Photo above - Here we are celebrating the Yakuchiway ceremony as we officially became little Rigner's Markayayas (godparents). We had never participated in this particular custom in the village, so we had lots to learn! But it was a blast! We also gained 2 amazing co-parents (Maximando & Gisela). We are super thankful to have family ties in our new village!
Photo below on right - This is what a classic visit looks like in the village: the ladies all sit together on one side, while the men sit on the other side. And every woman brings her bucket of masato! 
Photo below on the left - Masato making in the village is truly an art. The females in each household make masato about twice a week. Girls begin to help in the process when they are 8 years old, and generally are master masato makers by the time they turn 12 or 13.

After about four hours, Ana was still thrashing around and had be held down by 6-8 people at a time to keep her from running to the river to throw herself in. She didn’t seem to get tired, but the people holding her down did, and so they would switch off, taking turns and rubbing their scratches and bruises that happened as a result of them trying to keep Ana in the house. Her eyes remained tightly shut. It was kind of neat to see that everyone stayed awake and sat in a circle around her, wanting to help her and protect her from the thing that wanted to take her away. It was also neat to see the community of Christ responding like that with a determination to not give up on her, even if she was determined to escape them. ​

​Sometime after midnight, Selmira, the first believer from this area, who came to faith over 10 years ago, came over to where we were all sitting. She had been praying while lying in her mosquito net because she was feeling ill the whole time. She came over and knelt down by Ana and started talking to Ana. I was surprised because it hadn’t occurred to me to be persistent in trying to talk to Ana since she didn’t really seem to hear what we were saying the majority of the time, but Selmira started reminding Ana of her faith in Jesus Christ (Ana is a professing believer and was baptized in the last year). She reminded her that she is never alone, and that Jesus is always with her. She reminded her of Jesus’ great love and care for her, and that Jesus is stronger than anything that might want to harm her, that she just needed to look to and hold on to Jesus. After Selmira started talking to her and praying intermediately over her, Ana stopped thrashing around and lay still for the first time. Selmira even put Ana’s head in her lap and stroked her hair as she was talking to her. Just this act would have been impossible minutes before, since Ana had been trying to bite anyone close to her. The group who had been holding her down gradually let go of her when they saw her relax. With the context of Ana having said over and over again that there were two men at the door waiting to take her (two men that no one could see except Ana, even while her eyes were tightly closed the whole time), Selmira asked Ana if she could see Jesus. At that point, Ana nodded yes. 
 
Selmira kept talking to her, reminding Ana of who she is in Christ and how He can help if we just focus our eyes on Him and trust in Him. After about a half-hour of Selmira talking and praying over her, Ana opened her eyes for the first time since the whole ordeal started and actually seemed lucid. Eventually with Ana being back to her normal self, everyone gradually started nodding off as we were all exhausted. The next morning Ana was super sore and bashful. She couldn’t remember anything after getting out of the canoe, but she asked forgiveness, especially to those she had hit or kicked from the night before. 

The other two girls who had said that someone had touched them during the last meeting ended up dreaming of the same merman and his helper. He told them that he had been looking for another girl (Ana), and that he had touched them by mistake. Their separate, but eerily similar accounts of their dreams left little doubt that they had really dreamed with the mermen. 
 
This situation caused the team to remember the writings of Paul Hiebert on “the Excluded Middle” in missions (click here to read his article on "The Flaw of the Excluded Middle"). This “excluded middle” is talking about where this physical world and the spiritual world interact and intersect in our experiences here on earth. So many daily fears and concerns of tribal people fall into this “middle” that is so often not addressed, and sadly, very often excluded in Western missions, because we, as Westerners, rarely if ever experience or witness these kinds of “spiritual encounters.” We’re so quick to say that these kinds of things “don’t exists” or that people’s imagination “is getting the better of them.” But doesn’t Scripture teach us that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms?” (Ephesians 6:12) Is it not very plausible in the case of Ana and the many others who report having had the exact same experience as she, that our spiritual enemy is crafty, deceptive, fear-producing, and can present themselves in whatever form they would like to trick us and cause us harm? Like even pink dolphins and mermaids? Considering John 10:10, if the enemy in some cases can’t possess, perhaps they try to deceive and manipulate people so as to cause them to harm themselves or even try and drown themselves…? I’m so thankful that there is story after story throughout Scripture of the power of Jesus over all things: physical AND spiritual beings! His power is supreme in these things, and He rarely if ever is seen in His healings separating the physical body from the person’s spiritual needs. 
 
This is not the whole story of everything that happened; it’s just a small part really. But this blog post is already longer than should be allowed, haha. In the end, watching all this unfold was definitely a sober reminder not to take lightly or dismiss comments made by the people, even when they talk about encounters with mermaids, and to never miss the opportunity to point people to our Hope and Peace in the midst of fear and turmoil and call them to trust Him.

Dolphins are a common sight on the river during our travels! It’s a little bizarre at first seeing grey and even pink dolphins in freshwater, but we see them so frequently, it doesn’t take long to get used to them. What is quite a bit harder to get used to is the role pink dolphins play in the worldview of the people on the river. 
 
Did you know that pink dolphins are actually mermaids in the worldview of the people? They are often called “yakuruna” – the water people or the people who live in the water. They are described as enchantingly beautiful “gringos” believe it or not. The women mermaids are generally described as bewitchingly beautiful with white skin, blond hair, and blue or green eyes. The mermen are equally as beautiful with the same white skin and light-colored eyes. While the mermaids are always described this way, they aren’t the type of people or “beings” you want to run into. They are kind of like body and/or soul snatchers. They steal people and take them to their world under the water. 
 
Enchanted is a word that is often used for the world that the people on the river live in. By enchanted we mean a world that is much more than what it appears on the surface or physical plane, a world where a dolphin is a dolphin, but sometimes it’s also a devilishly beautiful white person trying to lure you to your death. 

​When first hearing about these fairy-tale-like stories, it’s easy to dismiss them as an overactive imagination or just fear without real experiences with these beings. But, a little over a week ago, we got to see in person what an encounter with these beings looks like.
 
All week we were in a discipleship workshop with all the believers from the 3 main villages where we serve. This is always an amazing time of worship, praying together, encouragement, and discipleship. Early on, we noticed that this particular week was a little different from normal. There were a lot of spiritual encounters.
 
– I’m using “encounters” and not “spiritual attacks” because it’s too easy to assume that “spiritual attacks” are logistical or health problems...etc. that we can indirectly account for as being ways the enemy is trying to distract or keep people from knowing or growing in their walk with Jesus Christ. But when I say “encounters” here in this blog post, I’m talking about direct spiritual manifestations.
 
Right after the workshop kicked off, the people began to mention on a daily basis little spiritual manifestations that they were noticing. One of these that one of the teenage girls mentioned in passing was that she had been visited by a merman in a dream after traveling from her home village to the village where all the believers were meeting. This merman appeared to her, exquisitely beautiful, and told her that he was coming for her, and that he would take her before the end of the week, before she got back to her home village. 

​This was actually the first time I had heard of the mermen or mermaids appearing in dreams, so while it made my skin crawl when the people nonchalantly committed on the subject, the days of the week passed without the dream becoming a reality, and so I didn’t think it was actually going to happen… little did I know. 
 
The night before everyone was going back to their home village, we meet up at one of the believer’s houses for one last time of worship and sharing from the week. Three teenage girls, from three different villages, seated in different areas of the house, mentioned that someone touched them from behind at different moments in the house, and when they looked to see who was touching them, there was no one. Again, most westerners, even worse – missionaries, would say, “you have an overactive imagination!” and immediately discredit any and all possibility that there is any truth or reality in what the people are saying they have just experienced. While we were all more than a little puzzled, thankfully none of the team responded in a way to doubt the girls’ testimonies about what they had felt. 
 
After the evening meeting was done, everyone loaded up in canoes and headed to the homes of the hosting church members. Nem and I were in the canoe with the girl who had dreamed earlier in the week with the merman, and she was also one of the girls who said someone was touching them while they were in the meeting. Let’s refer to her as Ana. We all unloaded from the canoe and eagerly headed up to the house for some much-needed shuteye. After getting back to Cristobal’s (one of the believers from the hosting village) house, the 25+ believers staying in the house were busy hanging up their mosquito nets and getting ready for bed. What we didn’t realize is that after everyone had quickly filed out of the canoe and up to the house, Ana had quietly stayed behind. She is one of 4 teenage girls from the village downriver, and they are always together. Her friends tried to talk her into coming up to the house, but she refused to go willingly, and so her 3 friends, when they couldn’t get her to come up to the house willingly, they forcefully dragged her from the canoe up to the house, to which she smartly replied that when they were asleep she would just sneak away. Now, let me assure you Ana is not a smart-Alec or a drama queen or a problem waiting to happen. She’s actually quiet, shy, attentive, kind, and hates being the center of attention – really she avoids it at all costs like most of the teenage girls on the river, so her weird, abrupt change in behavior was puzzling and scary for her friends. 

Since we had gone ahead of the girls back to the house, we didn’t know that all of that had taken place. We were on the other side of the room, which was now full of mosquito nets blocking visibility from one side of the room to the other, and in the middle of getting ready for bed when one of the girls came to get us. Without really understanding what was happening, she led us over to Ana’s mosquito net and there we found Ana semi-unconscious, in a dream or trance-like state, mumbling & groaning, and thrashing about. Her friends were all literally on top of her trying to hold her down. 

​My first thought was that I was witnessing some kind of demonic possession, but it threw me that she appeared to be almost asleep with her eyes tightly closed and that she still appeared very much to be herself in some ways (i.e. her voice and expressions were her own). At first I thought the girls were playing around, so I got down on my knees and started talking to her and holding her hand, but she didn’t respond like I thought she would. She continued thrashing around, almost throwing off her three friends again and again, groaning, and mumbling with her eyes closed. While I didn’t understand initially what was happening, the people had sent for us to pray, so with 2 other leaders from the different villages, we all started praying. While we were praying, the pile of people trying to hold Ana down grew to 8 people as she almost managed to throw off the people several times in her attempts to run for the door. The group would quickly grow tired and groan whenever she would hit, knee, claw, or bite them.

After seeing that praying a quick, initial prayer wasn’t going to be enough, the Mark 9:29 passage came to mind, and I realized this wasn’t going to be a quick thing. In fact, the people in the house started getting ready to be awake all night and to take turns holding her down. Every once in a while Ana would say, “they’re coming,” or “they’re here to take me.” At one point, when her friends asked her “who? Who’s here?!” Little bit by little bit, asking her simple questions, Ana was able to communicate that the merman who had appeared in her dream was standing in the doorway with another man, wanting to take her with them, but they couldn’t come in the house. They were waiting for the people to sleep, so they could take her.” A little while later, she got more agitated and violent and said her mom was calling her and that she had to go to her mother. Her mom was far downriver in her home village, but Ana was sure that her mom was in the doorway. The people explained what was happening and told us of similar experiences that they had had or seen in the different villages. It was creepy that the phrases that Ana repeated as she thrashed around were word-for-word verbatim for what the people told us that people being stolen by yakurunas/mermaids generally say in these types of situations, especially the part of getting confused and thinking that their mother is calling them. Apparently, this type of thing is not uncommon. Most of the people had at least one story of someone “going crazy,” saying similar things to what Ana was saying, and trying to throw themselves into the river. In the cases where the person succeeded in throwing themselves in the water, the people said that the crazed-person would try to swim under water as if they were trying to drown themselves.
​
To be continued in part 2....

I haven't written much in my updates and blog posts about the world vision of the people. Let's be honest, even with my five years living and learning alongside so many people from this area, I still feel like I have so much to learn. Most days I feel like I'm just starting to pull back the curtain and understand how the people think, how they express their beliefs, and why they believe what they believe.
​
This seems like a great time to share a little glimpse of what I've learned about their worldview (or at least one important piece). I could share all of my beginning mishaps from my early years when the people would share their experiences coded within their worldview terminology and just how many times that those important treasure troves of information have gone over my very literal head. Thankfully, those experiences in my first few years provide me now with a lot of information and understanding for present ministry. Let me share one of the first times I learned about the worldview of the people:

On my very first visit to the river, there was a moment when a beautiful rainbow appeared on the horizon. Behind the rainbow was a group of storm clouds lite up by a lovely rose colored sunset. There were several young people chatting and hanging out in front of the house where we were staying at the time. As the rainbow was quickly pointed out by a few teammates, a worldview conversation got started. The young people shared that the rainbow is a giant snake (the “boa”) that from time to time is seen stretched across the sky in the form of a rainbow. Also, if you point to the rainbow, your finger is cursed and will soon rot and fall off. (I can't tell you how many times I've had my hand slapped down because the people were concerned I was about to lose a finger.) This moment provided the perfect opportunity for a story swap, and one of girls on the team, after listening to the story of the snake in the rainbow, shared the story of Noah & the rainbow. In my worldview the rainbow is comforting and beautiful, but in their world it is the giant anaconda.​

One of the AMAZING things about the Bible is that these experiences of the people around me aren't as strange to the storyline of the Bible as they are to my western education. The Bible is full of stories that the people relate to in a way that I didn't & couldn't growing up in the western world (i.e. a man traveling in the ocean in the belly of a great fish to reach a destination that the Lord was sending him to, bread falling from the sky every morning during a long desert trek, a man's long hair that is somehow connected to him being supernaturally strong, a woman being turned into a pilar of salt for disobeying a command given by an angel, a donkey that speaks to his owner because it sees an angel standing in the path with a sword about to kill it, an angel army that surrounds Elisha that keeps his enemy at bay, a woman giving birth to a baby as a virgen...etc.). 

One of these stories that fascinates the people and me (much more now than before) is the story of a crafty snake that tricks the first woman and man in the Bible. Wow! Talk about the story of the Bible being relevant to EVERYONE. We’re not even two pages into the story of Grace and one of the principle characters in the story is a snake! 

This snake tempts and tricks the first couple into doubting their Good Father who has given them everything they could want or need and 1 very simple, easy-to-follow rule. Buuuut they listen to the crafty snake and end up doubting that God has their best intentions at heart, and they decide THEY need to know everything so that THEY can make the best decision for themselves in case God is holding out on them. What a heartbreaking story! One that's left me weeping more than once as I grasp the significance of what happened and the fact that that same crafty snake has also gotten me to doubt in different moments the heart of my Heavenly Father. The people's “heart-level” reaction and grief to hearing this story has taught me so much about the depth of God's Word and just how powerful and alive it is.​

The snake in the garden shows up over and over again in Scripture and over and over again in our present human experience. We find that he has a name, Satan, he is deceivingly beautiful, he's the ancient and crafty serpent, the father of lies, the enemy of God, and he wants our allegiance to be turned away from our Creator, which always results in fear and death. As we watch within the first few chapters of Scripture, the snake seems to win. He destroys everything! Or so it appears. Then comes the beautiful promise that one day a Son of the woman will come & crush the head of the serpent, even as it bites His heel… What a beautiful story!

     Toward the end of August we traveled up to our home village for our last visit to make sure we were "leaving well" for furlough, making sure that with all our relationships with the people that they understood why we were going to be gone so long and that we are coming back. Also we had to finish closing up our house to make sure the termites don't eat it while we are away. Once we arrived, we stayed with one of our close friends in their home, since our house was almost 90% closed up at that point (we lacked a few things to finish closing it up when we arrived). We were blown away when the family told us that there had been several infant deaths in the weeks before we had arrived. They used a term for the illness that we didn't really understand or recognize, so we were a little confused initially about what was happening. Their little 3-month-old daughter (our little goddaughter), Azalea, also had this illness. I was thrown off because she would be totally fine, her weight and color were good, and she was cooing and smiling away the majority of the time we were there. But out of the blue, every hour or two she would start to cough and wouldn't be able to catch her breath, she would literally have foam coming out of her mouth, and then she would turn blue from not being able to breathe. So scary! Watching her parents trying to figure out what to do was terrible. We felt just as helpless as they did.
        We both had a hunch just from the symptoms that it was whooping cough, but we hadn't ever seen or heard of an outbreak, so we had to do research and talk with lots of medical personnel outside the village to confirm that it is indeed whooping cough.
​    It has been a stressful, heartbreaking time. We've spent the last two+ months studying up on Whooping Cough and treatment options & having to do a lot of waiting which has probably been the hardest part. It's frustrating to feel like there's nothing we or anyone else can do. One of our supporting church in the States offered to send medical supplies for the outbreak, so we spent the last couple of weeks waiting for those supplies to arrive, trying to figure out how to get them to the village, since we are about to leave for our Stateside furlough. 

      We've experienced a lot of frustration, both from learning that there is no cure for the illness and finding that the treatment options that are available are so expensive or complicated that there's just no realistic option to get them to our village, and even those are not cures!! There's also the struggle of understanding that within the culture, if you treat a baby and they still don't make it, there's a good chance the family could see us as responsible for the death of their baby. Then there's the side of having to coordinate with the government health care representatives in the village and area who tend to see our questions and desires to help as a critic and threat to their monopoly and power over the health care on the river. There's a lot of power and money in health care, even though there's so little medical care available on the river. The pediatrician that works in the village for the government is a friend, but she has been out of the village on a long vacation since before the outbreak started and will just be getting back sometime this month (Oct). 
        The feeling of being responsible for the deaths of our friends' infants if we didn't do something quick enough was pretty heavy on my heart the first couple of weeks. After many sleepless nights and after the Lord closed all the doors we were trying to open in our search for a way to help the people, the Lord finally gave me a peace that He is in control. He is the ultimate Healer. He finally gave me a peace that it isn't our responsibility "to help" by providing medicine or a cure this time. He was calling us to walk alongside the people and weep with them over their loss. 

        You're probably asking whats happening now! Here's a quick update:
- the Lord ended up closing the door to receiving the medical supplies that we were hoping to receive from our supporting church in the States. We fought hard to try and get them here, but it was a clear "no" from the Lord. So we are left with praying and trusting Him with the situation.
- We've had a fear of calling Azalea's parents since we were afraid we would call and find that she hadn't made it. She's only 3 months old, so the odds have not been in her favor. And if we called into that situation or maybe in the middle of her funeral...what would we say? How do we hold it together ourselves?
- We ended up receiving a call from another friend from the village this past weekend and ventured to ask how Azalea was doing. This friend lives a good 30 minute+ walk from Azalea's family, but he assured us that the last he heard she was slowly recovering!! We still need to follow up and make sure that that is what is happening right now in her case, but that gave us the hope that she may make it! Praise to our awesome God and Healer!!

That's the latest! We'll know more once our pediatrician friend who works for the government health care system gets back to the village in a couple of weeks. Thanks so much for your prayers and heartfelt concern!! We have felt and see your prayers in action the last few weeks! Please keep them coming!

I'm going to combine all the prayer requests involving these different topics that I've been posting on (i.e. our upcoming furlough, team life, the believers and baby churches on the river, whooping cough, health...etc.). So here we go! 

1) Whooping cough outbreak:
    - we are praising the Lord for the progress in Azalea's recovery! We are beyond thankful for His protection over her little body, and we are praying that she will become a great warrior for Him as she gets older. 
    - continue to pray for the existing cases of Whooping cough in the village and for the families that are grieving the loss of their infants
    - pray for the Lord to use this outbreak for His glory, that He will show His power and love to the people 
     - pray for the Lord to end this outbreak, that He will protect the population, and that it will die out
2) Team life:
    - We are praising the Lord for our new teammate, Ruth! We now have 4 units on our team!! (2 couples and 2 singles) This is a direct answer to years of prayer! We are so thankful that the Lord has provided and blessed us with wonderful like-minded friends and teammates to continue the work on the river. 
   - We are also praying for another potential teammate that is finishing language school and is seriously considering joining our team the first of the year. Can you pray for her that the Lord will guide her to where He wants her to be, that the Lord will put her on the team that He has for her, and that if He is providing another teammate for our river, that He will give her a peace and confirmation on that. 
   - Pray for 3 of our teammates who are currently on the river, getting settled and studying the language! That they will learn the language quickly, that they will be an encouragement to the existing believers on the river, and that the Lord will use them to share with those who aren't believers yet. (Col 4:6)
   - Would you pray for the situation I mentioned in the last blog post about the leader who is associated with our team and the believers on the river who is being accused of being unfaithful to his late wife?? We are sure that that isn't the case, but the accusation is coming from his family, and they are dragging the ministry through the muck since we are all associated with this guy. Pray that this leader will be able to restore his relationship with his family, that they will be able to accept his new wife, and that the gossip they have spread (and continues to spread on its on now) will come to be recognized for what it is - a lie. Pray for forgiveness and restoration in a lot of relationships around this family.
   - Pray that we will be united in heart, mission, and methods as a team! a) Heart - that as a multi-cultural team (American, Australia, and Peruvian), we will love one another well, that we will have constant, open and clear communication and conflict resolution, so that we, as a team, will represent the unity and love of Christ in our own relationships (Rom 15:5). b) Mission - that we will be of one mind in what the Lord is calling us to do on the river (Isaiah 48:17). c) Methods - that we will be united in how to complete our mission on the river using all the gifts, passions, and abilities of our teammates (Prov 3:5-6). d) Also that we will be united in prayer (Acts 6:4) and that we will all maintain a close relationship with the Lord to be able to sense what He is calling us to do as a team, even amid the busy-ness of ministry and stresses of living in cross-cultural situations (pray that we will cling closely to the Vine =John 15:5).
3) The growing church on the river:
    - Continue to pray for the believers and growing churches on the river (2 Thess 3:1), that they will be united in the truth of God Word (Rom 15:5), that they will not be divided or distracted by false doctrine (2 Tim 1:13-14), that they will love and correct one another in love and not fall into attitudes of superiority between believers or believers towards unbelievers (2 Cor 10:17), that their passion for the Lord and seeking Him will continue and grow, that they will be effective in reaching their people for Christ, .
     - Continue to pray for us as we seek to understand how best to contextualize/explain the gospel in the context where we are serving. This is a never-ending prayer request! Ephesians 6:19 & 2 Timothy 2:15
    - Pray for the Lord to continue to work in the hearts of the people and leaders in our area- that they will be open to God's Word (Colossians 4:2-3), that the enemy who seeks to destroy what we are doing and confuse the people will not be allowed to stop the growth of the church, that the growing church will be such a testimony in their communities that unbelievers around them will not be able to come up with reasons to be against them. 2 Thess 3:2.
4) Furlough:
    - We are praising the Lord for allowing for us to be on the field as a married couple, and for His timely financial provision this last year with Nemo's Master's scholarship that covered over half of our financial needs. That scholarship allowed Nemo and I to be on the river while Nemo studied the culture to fulfill both his Master's requirements and also our team needs on understanding the culture better - it ended up taking on a "tent-making" style for some of our support. We are so thankful!
    - We have a lot of pressure on us during this furlough. We now need to double our support, since as a single, I had been on a minimum support level up to this point, just scrapping by, and now Nemo's Masters studies are coming to an end. To continue as a married couple on the mission field, we need the Lord to provide quite a bit financially. Would you pray for the Lord to open all kinds of doors October-February during our furlough?
     - Would you pray with us about how short our furlough is? It sounds weird I know, but with all the support raising pressure we are under, having to attend 3 weeks of trainings with our mission, and needing to be back in Peru the end of February because of needs on the field from ministry, legal, and team situations, we aren't sure how in the world we are going to get everything done in time! It's a lot of stress, pressure, and very little time with constant traveling. 
      - So in summary: would you pray that the Lord gives us rest and strength for whats coming ahead (Matt 11:28-30 & Mark 6:31).
5) Personal prayer requests:
     - Over the last year, Nemo has been my rock and is one of the main reasons I have been able to emotionally, spiritually, and mentally make it another year on the field. I've been in Peru going on 5 years and during that time I haven't had the opportunity to live in the same place (on average) for more than a month or two- I've lived in tents, in friends houses in the city, in friends and strangers' homes in the village, in different mission houses or apartments...etc. and I'm really feeling the need for us to have a place of our own that allows us to come out of the village and be at "home." A place that allows us not to have to pack everything up constantly. Would you pray that the Lord provides us with a place of our own? Also that He will allow us to have the resources to purchase that place? (Phil 4:6-7)
      - Pray for Nemo as he is finishing up the last bit of his thesis. He's been absolutely amazing, juggling ministry, traveling, and his masters' responsibilities. The Lord couldn't have blessed me with a more amazing guy! Hope you all get to meet him soon!

​If you’ve been following the ministry on the river up to this point, you’ve probably heard us talk about the discipleship workshops that we do twice a year. These workshops started when I first got to the field June 2013, and since then there’s been a total of 9! (Our 5 year anniversary working on the river is not too far away! Wow, time has flown!)
     These workshops are opportunities for the believers in the area to get together and pray together, break bread together, worship together, encourage one another, and study God’s Word together. Ok, so why the “together” mantra you ask? On the river where we are serving, one of the biggest challenges is how disperse the population is. There’s an estimated indigenous  population of roughly 11,000 people scattered throughout close to 20 villages (that does not include the large non-indigenous population & towns as well). Imagine having a few believers spread out hours and sometimes, days apart all along a huge river, where resources for traveling between villages are hard to come by for the people.
    One of the keys to a healthy believer is the opportunity to be encouraged and supported by a local group of believers, which is why our ministry can be summed up as church planting. :)

Getting back to this last discipleship workshop: We were blown away by the biggest attendence ever. We adveraged somewhere around 50 adults and around 100 kids!
We were so blessed to have a 4 person team (Karina, Max, Fabio, and Gerzon) from Pucallpa join us! I can’t say enough how the Lord used them all to bless and encourage the people. We also had our core team, Jamer and Isabel, Tim, Ruth, and Abi with us (Ruth officially joined our team after this trip, and we already see Abi as part of the team, even though that decision is pending). Geny, the wife of a pastor in one of the towns downriver, also joined us. She and her husband have been a huge help over the years in ministry on the river!

 Even though we generally plan everything several months in advance, sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned for these type of events, but even knowing that, this time sooooo many things went wrong initially, it caught me off guard. Here’s the short list of what happened:
-As we were returning from our missions’ trianual conference to the river, two of our teammates didn’t make their flights, and it just so happened that there weren’t any more flights for several days.
-Before that, the leadership from the host village had let us know that one of the leader’s wives had suddenly been diagnosed with Turburculosis, which meant that one of the key families in the church (and one of the strongest) would largely be absent as she needed to be quaritined in a hospital several hours away to receive treatment. Not only were we concerned about her, but also for her husband, kids, close family, other believers from the village, and others close to her - did they perhaps have TB too??
-With all that was happening the host village was suddenly unsure if they would be able to receive all the believers from different villages. They were discouraged and not sure if there would be enough food.
-Also, the other gal who had agreed to help me teach the ladies’ classes that week (so that I wouldn’t have to take on the load of teaching 6+ hours a day) called a week before to tell me she wouldn’t make it because of a family situation that had come up, so all of her teaching would fall on me with no time to prepare.
-One of the leaders of the church on the river was under suspicion of being unfaithful to his late wife who had passed away. His family did not approve of his remarriage, and so they were doing their best to destroy his reputation as a Christian by making up stories about him having an affair with his current wife before his late wife had passed away. In so doing, those family members were ("are" - its an on-going problem) dragging our small, growing Christian community through the muck, which of course was causing many of the believers from different villages to get sucked into the community gossip about the Christian leader and of course, they were wondering how someone they respect and look up to could do something like that.
-Nemo and I ended up having a legal document that had to be sent before we left, and after days of trying to complete the process before hand with no success (The due date for the document literally fell the day after a 3 week vacation for the whole office! go figure…), Nemo ended up not being able to make it to the workshop either, so I felt incredibly alone with everything piling up around the workshop.
-Half of the food for the week also ended up getting lost along the way, and the first day we arrived, none of the hosting believers were there to receive us, so there was no place ready to cook, no pans, little to no food, and lots of mouths to feed.

Needless to say, I cried a lot the first couple of days as we traveled the 3 days to the village where the workshop would be held. My conversations with the Lord went something like this:

"Lord, the believers from all the different villages are sacrificing so much to be present this week, and it is literally the first time in six months that many of them have had the opportunity to be surrounded with like-minded, fellow-believers! Why is everything going so wrong?! We can't afford to fall short in completing our part of the bargain to be prepared to encourage them from your Word. But how are we going to do that if half of the teachers do not show up or are discredited in the mind of the people??! What will the believers think of our commit to them and the gospel if we can't even show up and be prepared?"

Anyway, you get a rough idea perhaps where my heart and head was. We've never had so many things go so wrong before one of these workshops, and boy, did I struggle with what I was seeing and feeling. Thankfully, the truth that I couldn't see, and was struggling to hold on to, was that the Lord hadn't abandoned us. Not once.
       After everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong, Sunday night, the day before the workshop was scheduled to start, right before dark, almost everyone showed up, litterally at the last possible moment – all the canoes packed full of believers from upriver and even our two teammates, the pastor of the host village, and the gal who ended up being able to make it in the end to help me with the teaching that week - they all made it! Even the food that had gotten lost on the way, showed up. Thank the Lord! 

The week went almost smoothly after we got started on Monday, and it ended up being an amazing week!
-The Lord provided more than enough salted fish and game to the extent that some was left over.
-Several of the older believers continue to bring their new disciples with them – those from their village who they are sharing the gospel with! All of those who were baptized were those who had been brought and already taught by the older believers in their villages.
-In the group of ladies, there was over 30 the whole week! Even with long hours sitting on the floor with the heat making us wish for a nap, they didn’t miss one session. There were 3 men's groups, and they also attended and studied faithfully.
-Every night a representive from the 4 discipleship groups presented one of the stories they had learned that day from memory!
-There was a good group of young people who stayed with us throughout the sessions that week, tracking with all that we were learning – and they were even quicker to respond and share in our sessions than the older believers at times!
-It was so apparent that the people loved their time together, especially each night when we had church services. Each night, they would still be going strong when the power from the generater would finally go out.
-The kids loved the program that the team from Pucallpa organized for them each afternoon! One of the ladies told me that a few of the parents in the village who are not in favor of the church had threated their kids and told them not to go to the kids program. She then laughed and said that they went every day any way. It was too much fun to resist!
-There was a big group who decided to be baptised as well! We spent time beforehand with each of them individually making sure they were ready. 

And that's just a few of the highlights from the village in August! So thankful that the Lord held me together with all the stretching situations we faced. It was not an easy week, but the Lord is obviously at work!

This is the story of our bout with tropical diseases from this past May!! We would have loved to have given you guys live updates via Facebook or email when all this went down, but we ended up getting sick & hospitalized in an area without cell or internet service. So here's the story two months late (Sorry about that!!):

As you guys know, we spent the first half of this year on the river, splitting our time between the 3+ villages. Between March-May, we mostly lived in a new village, putting down roots, studying language & culture, and building relationships with the people and building our first house! As we adjusted to the new village, the people and medical personnel in the village mentioned every once and a while of the fact that there has been more cases of Malaria in the village this year than ever before. Malaria & Dengue aren't new or super scary diseases for most people living in the jungle since they are always present. The people kind of look at it like people in the city see the common flu (i.e. ideal if you can avoid it, but realistically almost impossible to avoid since it gets passed around each year). You can't really be in the jungle, especially in our area, without eventually getting bit by the wrong mosquito; it's basically inevitable where we are living. (If you guys remember, Nemo actually got Dengue the very first week that he came up to visit me while living in a different village, and that was just from a week of being on the river!!)

After a couple of weeks in the new village, visiting and getting to know the people, we came to realize that our village is being plagued with an intense epidemic of malaria (more appropriately labeled as an "endemic"). This was not something that anyone had warned us about (i.e. no one is talking about it in the Napo or outside), and no one used the epidemic or endemic terms even while we were in the village. In the end, malaria is such a constant and normal thing all along the river that it seems like no one is spreading the word about the situation. 

Mid-May we were wrapping up our stay in the village & getting ready to head back to the city for some conferences, paperwork, and Nemo's eye surgery. We'd been super healthy up to that point, even though we'd been bitten by who knows how many millions of mosquitos. Literally 3 days before we were to leave, I came down with a high fever. On Saturday, we went to the local medical post in the village, and they diagnosed me with malaria. No biggie, we thought, I'll just start the treatment and be over it in a few days...in theory! Come to find out they had just run out of the treatment that I needed...as well as all the other villages in the area. But, there was a boat that was bringing more that same day, so no sweat! We decided to wait just a bit more for the meds to arrive...but in the end, the medical personnel chose that day NOT to pick up the meds from the boat, so everyone in the village that hadn't received treatment yet, would have to wait days until the boat finished it's route and came back. 

We decided to leave anyway as we had originally planned. Sunday afternoon Nemo packed everything up in the house, and we caught a boat going upriver. 6 hours later, we got to the border. By that point, Nemo was also sick with a high fever, so we really were the pair! But I married a super-guy, let me tell you!! He amazed me with his strength and care for me that whole week! He took amazing care of me all the while being sick himself! We got to the town at about 10pm, so Nemo went, found, and woke up the only medical personnel in the village. In the end, they had the necessary treatment for what I had, and I very ungracefully passed out at the door of the clinic, so I got to experience my first time sleeping in a medical facility hooked up to an IV, but most importantly got to start my treatment. :)

The next day the medical personnel sent us across the boarder to a hospital about 3 hours away. Nemo was feeling almost as bad as I was at that point. We got to the hospital, and they immediately did our blood work and came back saying that we both had Dengue!! Surprise, surprise! We definitely weren't expecting that. So my malaria was gone, thanks to the treatment, but it appears that I had had Dengue and Malaria at the same time all along. (It isn't possible to diagnose Dengue in any of the villages, but thankfully this was a legit hospital, so they had the equipment to diagnose even something as complicated as Dengue!) Nemo was just starting his Dengue, and I was on the tail end of mine. In the end, the doctor required us to be admitted. We didn't argue!

We received really great care at the hospital! The Lord really cared for us! The hospital we stayed in is one of the best for tropical diseases. They've even discovered a treatment for one of the more extreme ones! Our doctor had even seen & studied cases like ours (malaria+dengue), so he was the perfect person for our case. The only bummer was that they quarantined us in two different hospital wards. That just about drove us crazy not being able to see each other and not knowing if the other one was okay! After being admitted on Monday, my fever gradually went away, and I was feeling a bit better by Wednesday, enough so that the nurses agreed to let me out to visit Nemo and get use to walking again (haha, I was super weak the first 3-4 days and would get dizzy a lot). 

Since there's no treatment for Dengue (i.e. you just have to wait it out and control the fever as much as possible), Nemo's fever was terrible the first couple of days in the hospital, and much like mine, it refused to come down even for a little bit. It just stayed at a constant 40+ degrees celsius. On Wednesday, Nem's fever broke for just a bit, so we had hope that that was a sign that he was on the mends! But then, that same day, they did another blood test and come to find out, that while I was improving, Nem was just starting Malaria. That was a terrible moment, to be told, "you've just gotten past the worst of the Dengue, but now you are just starting Malaria." Well, long story short, we stayed in the hospital a full week until we were both over Dengue and Nemo had completed his Malaria meds. For Nem, since he had Dengue first & then Malaria, he had a super high constant fever for 7 days straight!! Ugh. It looks like I probably had Malaria and Dengue at the same time from the very beginning, so my fever was super intense, but only lasted 5ish days. In the end, on Sunday morning, we were finally given the green light to leave the hospital. So we traveled all day to get to our apartment in Quito to finish up our recuperation at home, and boy! were we happy to be able to go home!! 
And that's the short version of the story! ;)