Pucallpa November 2010 Part 2

Day 2. Early set off on the river. This time we used a quicker boat than previous times, so this time we arrived in just over an hour, rather than between 3-4 hours. What a difference! We split the morning into 2 sessions, I taught the first session on how our Christian life should be balanced UP (our relationship with God), IN (our relationship with the church at large) and OUT (our relationship with those who are not yet in the church). Mark speaking with Antonio translating. I spoke for 15 minutes, the preach was 1 hour 10 minutes!!

This was well received, as were the small groups where we gave the people chance to share about their lives. We finished our time with them by sharing a humble meal of fried plantains and rice.

Following our return to the port John Mark and I wanted to buy a small snack and after asking the lady what was for sale she asked me if I wanted to buy a monkey. The 'friendly' Monkey

My response was ‘how much’? She said ‘120 soles’ about 40 dollars or 25 pounds. I’m sure I could have bartered her down, if I’d actually wanted to buy it. The lady then showed us the monkey, which was allegedly friendly, but did start to growl at us when we approached it. Following the monkey jumping and dancing, we returned back to Pucallpa and our hotel. We had a wonderful meal in the evening at the La Rueda restaurant which I have visited each time I have been, and was pleasantly full, which cannot be said for my American friends who ordered too much. Unfortunately we split the bill three ways!!

Pucallpa November 2010 Part 1

I (Mark) had the privilege to go to the jungle again last week. It again was a time that really blessed me. This time I went with two American missionary friends, Wes and John Mark. Wes with two of his Shipibo friends.

John Mark, myself and many Shipibo children and young adults.

My trip had 3 main aims; to visit and teach the church in Nueva San Juan (New St John), who would like to be overseen by our church and myself, to visit the river community that we visited in June, and to do research for the medical mission/campaign in April 2011.

This is where they grow!!!

The trip was a real success and I felt that God is growing my passion for the jungle people, and especially the jungle tribe of the Shipibo people. We set off on Monday night. It was incredible that I was able to take Bibles with me as I had forgotten/didn’t have time to buy them before Monday, which was a public holiday and all the shops were shut. However I went to Miraflores (tourist destination) with the boys on Monday morning and there was a book fete there, and I was able to buy both Bibles and Sunday school materials fairly cheaply. Isn’t God good!

Bernado, a Shipibo pastor and his wife, our hosts for the 2nd day, with Wes

We arrived after our 45 minute flight, expecting the normal 10-15 degrees difference in temperature from grey polluted miserable Lima, but we actually arrived in the rain, having missed the very strong thunder storm earlier in the day. It was cold for Pucallpa, only mid 20s (mid 70s)!!

Whilst being greeted by our Shipibo contacts, our free airport pick up decided we hadn’t arrived and went back to the hotel. It must have been difficult to stop 3 large tall white men in the crowd of 30 or so dark skinned Peruvians. We took a moto taxi and got to the hotel Las Gavilanes (which we will be staying at in April), which was very pleasant and received the apologies for being missed. We slept well ready for our river trip the next day.

Typical Shipibo smiling faces.

Light party

Last Sunday afternoon we had a light party at our house. Most of the kids dressed up, and we organised some games and party food...

Daniel and Joel were Superlightmen. Daniel did not want to do the superhero thing and wear pants over his trousers. 'That would be silly, Mummy, and everybody will laugh at me.' Fair enough. Joel, however, did not mind the attention!

Superlightman saves the flailing Allison.
Butterfly Lili with Teago the clown

Nicole made a great little Amazonian Indian and won the girl's prize.

But it was little Jonqui who won the boy's competition with his cute outfit!

New miscarriage and stillbirth website

Well, one of the things Anna has been doing in the last few weeks is setting up a website about responding spiritually to miscarriage and stillbirth. Why don't you take a look and let us know what you think?

www.godinmygrief.com

Joel's birthday and some family pics

Happy Birthday Joel! Joel is now two! According to Daniel, Joel is funny and he likes to watch t.v. and he likes to play with his toys and he likes to eat bread and ham and cheese. It is certainly true that one of his favourite pastimes is eating - and as a result he is quickly catching Daniel up in height - already the Peruvians ask us regularly if they are identical twins. Not that they look alike to us of course with Joel being very fair-haired! Daniel and Joel generally play really well together - they especially like pretending to be cats. Joel is Daniel's kitten:

Daddy cat licking his kitten!
On the day of his birthday (sorry so late posting!) which was Wednesday 6th October, we had a little 'parr-teee!' to celebrate at the end of their in-house nursery. Anna and Grandma Sue made monkey cupcakes for the occasion.

I know, I know, but he just loves Barney!

The identical twins!

Baptisms and Dedications

Today was our baptism and dedication service. We borrowed a pool from some friends and set it up on our patio in our house.
Lots of people came - probably the most people we have had in our house. Most of them are contacts through the Mums and Tots group we have been running.

The children and adults had a time separately to explain baptism and dedications and then we all came together after the adults who were being baptised gave their testimonies. Mark then dedicated 13 children.
We then got all the children and an accompanying adult up onto the balcony (out of the way of splashing hands!!) and the baptisms started below. 4 ladies - Melisa, Yayaira, Belen and Jesse were baptised. They are all mothers from the Mums and Tots group.
Belen being baptised.
Melisa before her dunk.
We made baptism and dedication certificates for them all which they were very proud of. Above is Melisa with her mother Inés and son Thiago.
Jesse (purple and grey stripped jumper) with her family and son (and Mark!)
Yayaira and her brother and son with Mark
We had a scrummy chicken and chips lunch and spent time together. José Manuel is in the photo above with Llida.
Yayaira and Julio Cesar.
Towards the end, Daniel suddenly stripped off and jumped into the pool, much to everyone's amusement. Fortunately, he knows how to swim so we weren't too worried!! He did not seem to mind the cold!
All in all, it was a great day! We are so thankful to God in how He is working in the lives of these people, and it is great to hear people's testimonies and confessions of faith! We pray that it will be the first of many events like this!

Family time

Okay, so we felt it is time to update the blog with a few family photos to prove that we do have fun too!! This last month, as you are probably aware by now was obviously a memorable one, but it has been a really special one too.

Mark got the opportunity to go to Toronto, Canada for 5 days for a 'Father Heart' school, which he really enjoyed and really benefited from. It was through a series of miraculous circumstances that he got there in the first place, after Anna hearing God telling her that Mark should go to a Father Heart conference there in August not even knowing if there was one on. God also told her the money would come in in parts and bit by bit, various unexpected gifts began arriving from the very next day, the final amount coming in just a week before the conference!

Two days after returning we found out that our beautiful baby, who we found out a couple of days later was a little boy, had died several days earlier. It seems that it was due to a detached placenta. We called him Solomon because of the peace that surrounded us during those days, and since as well. Perhaps if you spent a day with us this week you would not think we were still affected by what has happened - normal life has resumed and we are joyful, hopeful and excited about the next steps God has for us. At the same time, we remember Solomon and face frequent (not always painful) reminders of him, and of loss in general as we work with people who have very broken backgrounds. We do not avoid mentioning him or what has happened. For us, it is important to just be honest and open about it all. His life still goes on in heaven and our lives go on without him a physical part of them. But the thing about losing someone, especially one who was so young when lost and there are few shared memories, the life of the person is lived out in the imagination instead.
Thank you to those who sent kind messages - we really appreciated your prayers and thoughts and felt upheld by them over the last few weeks.

We have had some precious memories in the last few weeks with Daniel and Joel. Daniel flew his first kite on Monday. He was so chuffed to be holding onto it as it flew. What is it about kites, however, that you never want them to come down and when they do, you just have to get them back up again?! It makes going home very difficult, but the wind was cold and we were shivering, so that was a good persuasion!
We also visited Huachipa zoo on Monday, a zoo 45-minutes out of Lima into the hills. The boys were really excited at finding the animals, and loving the full-size pirate ship they could climb all over. We enjoyed the chance to get some sunshine out of the Lima winter fog - both Mark and I getting sunburned!


Here are some other pictures from this month from a children's play place called City Toys. Really an ingenious idea - a mini city built for kids, with different houses in different themes. Here is my little soldier and policeman enjoying a quiet read in the town library...
Joel loved the baby dolls until he found Barney...
A soldier-policeman on a horse with Barney. Only in a child's imagination!