We arrived in our now normal style of late after car troubles... The night before our border crossing from Colombia into Ecuador we found a hotel to sleep in after a long day of driving. Unfortunately it landed up being a hotel where rooms are hired out by the hour... Needless to say we left bright and early the next morning, only to have car troubles not 100m out the front door. Drat. So 6 hours later after spending the morning fixing the axle of one of our popup trailers we finally headed off to the border, which by God's grace was only about a 2.5 hour crossing, our shortest yet. We were also totally blessed to have been right next to a mechanic who could fix our trailer axle. After a really long night of driving we arrived at our host in Quito at 2.30am...
We spent some time getting ready for our first outreach into the Amazon jungle. We split into two groups and headed off by public transport on Friday 3 February. What an adventure. Our team of 13 took 4 buses to the town of Puyo. We didn't really head off with a plan, we wanted to wait on the Holy Spirit so that God could show us where we should go. After a team meeting and prayer we started getting clues as to where to go. Every word and vision we got from the Holy Spirit was totally met and used in our week. We met someone after lunch who told us there was a church we should visit that evening. So off we went at 7pm looking for it. We never found it, even though we were given at least 10 different sets of directions by different people we asked along the way!! After prayer walking for a bit we felt lead to go up a dark road, and sure enough we found another church which has a missionary focus and works with the indigenous people.
What a devine appointment as Pastor Carlos hooked us up with amazing contacts. We interrupted their Friday night leadership meeting as we hung out together and shared our hearts. He connected us with his missionary pilot friend Rick who could possibly fly us into the jungle. A breakfast meeting was set up for 7am on Saturday morning with Pastor Carlos and the Pilot Rick.
After sharing who we are and what we do with Rick he invited us back to his house and showed us around his hanger as we planned where we should go.
After that it all went very quickly and before we knew it we in the back of a pickup truck on our way to the VERY small town of Chapintza (2.5 hours away) which is really at the end of the road, there was nothing past that point. Rick then proceeded to fly us across the river 9 miles to the village of Ayui where a Cuban missionary couple (Ramon and Karidad Rodriguez) have been serving the Shuar indigenous people faithfully for the last 2 years. His plane is really small so he could only fly 3 of us at a time.
Breakfast planning meeting
After sharing who we are and what we do with Rick he invited us back to his house and showed us around his hanger as we planned where we should go.
Believe it or not we planned our route through scratching on this rusty drum
After that it all went very quickly and before we knew it we in the back of a pickup truck on our way to the VERY small town of Chapintza (2.5 hours away) which is really at the end of the road, there was nothing past that point. Rick then proceeded to fly us across the river 9 miles to the village of Ayui where a Cuban missionary couple (Ramon and Karidad Rodriguez) have been serving the Shuar indigenous people faithfully for the last 2 years. His plane is really small so he could only fly 3 of us at a time.
Getting ready to take off
Taking off from Chapintza
Flying over the Amazon
We arrived unannounced at Ramon's door... we caused quite a stir in the village, it's really small and rural, they haven't had a group as big as 13 white foreigners before. But Ramon was great in getting used to us and before we knew it we were getting set up to pitch our tents in the church and Ramon was starting to put together a schedule of ministry opportunities for us.
Pastor Ramon (in long sleeve grey top on the left) giving us an introductory briefing
Tents (to avoid tarantulas and other bugs biting us while we slept) set up in the church
Tight fit... are we sure this is a 2 man tent?!
On Sunday 4 of our team members hiked to another village to minister there for a few days. The remaining 9 of us lead the church service that morning. It was a bit slow to start with as not many people came - they were a bit nervous of all the foreigners, but eventually a few braved coming out and we had a great morning of ministry. After the service 6 of us hiked through the jungle to the village of San Francisco to minister there overnight. Hiking through the jungle is quite intense. There were many times without a good path where we had to wait for Ramon to clear the way with his majete. There was also soooo much mud, now I know why indigenous people wear gum boots, not hiking boots like us!! We had to hike along logs (pretty rotten and slippery with all the rain and mud), through rivers and densely overgrown vegetation. I loved it!!! What I didn't love so much was all the mosquito bites...
Heading off for our hike to San Franscisco
When we got to San Franscisco (a tiny even more rural village of 72 people spread out between about 7 families) we put up our tents in the church. The pastor and his wife treated us to some delicious papaya. We had brought them some rice, which we had for dinner. Just rice. Nothing else. Shows how poor they are and how deep in the jungle we were, there is no contact or shops for miles, you eat what you grow or hunt there. We lead a church service and children's programme which was awesome, it was challenging with the language though, translating from Spanish to Shuar as most of the village only speak Shuar.
On Monday morning a couple of our team members stayed behind to do another children's programme and some leadership training with the adults. The rest of us headed back for the 2.5 hour hike home as we were planning to minister at another village that day. Unfortunately we didn't get to the other village but rather enjoyed our time back in the village of Auyi where we ministered with and got to know the Cuban missionaries.
Helping with cooking - as you can see I'm not doing it right so this mama is showing me how...
The kitchen - the red bowl is the rinsing basin after washing up, notice how not it's not that clean...
Tuesday we lead a leaders training time which was amazing. Difficult again with the languages (English, Spanish and Shuar). We did a trust exercise where you need to fall into the arms of your team members to demonstrate trust. We only found out afterwards that the two tribes who were there for the training are actually enemies with some feud from years ago, so getting them to trust each other was HUGE. It was amazing see God work through it all.
Trust exercise
On a side, the jungle really is filled with critters. We slept with a Tarantula above our tent in the Church. Seriously. Our leadership training time was also interrupted with a snake which needed killing... 1 metre long and the width of a fist. I know as it was presented to us hanging off a stick. It was then left draping on a tree stump (gross) and then disappeared... I
The snake...
An idea of just how wet it was
Waiting out the rain (which didn't stop!) under the shelter of the plane
So after standing in the rain for a while, some guy came over and invited us to sit on the porch of a house out of the rain. After a while it got dark, we realised we weren´t being fetched, a couple of girls told us we could sleep inside that house, and that was it. A mom came in with her 4 kids and slept in another room, we went to bed early (it was dark and we had nothing to do and hardly anything with us to eat, just some of my muesli I made in Colombia), then Thursday morning we waited until we got fetched.
I loved my overnight in this small village, the people really crept into my heart, I had mixed feelings when I was fetched the next day - on the one hand I was relieved to see our pilot, but a part of my heart felt ripped out leaving the kids I started building relationships with.
Flew to Chapintza and were told the bus is in 6 hours. Shew. So we ordered the only food we could (rice and eggs) (we were starving as we hadn´t eaten much in a couple of days) and then hitched a ride back in a truck.
So, I have learned a few things:
1. I can survive without showering for 7 days
2. I can survive without washing my hair for 6 days
3. I can survive skipping meals
4. I can eat just rice for dinner
5. I can eat soup for 8 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner)
6. I can eat rice for breakfast
7. I can go without water for 36 hours
8. Going without water for 36 hours also means I will only need the
toilet once a day (without really needing it)
9. I can go hiking through a jungle for hours and be knee deep in mud
and wet and soooo dirty and still be okay.
10. I can get wet and dry and wet and dry (it rains all the time in
the jungle) etc etc all in one day.
11. I can put on wet socks and shoes in the morning and hike out of a
jungle without complaining
12. I can go a week without chocolate and coffee
13. ALWAYS take granola with you for emergency supplies
14. Through everything, God is good, ALL the time, I am never alone
and He is always in control and I am safe in His arms
15. I can't wait to go back to the jungle...
The Ayui village
Some things about the jungle and the Shuar people:
* We ate rice (which we had brought) sometimes, and soup which consists of a type of potato, yuka which is like a root vegetable and a green onion type herb which is picked from the garden. This will be cooked for dinner and then eaten till it runs out. Dinner. Breakfast. Lunch. Then the same again.
* The Shuar are the most dangerous of the tribes in that area being the only tribe never having never been conquered by the Spanish or Inca.
* Some of the Shuar are still involved in shrinking heads (not the people we were with though!).
* One of the ways the Shuar are intense is that their spears are shaped so that once they have skewered you can't really pull the spear the arrow out easily, without some serious force and ripping out your insides. They use a poison on the tip of their spears which is lethal, like only a drop is needed to kill you. Only very few people in the tribe know how to make this poison.
* They still hunt with blow guns which can be 4m long. I shot a 2m long blow gun and that was challenging enough, so I can only imagine how hard a 4m long one must be to shoot... Apparently it needs to be that long for the dart to get enough speed to shoot accurately a bird in a tree for example.
The 2m blow gun
The "mayor" of the village in traditional fighting gear
Jungle flora
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