Pucallpa May 2012: Background

Rosa and her mum Vilma

Last month Shaun, Nancy, AnnaLou, Rosa (her first time flying) and I (Mark) went to the jungle again, this time to do what is called a learning community. We went from Sunday night to Friday night and taught 2 sessions a day Monday to Thursday, and did consultations on Friday morning.

This was an amazing time, and I can honestly say my best trip to Pucallpa, and the Amazon jungle out of the 10 visits i have done. It may not have been the most exotic visit as we were inside 4 walls of a church building for the majority of our time. (Thank you to our friends at Luz Divina church for the provision of their building). However it was the beginning of something really special.

Marcial

However let me backtrack to give you a few more details so this makes more sense.  In January of this year a small team from Oikos went to the jungle for 2 weeks.  This was a time to identify what was the next step for our ministry in the jungle. We had 2 kairos moments (in our language these are moments that define our lives and we have a choice to grow from them or ignore them). The first was that there was an enormous need for supporting and equipping Shipibo jungle churches, and especially their unsupported leaders, in and around Pucallpa. Secondly this would not be even vaguely possible if we did not have a team of Shipibo leaders managing and running this process. We also knew that this team needed to be run by Marcial and his wife Doria.
Therefore when we got back to Lima we started to think and pray about the way forward, and we felt that the correct direction was to start to huddle (in otherwords to coach and/or equip) Marcia and Doria, firstly face to face as they were in Lima, and then by internet as they moved back to Pucallpa, as they had felt the call of God to do exactly what we wanted to support them in. Anyway to try and keep the story short(ish) Maricial formed a team of 3 people with their wives, and 2 young single men.

Erling with Kaleb

The aim in the beginning was that Miguel, and his wife Vilma (Rosa´s parents) would oversee the church in Calleria, Marcial and Doria would oversee San Juan, and Florienzo and Cazilda would oversee the planting of the church in Egypt (yes that really is the name), Erling and Rafael, the two single guys would help with this process. Well this was the idea before we arrived in Pucallpa for the Learning Community.

Miguel being lunch preperation!!!