A Shipibo jungle Wedding

JUNGLE NOVEMBER 2012: PART 3

We were really honoured as a team to have Dennis and Charmian helping us.  They are leaders of church in another part of Lima and it was great to draw on their ministry experience. 

They did a wonderful talk on covenant with your spouse and also covenant with your kids, focusing on their spiritual walk. This was a real needed area in the life of these Shipibo people. I was so blessed to be part of a team helping to lead these guys into a new deeper experience of love for our God and in their marriages and families. 

Traditional Shipibo dancing at the wedding.

We heard testimonies from men and women, lay leaders and church leaders about how their spiritual eyes were being opened.  They talked of scales being removed from their eyes and closed or immature beliefs being changed. Some realised for the first time that it was ok to include your family in your mission and ministry.  A pastor realised that the church was less important than his relationship with his 16 year old son. It was a revelation that the family is more important than the church, but not God and that loving God is not the same as loving the church at the neglect of your family.  

Erling and Maritza in their traditional outfits 

Following the times of confession, many pastors and leaders saw bright futures for their marriages. This is wonderful in a culture where most marriages are functional (often arranged) and made for protection, provision, and child bearing and not always love. This I know will now begin to change.

Mark, his kushma, and Marcial

This was massively highlighted by the wedding of Erling and Maritza on the Friday night. Starting at 7pm sharp, the 10 people present were calling all the attendees by microphone. At 7.20 incredibly there was over 200 people there celebrating the first Shipibo religious wedding in this village. What a honour to be presiding over it.

With the happy couple

We started with the short (very)cultural section and it was wonderful to see both Erling and Maritza, and many other women dressed in traditional costume. I was lent a kushma or traditional male outfit and far too small traditional headwear. Very few people own these outfits due to the cost and so there was only 3 at the whole wedding. Following more singing and the traditional Shipibo dance section I was asked to lead the modern marriage vows. 

Here comes the bride with her Dad.

The whole event was very emotional and a real pioneering step towards seeing a more united God loving church and people. It is so amazing to be involved with the Shipibo church and especially with Oikos Selva.

Starting next year I plan to be there once a month to really start to intensively train our leaders.  We also hope to lead some short term teams there and carry on the learning community conferences we have started. 

Jungle churches near and far

JUNGLE NOVEMBER 2012: PART 2:

Some of the people from Nuevo San Juan

When we started the conference on the Tuesday morning we discovered that we had leaders, pastors, and representatives from 6 churches, 3 of them from our May Learning Community conference, and 3 new ones. These churches varied in size, distance from Pucallpa and number in attendance. Most of the 40-50 people were from the hosting church, Nuevo San Juan, 13km outside of Pucallpa. Our church in Nuevo San Juan has seen their membership grow from 10 people in May, before our last learning community to now having a membership of 72, with their attendance on a Saturday and Sunday being much higher. 
There was also leaders from the church in Calleria that is now unofficially affiliated with us. They would love us to visit them next year, and potentially marry 10 or more couples!  

Dennis, Charmian, Rosa, Miguel and Vilma in the Calleria group

Junin Pablo, Nuevo Loreto, and others

We also had 2 people from Junin Pablo (24 hours away), as well as the leaders from Maritiza’s (the bride in waiting) church, which the leaders there described as much further than Junin Pablo in distance. 



However  Carlos from Santa Rosa de Renewya won the award for traveling the furthest. It took him 3 days to arrive by boat. This however only costs 40 soles, which is 10 pounds or 15 dollars. He and his church wished to join our jungle church network, Oikos Selva, and they had signed an offcial document, ratified by the local lawyer's office stating their attentions to be affiliated with Oikos! We were obviously delighted to accept them and now have to look at how much the plane ticket costs to get there. I really don't think three days on a boat is the most wise use of time. Please pray for this small village church. 

I asked Carlos, the pastor of this newly affiliated church about his wife, and kids. He told me he and his wife Isabel have several children. He told me that they have Esther 20, Priscilla, 18. After 5 minutes he said ‘and Ronaldia he is 4 years old’ He has 9 kids all 2 years apart from Esther down to Ronaldia. This man is a lovely example of a humble jungle pastor who has a love of the Lord,  and a desire to do the best for his people, but no support financially or spiritually.  I have no idea how this works strategically, but we have a great and big God. We need start to pray for an Oikos boat, and an Oikos plane (faith like a mustard seed?). I am starting to understand a little of what Paul the apostle went through to take the gospel to the ends of the Earth.

Doria praying for her husband and leader of Oikos Selva, Marcial.

During the conference we also saw many leaders and pastors blessed by the Holy Spirit, when praying for them after the practical prayer ministry session. This was the most powerful experience of God that I am sure that most of these Shipbo pastors and leaders have experienced. Many of the testimionies after talked of this mighty wind (like Pentecost in Acts 2?) coming and blowing them over. Also there was an overall feeling of love from God manifesting. 

The loving couple of Charmian and Dennis talking on  covenant between spouses

During this session one of the highlights of the conference has to be that a women said she didn’t know how to pray for other people, and didn't feel comfortable doing it.The reason why? She wasn't a Christian yet! Charmian had the honour of leading her to the Lord, a wonderful blessing. 

God's ways are not our ways: Travel Problems

Jungle: November 2012: Part 1 

God has been using me more and more in the jungle, and I think it is fair to say that I feel highly blessed each time I go. This time was certainly challenging, especially in the area of transportation but God used the situation for His glory...

The Church with newly completed roof where the Learning Community happened

Our plan was for the team, Ronald, Nancy and I (with Dennis and Charmian, fellow church leaders and friends) to arrive on Monday morning and then do the learning community conference from Monday afternoon until Thursday afternoon, and on Friday, I (Mark) was to perform the wedding of Erling, a friend and part of our central jungle team to his bride Maritza. However, God had other plans.

Erling and Maritza in their formal outifts

We left our house at 3am Monday and arrived in good time at the airport to  check in.  The plane was full of people going to work on Monday morning, and people with urgent contracts in and around Pucallpa.

As far as we were aware there were no problems, expect our drooping eyes and tired bodies until we reached the departure lounge and the screen said the flight to Pucallpa was delayed. This was not the first time that I have been delayed due to weather so I settled down and started to read my kindle. Ten minutes later the LAN staff member announced the flight had been cancelled due to adverse weather conditions and we would have to find another flight and collect our luggage in the baggage reclaim. As you can imagine this was not widely accepted with joy and was greeted with a lack of understanding (huge understatement) of why the flight was not just delayed until later. 

We were told that we would get flights the next morning, and had to go out to the main check in area to do this. By the time we reached the front of this queue we were offered flights for Tuesday night. I explained that I was leading a conference starting in the afternoon and I needed to be in Pucallpa and not Lima. We reluctantly accepted the tickets for Tuesday night and prayed and thought of other solutions. Meanwhile Anna back at home had cut open her finger from the broken glass of our liquidizer making the morning juice. At this point we felt something was afoot. 

Anna then mysteriously received an email from her sister asking her if everything was ok, because her boyfriend's dad (who we have never met, and he doesn't even know our names!) was woken up by God in the night to pray for us for two hours.  

So we will never know this side of heaven, but God obviously had a reason for allowing that flight to be cancelled! 


It is important to remember that all of this happened before 7am, and so this gave us time to make the decision to get the bus and travel overnight arriving early on Tuesday morning. 

Dennis & Charmian talking about marriage

On previous trips to Pucallpa I had always avoided the bus. Partly because it takes between 16 and 24 hours (compared to a 45minute flight!), and partly due to the immense altitude as the bus crosses the peaks of the Andes.  Mainly, however, I had been discouraged by the 100% negative reactions to the journey by those who had ever made the trip!  But with no flight available within the next 36 hours, we felt that God's leading to get the bus, especially as people from the inner jungle had already arrived in Pucallpa ready for the conference. 

It is times like these when we are acutely reminded that the plans of God are not our plans.  The taxi driver to the bus station needed to talk to me. We were having the usual conversation Peruvian taxi conversation about life, the universe and everything and the driver started to open up to me.  He began to talk about his negative church experience with an established denomination who unfortunately has a tendency to control their people. 

He told us about how he and his wife had been involved with this church, especially his wife, but how over time the demands of the church (which was deemed more important), meant the family no longer spent time together.  
  
This was very interesting as we were going to speak in Pucallpa on covenant and how God is number 1, spouses number 2, kids number 3 and then calling, ministry, and then job if not covered by the other 2. 

Due to all this pressure his wife and he left the church, and have now been separated for a while, and the relationship is very strained. I got the chance and priviledge to listen to him and then to pray for him, a great honour.

This was posed for but you get the idea.

As we arrived at the bus terminal we got the last tickets with an 180 degree seat and left in the afternoon at 1.30pm.  The 16 hour journey arrived in Pucallpa early which was a welcome relief, after sleeping on and off for 13 or so hours, under the influence of a drowsy allergy tablet and 2 anti-sickness tablets. The journey was not as bad as I thought it might have been. I would be willing to do it again if required, although I hope I never have to. 

Three things I remember from this journey: 
1. Waking in the altitudes of the high Andes mountains, in the pitch dark, and struggling to breathe, due to the lack of oxygen at upto 5000 metres, 15,000 feet. 

2. The speed the drivers were driving at on hairpin and roads with sheer drops by our side. The bus had a 90 kph  speed limit (60 mph), and had a speed alarm which sounded at 91kph. The brief times I was awake and conscious I must have heard the alarm 5 or more times in a matter of 10 minutes.   
3. The strange choice of films chosen by the lady in charge of meals and customer care. Let me just say they were not family viewing!

The travel problems did not end upon arrival. On day 3 we were trying to get a refund for our cancelled flight.  Unfortunately, the LAN phone rep. managed to cancel both the outgoing and the returning flight.  Suddenly, the reality of having to make a return bus journey on my birthday was looming. 

Wednesday afternoon we visited the LAN office.  Apparently the flight hadn't been cancelled. 

Friday afternoon, we returned to the LAN office just to check that the flight hadn't been cancelled.  It had. 

Fortunately, the LAN rep in the office that day was very helpful, although she could do nothing about the cancelled flight.  She could get us on a now much more expensive flight though! 

However the Lord is sovereign and He had a plan. Eventually, a LAN rep found us a cheap internet flight home on my birthday - with a rival airline! He even booked it for us! 

Pucallpa May 2012: Uncle Bob

The churches from San Juan

Shaun teaching on teaching!

Another powerful thing we saw was the breaking of the Spirit of religion. One particular man in one of the churches, who we will call Uncle Bob saw an amazing change in his life during the 4 days of the Learning Community. (Uncle Bob is the uncle that is just a little bit akward, seems to have an opinion that is different from everyone else, and at times has little social awareness, or awareness of what others think of him (or her)). The man has been a bit of a pain to us in previous visits as he seems to dampen a lot of what we say, always has an opinion, which is not normally helpful, and also asserts his position, which is extremely unclear. 

Well Uncle Bob was behaving like Uncle Bob at the beginning of the week. Each of the groups had their challenges and there was no exception in Uncle Bob´s group as it felt like walking through treacle at first. However the cracks began to show on Tuesday, and Wednesday the dam opened. Uncle Bob stood up and said Í'm like a Pharisee I am very religious´: I wasn´t there to see it happening but I saw the difference in Uncle Bob after.

Nancy talking about discipline, the slide behind is in Shipibo.

I also saw him being hugged by Shaun 24 hours later during ministry, and this child of God was crying like a child who finally understood the love his Dad has for him. Powerful stuff. I would pay to see stuff like that, and I am being supported to see it.Thank you to those of you who let me do this. Overall the week was an amazing sucess.

Michelle and Nehemias, Marcial and Doria´s two youngest kids

 I could say so much more but we now have joy of supporting this into a complete change in churches across the jungle, one by one, one step at a time. We are planning another one visit in November and then 2 next year, more people, more churches, more lives changed. I love my job.

  

This is all of us involved in the first Shipibo learning community (Sorry about the photo)

Pucallpa May 2012: Shipibo Women

AnnaLou with Ana one of the leaders in San Juan

AnnaLou said to me in our lunch time meeting on Wednesday ´you are starting a feminist revolution with the Shipibo women´. What she was saying is that I was beginning to help a process of empowering women, especially in ministry.

I  have been learning recently about leadership in covenant, and how when we use discipleship as our operating system, and not church the leader of the church is two in one and not just one man (as is the norm). This means that Anna and I are the leaders, not just myself on my own. We have been very blessed in this area as we have done this from the beginning of our ministry here in Peru, mainly due to the fact that until recently it has only been Anna and I in our team, and as an extrovert I have needed Anna´s wisdom and counsel. 
 I was sharing this with all the Shipibo leaders  at most potential opportunities and I could see that  God was doing something special.

The Leaders from Calleria with Vilma in pink.

 He was changing a culture. Normally the Shipibo culture is a male dominated structure where the man is the dominant leader. He has been the hunter gatherer  and the women have had to follow. This actually happens physically as well as the women follows behind the man when they are walking to a destination, and never to the side.  Added to this men receive education and their wives rarely receive the same opportunities. This is now changing but it means that female leaders over thirty are reticient in general to speak in Spanish, only Shipibo, not the case with male leadersIn addition the men have thought that a woman has no role in ministry as they are uneducated and have no giftings. This has now begun to change since this community experience. Nearly every single female leader in the learning community was speaking 10 times more by the end of our time together than at the beginning.

Cazilda sharing her testimony about how God is showing her new things



Doria being prayed for by Nancy



Doria, Cazilda, and Vilma know they have a role now, one that will help not just their lives, and their family´s live, but many other families and Shipibo women, as well as non Shipibo tribeswomen, and even men.

This can be easily highlighted by a testimony from Doria sharing how she now knows she can now teach the women how to love Jesus better. Even though it has been a real struggle for her to even understand the teaching,and especially trying to understand the discipleship mentality of covenant partnership. Her fears have been replaced by faith. She says that she now know what she is called to do for the rest of her life, in her words, ´until she dies´.

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!!!

Pucallpa November 2010 Part 4 Observations and Thoughts

One of the other interesting conversations that we had while in Nuevo San Juan was when Wes was asking some of the men about marriage, and two of the men said they were ‘brought’ a wife at 17. Their spouses were younger. The third man didn’t remember how old he was. They all said that they were still with their spouses today. Traditions however are now changing and becoming more similar to the western tradition. Is this better, I do not know because even though we choose our bride or bridegroom, it is still a choice to work through the problems and the trials.
We finished our time in San Juan by having a tour of the village in the hot baking sun. (I remember noticing the temperature increase several degrees while preaching in the morning). We saw all the different things going on, business teaching, free hair cutting, and also fruit picking, It was amazing to have fruit picked off the tree and eat it there and then. One interesting observation I made was that all the people there that were teaching were not Shibipos. This is something that needs to be addressed. It is great and really important to help those in need and the Shibipo people are certainly a poor, disadvantaged people, but they also need to be equipped to sustain themselves. At the moment they have a very dependent mentality, which I do not believe is God’s plan for them. Therefore we need to be helping them as much as possible to help themselves. As the Arab proverb says, and as the charity Oxfam has shown in their adverts in the UK ‘if you give a man a fish he can feed his family for a day, but if you give him a net, he can feed his family for a lifetime’. This is my desire to give people tools that means they are not relying on outside support, but are relying on their own resources, and more importantly God’s resources. I want to be a facilitator and not the answer. Too many times I have seen indigenous people who rely on missionaries, or other NGOs which I don’t think is a healthy or sustainable model. I also heard of tribes that still have yet to be reached in the jungle and are still very wild and not used to other human contact. The Shibipos are starting to realise that they are called to be missionaries as well to other peoples. What is our role in this? We will see in time. I have a fondness for the Shibipo people, people who were reached with the gospel only 40 years ago. What is God calling us to do in the future?

Pucallpa November 2010 Part 3

Having a tour of Nuevo San Juan including eating fruit of the trees.

Day 3 was a later start at 9 o clock, and we took a moto taxi to a Shibipo settlement 13.5 kilometres outside of Pucallpa to Nuevo San Juan. The church in Nuevo San Juan which is falling down!

We spent 2 days there teaching, sharing, eating, and doing community. Mark teaching

This was a really blessed time as we received a very warm welcome and it felt like we had a new family. Free hair cutting.

At the end of our time there the leadership confirmed that they wanted to work with us and be advised and overseen by myself, and our church. The busy main street in Nuevo San Juan!

This is an exciting prospect as we have a large heart for the jungle. There is great need, financially, emotionally and spiritually in Lima, and the needs are even greater in the jungle and the Andean mountains, which make up most of Peru's landmass. We are now in a process with the church in Nuevo San Juan to discover whether it is God’s will that they are part of us. We finished our two days by trying out restaurants that we may well use in the medical campaign in April. The food we ate was really good and certainly a possibility for April. Are you called to come on this trip? Please let us know as soon as possible.

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!!