Tambo River Trip

The Tambo River

On Monday December 3rd I will be flying to Lima to meet up with Scott Dollar and then on Tuesday we will be traveling from Lima to Satipo. It is a 9 hour drive.  On Wednesday we will drive to Puerto Ocopa and take a 5 hour boat ride down the Tambo river.  There has been 40 communities identified along the Tambo River that have no known believers and no churches. We will be traveling down this river to see some of them. We will spend 2 days in a village called Shevoriato. This river village does have some believers. We will be encouraging them and seeking how we can be affective in taking the gospel to the other communities.

Partnering with Wretched Radio!

We are excited to announce that we are partnering with Wretched Radio to distribute 1600 of The Biggest Question DVDs in Spanish.  The DVD address the 3 most profound questions in life that every human must answer at some point in their life.  This is an evangelistic DVD that explains the gospel extremely well.    Wretched Radio is giving us and shipping the 1600 DVDs to Cuzco for free.  We will distribute all the DVDs on February 14th as part of their plan to distribute tens of thousands of these DVDs throughout Latin American in 2013.  You can read more about the biggest project.  We will be giving them out at the two Universities in Cuzco.  The promotional video for this DVD in English is below.  We are very excited about this project and it will be perfect timing for the start of the church in March.

Going to the Jungle

The Tambo river in the Peruvian jungle

I have an opportunity to go into the jungle with my friend Scott Dollar, who is a pastor in a Baptist church in Clarksville, Tennessee.  Scott has been coming to Peru several times a year to work with church plants in different regions.  This time God has providentially provided an opportunity to explore a church plant with a native pastor in the a small jungle village along the Tambo river.  You can read the story of how this came about here. 



Our mode of transportation

I will be flying to Lima on December 3rd and returning to Cuzco on December 10th.  It is not very easy to get to this village, as you can see from the agenda below.  So please pray each day of the trip for us.  Please pray for God to work among the people in these areas and that the Kingdom of Christ will be advanced.  Please pray for our safety along the way and that we will have providential opportunities to proclaim the gospel.  I attached a few pictures of the area and the Agenda.




December 2012 Trip Agenda

December 3 – Fly to Lima
December 4 – Drive to Satipo (l1 hours)
December 5 - Drive to Puerto Ocopa and then take 5 hour boat ride to Shevoriato.
December 6 - Visit in Shevoriato and discuss training and future church planting along the river
December 7 - Head back to Puerto Ocopa and Satipo
December 8 - Stay in Satipo, Pray and check out city, preach in evening
December 9 - Travel to Jauja- Attend, Preach in evening
December 10 - Fly from Jauja to Lima and then Lima to Cuzco

 

Thank you brothers and sisters back home that spend much time on their knees interceding for us and for those who hold the rope to enable us to labor in Peru and seek the advancement of His Kingdom.

MMI Medical campaign

I must say that I have a renewed urgency to brush my teeth ever since Joe Martinez and I worked as translators for doctors with the MMI medical campaign in the small town of Urcos for 2 days. Joe was in triage and I was in the dental clinic. It seems that out of the hundreds of patients that came in the doors, almost all of them had back problems and teeth problems. Back problems because the Quechua people spend their lives lifting heavy thing and working back-breaking hours in their fields. Teeth problems because they don't brush their teeth and many of them, especially the older Quechua women, spend most of their lives chewing on Coco leaves. 

Translating was great but it was a challenge. The realm of dentistry is a realm of vocabulary that I have no experience in. I had no idea how to say many things and the dentists were relying on me to listen to the person's complaint and then explain it to the dentist and then relay what ever the dentist told me back to the patient. This became more complicated when the patients only spoke Quechua and not Spanish. Then the bilingual (Quechua/Spanish but no English) entered into the mix. The chain of questions from Quechua to Spanish to English put a damper on time and communications. But I must say that things went pretty smooth and I learned a lot by the end of each day. After all, I heard the same complaints over and over and I gave the same diagnosis and instruction all day. After you say, “We are going to have to pull 3 teeth” or “We have to give you several shots of anesthesia to dumb your mouth” or “Is your mouth numb yet?” or “There is just no way we can save the tooth” about 50 times a day, you begin to get it down.

I saw so many shots to the mouth, blood and teeth pulled that I lost count. One poor lady had 12 teeth pulled. I was able to share the gospel in the waiting room with a guy and talk about the things of God with some of the workers. MMI had a Quechua pastor sharing the gospel in the waiting room each day and they played the Jesus film in Quechua in the waiting room as well. One of the Quechua translators was a pastor and we talked a lot about the gospel in Peru. He told me about a very remote region (which I had already been studying on maps) where it was a 2 day walk into a few scattered villages. This is definitely a place that I want to check out in the future.

 

On another note, we did finish the church offices.  Here are some pictures.

 

 

My office/closet

 

The Family at the little church we attend