Our Peru mission trip

The original vision Chris had was to build a church in an amazon village.
This is what the church looked like when the men arrived. (They took the fast boat and arrived a day ahead of the medical team) By the end of the trip it had the boards nailed down, a platform, sides, and slats on the window holes. It was about 80% complete, needing mostly benches and a podium.

Packing our six suitcases, three carry-ons included spraying all the clothes with insect repellant. Actually the mosquitos were not as bad as we expected. Which meant we could roll up our sleeves a little in the hot humid weather.

Our trip was plagued by delays starting in Dallas which caused us to miss our connection to Lima putting us a full day behind. We were put up at this fancy hotel in Miami but didn't get there until about 1:30 A.M. We flew out at 5:30 the next afternoon and had trouble with the LAN airline connection to Iquitos but God was faithful and we did get on the flight with minutes to spare and not having to pay the penalty for changing the flight since American Airlines admited to being at fault. We did not realize at this time that they had canceled our return flight because we missed our first flight on LAN. When we arrived at the airport at 6 am on 9/8/07 they had no record of our reservations so 9 of us got on standby and 3 stayed in Iquitos till the evening flight. Our Dallas connection was delayed as well and we arrived home 9/10/07 at 3 am safe and sound. God kept us healthy and safe.

This shows the vast width of the Maranon river, a tributary of the Amazon. We were only on the Amazon for a few minutes outside of Iquitos. Most of the trip was on the Maranon river.

A typical view of the river. The water is low so they make steps in the dirt to reach the water to bathe, do laundry and get water.

A common sight along the river is rice and beans and corn being grown. The river is very low at this time of year and usually will reach the house during the rainy season.

People gather to board our slow boat to sell to the people on board on the way to the village.

Floating logs down the river is a common sight we saw.

The Eduardo is the Slow boat Jan and Teresa took to and from the village. Here it is pulled to the bank to let us off at the village. On the way back to Iquitos we attempted to board a different Edwardo (they have 7 rotating, one each day) during a rain and wind storm but they wouldn't let us board till the storm let up so we waited out the storm tied to a tree on the river at about 10:00 at night. It was an adventure but God kept us safe. I think we had to bribe the captain to let us on as they were heavily loaded on the way back to Iquitos with 6 cows, bananas, rice, etc.

Teresa and Linda in the pharmacy. Usually Linda and Jan did blood pressure and temperatures and triage, and Teresa did pharmacy and supply dispensing. Jan did help in the pharmacy the last day and also dispensed reading glasses.

Teresa, Linda and Jan stayed in this house. We had to rearrange the hammocks after we cracked the beam they were all attached to. Oops :(

Chris got to preach one night. Jan is disappointed she didn't get to share a message she had prepared but that's alright.

We took the fast boat to another village on two days for a separate medical clinic.

Chris' hammock setup

Chris got to help with 19 baptisms

This was San Jose village where we stayed and built the church. The house directly under the sign is where the girls stayed and the blue house next to it was our "dining room" and the entrance to our outhouse in the back yard. The village was built on three sides of a square with this soccer field in the center. Some houses also extended on each side of the square along the river. One estimate I heard was that 400 people lived here.

Teresa, Linda, Rene and Jayme and some of the guys dance with the native Bora tribe at a tourist spot we visited on Friday. We purchased a lot of souvenirs from them.

On Friday we saw ant eaters, monkeys, sloths, butterflies, tapirs, and lots of other animals at a butterfly reserve and a little farm that had various animals we could hold and look at.

Linda holds the two beautiful parrots

Chris and the friendly sloth