Pray for Marco Lancha

Marco Lancha, the vice secretary of the Chayahuita Association of Evangelcal Churches, came on Thursday and knocked at the gate. He is usually a very upbeat guy, so when he looked liked he had lost his best friend I was concerned. He could barely speak. He told me that he has had a pain in his stomach and side and a headache for about 1 ½ months. He thought it would go away and so he just kept on going. The pain had gotten so bad on Wednesday that he hitched a ride downriver to Yurimaguas.

On Friday, Ken went with him to the hospital to be checked out. Poor guy was not only in pain but was scared to death about going to see a doctor. It turns out he had never been before this. They spent all morning running tests on him.

Today they ran more tests and took an xray of his chest. Ken and I are suspecting TB. He won’t get the results until Monday after we are gone, but hopefully we can call Pancho and find out. Please keep him in your prayers. It is hard just not knowing what he has for him.

ASSAULTED

We can never stress enough about praying for travel mercies. On Monday, Pancho, Gonzalo (the Achuar pastor) and Enoc took off on their journey to Tarapoto. Pancho and Gonzalo headed from there to Lima and Enoc to Pucallpa. Pancho and Gonzalo, as far as we know (since we haven’t heard from them), made it ok to Lima for their meeting.

Enoc called us this morning saying that he had been assaulted on the road from Tarapoto to Pucallpa. They took everything he had but the clothes on his back. This is the area where the Shining Path works to protect the drug growers. As US citizens we’ve been told never to be on this road. Please pray for him. He is pretty shook up and since they took all of his money now he will probably have to return here instead of going to the south to be with the Ashaninka Indians. His family is sending him some money. Jesus will be traveling that same road this week. Please pray for him that he won’t be assaulted and that he can make it before the strike starts.

Visit from a Achuar pastor.

On Friday we heard a knock at the gate. We saw that one of the Achuar pastors had come for a visit. He is part of FAIENAP (an indigenous organization) as the vice treasurer. He was on his way to Lima for an annual meeting along with Pancho. We invited him to stay with us until he left on Monday. We had some really wonderful conversations about the Lord. He truly blessed us with the stories of what God is doing amongst the Achuar. They face problems very similar to what the Chayahuita face. They are much more isolated though. Please pray for Gonzalo Maurish as he leads his people in the northern Amazon Basin of Peru.

Answer to Prayer for Raul!

After weeks of searching for a wheelchair for Raul, a man from the city office found him one. It isn’t new by any means, but it works and is so much better than the one he was using with no tires and broken bar in front. He can now get around town which has put a smile on the face of all of the family. Thank you for your prayers. Continue to lift him up in prayer for God to show him what purpose he has in life.

It is Official....STRIKE

Are you praying?
We just got word today that the strikes are on for sure. The first begins on the 9th and the other begins on the 13th. They are both indefinite which means they could go on for quite some time. During these type of strikes there is no travel in or out of the city, no market (no food to buy etc). For these reasons we are leaving Yurimaguas on the 8th and will have to stay in a hotel in Tarapoto until the date of our tickets (25th). It won’t be cheap but we really have no choice. This way we will be able, Lord willing, to make it to Lima for our international flight on the 28th. We would fly to Lima right away except we have tickets and they are not changeable. We would have to buy new ones which would not be cheap buying them now at the last minute.
Please pray for our safety as we cross over the mountains. We have had lots of rain. There have been numerous landslides. Pray, too, for those people stuck in Yurimaguas that this strike will not last too long nor will there be any violence.

Enough Already

Just when you think everything in Yurimaguas has finally settled down another announcement of yet another, no another 2 strikes. School should be starting in the first week of March, but of course, we couldn't have the kids start on time!

Today we found out there are 2 new strikes planned. The first (March 9th) is a strike by the "indigenous" whatever and whoever that may be. We will have to ask around and find out. The other is by the people that always call strikes and usually for no real reason. This will be on the 13th of March and they say it will be indefinite which means it could last a month if they so choose. We are supposed to leave Yurimaguas on the 22nd to head back to US for ALTECO conference. During this time too we have scheduled a computer class from the 15th-19th.

We need wisdom and prayer for knowing what steps to take. If we stay we could get stuck since these indefinite strikes shut down EVERYTHING including transportation. I'm very tempted to go the the tv channel and as to talk to the President of this group calling the strike. They complain about no money coming into the area, yet tourists don't want to come here for this very reason. This needs to stop and the city politics need to not affect those that don't live here. These also shut down the market and everything else, so no food either.

Please pray!

What a Week!

This week has been very interesting to say the least. There has been a stream of visitors which has been fun. It has rained hard most of the week. That is good for the river traveler, but not so much for the road traveler. There have been many sink holes caused and flooding and of course the usual landslides. Please pray for travel mercies for those of us who travel a lot.

Ken has been trying for the last couple of weeks to get the latest census data from the area. The word here is that there are 16,000 Chayahuita now and we’d like to see how they are divided up. We did manage to get a list of communities in each district, unfortunately it doesn’t say what tribe lives where and there are many with the same name. Hopefully we can get some better data than what the city has given us.

Also, for the last month Ken has been trying to get a wheelchair for a man named Raul from Nueva Vida. When we first met him a couple of years ago he already had both of his arms amputated due to diabetes or at least that is what he was told the reason was. He was trying desperately to get prosthesis or at least a hook for one arm to be able to function better. After many consultations he was turned down. Evidently if it is diabetes that is plaguing him, it is not being treated. Now he has had to have a leg amputated. He is “getting around” (and I use that term very loosely) in a wheelchair that has wheels but no tires and one of the bars at the bottom is missing. There had been a campaign giving away wheelchairs but the hospital said they had none left. Then Ken went to the mayor’s office to see what they could do and got the same response. Finally after all this time Raul has been put on a waiting list to receive a chair when the next delivery arrives. Praise God. Please pray for him as he has also been told by some people from a different doctrine that he lost his limbs because of his sin. Ken and Pancho have been counseling him on this issue.