Days One and Two -- 18-19 July 2009

Saturday - Sunday 18-19 July/Julio 2009

[I write this in my jungle hammock, on Sunday, in the hut/shack of Pastor Isidro in the community of Nuevo Progresso, on the Itaya River in the Peruvian Amazon.]

Our team of 15 (six of whom were teenagers) left Calvary Christian Church in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, at 8:45 a.m. to fly from Logan International Airport in Boston to Atlanta, departing at 12:15 pm and arriving a few hours later. We left Atlanta  at 5 and arrived in Lima, Peru, around midnight. After a while in customs, we bought some snacks (and our first taste of "Inca Kola" the bubble-gum flavored soda we would grow to love) then tried to catch some sleep at the gate as we waited for our 4:30 a.m. flight to Iquitos, a couple of hours north, in Las Amazonas, the Amazon.
We arrived in Iquitos at 6:30 a.m....nearly 22 hours of traveling.
As a light rain fell outside the Iquitos airport, we loaded our blue cargo totes, rucksacks and other gear into a van rented by Steve, the missionero who lives in Iquitos with his wife, Terry, as well as into his Chevy Blazer and a small station wagon jitney that I was to ride in. We drove through the Sunday morning mist and drizzle into the city proper of Iquitos, the world's largest city with no roads connecting it to the outside world, beyond the jungle. We arrived at the Hotel Europa, which caters to church mission teams and other gringos (but not necessarily the high-end ecotourists that other hotels seemed to attract), a short while later.
The first thing we noticed (besides the closed storefronts you'd expect on a Sunday morning) were the mopeds, motorcycles and three-wheeled "motocarros" that were already rumbling and zooming along the roads, with seemingly no concern for the idea of traveling lanes as they weaved around one another.

From Peru Photos

The rumble of their engines, the noise and smell of exhaust hung heavy in the damp air. On single mopeds and small motorcycles, infants and toddlers were positioned between parents (and sometimes held by one arm on the parent's hip) as they zoomed down the road. Naturally, unlike one would expect on a roadway in the U.S., none wore helmets. I even saw a family of five all perched on one motorcycle traveling past us.
We rested until noon at the hotel, then walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant for lunch.

From Peru Photos

It was a University of Texas-themed restaurant, with the waitstaff wearing the burnt-orange colors of "Hook 'em Horns" fame...the owner was an American who had moved to Iquitos from Texas years earlier. The restaurant itself was adjacent to one of the city's main tourist attractions, the Casa del Fierro, or "Iron House," known for its iron construction and its designer, the famous Gustav Eiffel (yes, of the Eiffel Tower".
I ate dorado, a local river fish, served in a tomato salsa and wrapped in banana leaves, along with fried yucca, which are much like American french fries. One of our teenagers, Nicole, who was known to be a finicky eater, had eaten just a couple of bites of her alligator burger. So I ate half of it, and of course it tasted like a whiter, chewier chicken.
After a short walk around a block or two, our group returned to our hotel, where Steve and Terry, our host missionaries, led us in our "orientation" talk and helped prepare us for what we were about to embark upon. We each gave small testimonies about what led us to take this trip and Sarah C. spoke movingly about her reasons for being here. We all came from very different backgrounds, from the teenagers to us adults, some of us married, some single, and one who is a single parent. It was clear to me that God had put us together as individuals who were to function as a team, one body with many and varied parts, for his purposes and for his glory this week. For me, he had already shown himself on this trip.

From Peru Photos

During the flight, his "sunset" from the airplane, in which the sun was shining "down" on the clouds...and earlier that day at the Texas-themed restaurant: the rain had held off as we walked to our lunch place, but less than 2 seconds after the last member of our group entered the building, a tropical downpour was released, causing the proprietor to raise his eyebrows and comment on the phenomenon that seemed too perfectly timed to be coincidental. Even that we had been able to rest and to eat well for supper too (we had a type of shish kebab for dinner tonight) was a blessing...because our original plan had been to go straight to the jungle without spending our first night in the hotel, in the city, where we were able to get physically and mentally ready for what was to come. And it was needed too. One of the women in our group had felt very weak that evening as we were walking along the sidewalks. The team surrounded her on a streetcorner, prayed for her and she felt God's healing at that moment and felt better immediately.
All of this on just our first day...
Random notations: In Iquitos, my iPhone wasn't getting a decent connection, so I bought a phone card that was supposed to have 50 minutes on it, but it had just 5, so I bought a second one and was able to speak with my wife, Christine, at 10 pm Iquitos, Peru, time, just one hour ahead of Boston's time zone. Hearing her voice, and knowing I wouldn't be able to speak with her for an entire week, until the next Saturday when we were to return from the jungle, was difficult. In 15 years of marriage and more than 20 years being together, we had never gone 7 days without some form of communication, even if it was a text, a letter or something. But I was here to rely on God's strength, to do His work and to be encouraged and boosted by Him. Though these next several days would be a challenge, "Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece ... I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." As the younger members of our team practiced the drama presentations they would be offering to the children in the village, I went to bed. It was 11:30 pm, Sunday, and we were to wake up at 4 a.m., for a 5 a.m. bus departure.
Good night. Buenas noches.

A first-person account of a short-term missions trip to Peru's Amazon jungle

Welcome to the online version of the daily journal I kept from July 18 to July 26, 2009, when I joined 14 others on a trip to Iquitos, Peru, where we went to help the pastors of two villages along the Itaya River. I welcome your comments.