Hello from the Amazon River!

                Thank you for your prayers this past week as a group from our school ministered in 3 indigenous Amazon communities.  The trip left me with a lot to pray for, and I want to share some of that with you so you can join us in prayer for these people.   As always, also let me know how I can pray for you.  As we celebrate Easter this week, I celebrate that God is alive and hears our prayers. 

                On Thursday, April 14, our group of 22 arrived in Leticia, a town on the border of Colombia, Peru and Brazil.  We spent Thursday afternoon and Friday morning in a children’s home in Leticia, and Friday afternoon we got on a boat and travelled 4 hours down the Amazon River to a community called Zaragoza in Colombia.  Saturday morning our group split into our 3 teams: a medical group (2 medical students, a nurse, a dentist and volunteer optometrist) set up a clinic in the school, a group of students ran activities with children in the village, and the last group painted Bible verses on houses and the church, visiting and encouraging the Christians in the village.  Each day we spent in the villages we focused on these three ministries.  After 2 days in Zaragoza, we crossed the river and spent one day doing ministry in Puerto  Alegre in Peru, and then continued on to a community called 2 de mayo, also in Peru.  We stayed there until returning to Bogota on April 21.  In Zaragoza and 2 de mayo we showed the Jesus movie one evening, and another evening we shared choreographies, testimonies and dramas my students had prepared.   The communities we grateful for everything we were able to share with them.

                I spent most of my time with the painting group.  The first house I painted in Zaragoza belonged to a family that became Christians when their mother had cancer and was sent to the city for treatment.  While we painted, they told us their story: this woman stayed with a Christian family in Bogota, and when their pastor laid hands on her and prayed for her she was miraculously cured.  In one picture you can see a verse I painted in their indigenous language, Tikuna.  I spent one afternoon helping the dentist because she had 35 patients one day.  The medical brigade was set up in the church, and she still had a line of people at 6 pm when the church service was to start, so she stayed pulling teeth in the front of the church during the service.  At 10 pm she pulled out a tooth for the pastor and called it a day.

                The big lesson I took away from this experience was: Jesus makes the difference.  In the United States, being a Christian is not as counter-cultural as it is in these villages.  In Zaragoza, abuse and alcoholism were rampant, so being a Christian means not participating in such activities.  In Puerto Alegre, a 14 year old girl came to the medical clinic with a vaginal infection because her father had been sexually abusing her since she was 11. She went and told a few of her friends who asked for the same medications because similar things had happened to them.  I know that this cycle of abuse can stop if these families would allow God to transform their lives.  We saw the power of God’s transformation in 2 de mayo, which has many Christians, including the town leaders and a schoolteacher.  For the first time on our trip, we saw husbands loving their wives and mothers caring for their children. The children had a joy and innocence that we praised God for.  This community was different because many have decided to accept Jesus’ love and live the way He calls us to.  It gave me hope that sad situations we heard about in the other villages can change.  In the picture I am painting one of my favorite verses, Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  This is my prayer for these villages, and I ask that you remember them in your prayers and commit to living transformed lives wherever you might be.  A relationship with Jesus is about abundant life, here on earth and in heaven. 

Blessings,

Robyn