 2010. Palmiche has changed considerably since then. They even have electricity for 3-4 hours a night. While Ken and I walked to the church the first night, we even happened to look into a house and saw a flat screen tv. Boy, the times they are a changin'.

This year was quite different that the first time and far more people attended the conference. I'm not sure the exact number of attendess at this point, but the church was so packed out that there was overflow into the outside. The men's session was very well attended with at least 100 men each session. There were 200+ women and 150+ kids plus a new believers' class of 120 young men. Ken, along with 3 other men (2 from Grace Church and 1 from Swiss Mission) taught the men. There were 5 sessions a day for them as they rotatd the teaching between them. There were 3 of us teaching the women (me, 1 from Grace and 1 from Swiss Mission). We only had 2 sessions of 2 hours each day. Luz taught all the morning sessions since she had more to cover. We took the afternoon sessions. It was great hearing that many women sing and watching them learn from Scripture and of course, do some handcrafts.

During the conference, I was able to train Jesus Pua from Nueva Vida to be an optometrist of sorts. We donated the I-See kit from I-Tec to him. This will serve as a source of income for him as he travels as the tribe's evangelist and it will also help open doors to villages that have not been open before. He caught on quite easily. By the end of the 2 session training he looked like a pro. He was able to sell 20 pairs of glasses in him spare time at the conference.

We really enjoyed just reconnnecting with our Shawi family. It was hard this time around trying to explain to them that we won't be living in Yurimaguas. Our new "task" is helping out ALTECO and working with all the tribes of the Amazon Basin. Many have nobody to encourage them or help them learn to dream. Ken has been named one of the advisors to the newly formed Peruvian Indigenous Network and he is still the advisor to the Shawi. There are many exciting things in the future. We won't be deserting our Shawi brothers and sisters just not with them as often. It is time to let them put into practice all the leadership skills they have learned over these last 7 years. They have grown and great things are just around the corner for them as they take more and more responsibility for their own future spiritually and physically. Please continue to pray for them during this growing and transitional time.