Indigenous Tribes of Peru and Colombia

So yesterday we got back from la jungla (the jungle)! And I´m alive! Yay! So let´s see. Jungle tip number 1, it doesn´t matter how much bug spray you use or how high quality it is, if the bugs like your skin they will eat you, and if they don´t they won´t. Ruth and Marleen used insane amounts of bugspray and got eaten alive. I used like none and have about six bites total. I have many more tips, but it might go faster if I just summarize the week. So we left on Tuesday. We walked down to the river (the Amazon River to be exact). We took a five hourish boat ride to where we were going. We had to stop five minutes into it to officially enter Peru and get stamps and everything. We finally got to our first village and I was shocked. I expected like uncivilized people and barely a town at all. They had street lights. We arrived in the middle of an organized futbol game. Each team had jerseys. One guy was reffing. And apparently they weren`t at all phased by seeing white people because we had to wait half an hour for them to finish their game. Then the pastor came over and talked to us. They gave us this little house to set up our tents in. We cooked all our meals in the pastor´s house and ate there too. Whenever we were in our little house there were always children standing at the door staring at us. The bathroom of course was the jungle. We did two evening church services and a kids program. We also did lice removal stuff. Then we went to the next village after two days there. The next village was pretty similar. We had a bigger house that we were staying in and the town had a store! That was about the only thing different. We went to the store quite a bit. They had some yummy cookies and some cold coca cola! Yummmmmm! In this town we did the same thing: two evening services and a kids program. We also used the rest of our lice removal stuff in this town. Both of these little villages were in Peru. Neither of them had very friendly people. The children were scared of us, the babies cried if we held them, and the adults wouldn´t really talk to us. It was quite frustrating actually. After staying there two days there was another town in Peru we were supposed to be going to. But Jaime and JP went to check it out and it was flooded, so basically we would only be able to stay in one house. Door to door evangelism wasnt really an option and church services wouldnt have been very logical. And as much as logic is not a part of doing God´s will, we decided to pray about it. Long story short, God very clearly opened another door and shoved us through it (gently of course. just obviously). We ended up going to a village in Colombia about an hour away from the villages we had just been in. This village was wayyy more receptive! The kids greeted us as our boat pulled up. Everyone was excited to see us. They were super hospitable. It was great! In this village we did an evening service on Saturday and then the next day was Sunday. So we did two programs Sunday morning (one for kids and one for adult). Jessie did the adults one, leaving me as the translator for the kids service! It was so much fun!!! Then in the afternoon we did another program for the kids. Then we had like two hours off until dinner and J and Ju and I wanted to do something (J being Jaime). So we took sheets for the beds and ibprofen and went around the community handing them out and asking the people if we could pray for them. When we had done door to door evangelism and asked to pray for the people in the villages of Peru they were really awkward about it and didn´t really want prayer. But in this village everyone had a prayer request and everyone was excited for us to be there. When we ran out of stuff to give, we had people coming up to us and asking us to pray for them. I prayed for an old lady with stomach problems, a pregnant lady with headaches, two babies with a fever, a little girl who wasn´t strong, a lady with back pains, another little boy who was sick, and a baby that was blind. It was super cool to be able to do all this. And I truly believe that by the time we left, the blind baby girl was starting to see. Also, there was this little girl with a super infected ear. So I went and got JP to clean it. And he was using like hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol and stuff to clean this open wound covered in grossness. This little girl should have been screaming. It should have hurt really badly. But I was praying over her the whole time that God would hold her and take away the pain. And she didn´t make a noise once. She didn´t even whimper. It was incredible. She almost fell asleep even. I was so amazed by God´s comfort for her. Anyways, later that night we had another evening service and we prayed for more people in the community. On Monday morning we left for the boat ride home. That was our week in the jungle! It was crazy. But it was good. It is an experience I´ll never forget, but I know for a fact that I am not called to the jungle. Well, I think I probably already knew that... Anyways. I hope you all are well and I miss you all lots!

Que Dios les bendiga!

Coray