For the last few months I've been working with a team of 5 youth from the Paz de Dios church to create a video in the Shuar and Quichua languages. This past week, we had the opportunity to go down to the jungle to show the video for the first time, and deliver it to the missionary pilot (Rick LaBouef) who will be using it long term in his ministry. Kim also came along.
We left by bus as a group from Cuenca last Wed. at 12:00 midnight. We rode all night and arrived in Shell at about 9:00 Thur. morning. That day we reviewed the 35 minute movie with some Shuar and Quichua brothers and spend the night with a couple missionary families. All Thur. it rained and would have been impossible to fly into the jungle if we would have wanted to. That evening we prayed that the Lord would open the clouds for the following day. What joy there was in the morning to see the clouds breaking and the sun peaking through.
From Shell we took a 2.5 hr bus ride further out into the jungle to a town named Arajuno. We arrived at about 11:30am, and brother Rick was planning to pick us up with the plane at noon. While we waited, I got talking with a man and he expressed a sincere interest in the movie. It turns out he works for the government and is the director of children affairs (or something like that) for the area. He was thrilled to receive a copy of the video and plans to show it in the area. The video is of many different animal and nature scenes with a narration of Scripture and a salvation message at the end.
Finally at around 5:30 brother Rick arrived with the plane. He had alternator troubles with plane and was unable to turn off the engine. He dropped us off at a Quicha village about 5 min. (by air) from Arajuno and flew back to Shell to fix the aircraft. The village is named Liquino and is on the Curaray river. This is the same river where the missionaries were martyred in the 50s, only we were upstream from that location and with a different tribe.
Friday evening we showed the movie. About 25 people came to see the movie. Most of them were children. That evening, they let us sleep in the local "community center". It was a large wood building with a hard cement floor. On waking up the following morning, it was drizzling. After a time of prayer for the weather and breakfast, we decided to have a time with the children again. It felt very isolated not being able to call out and find out when/if the plane was coming to pick us up. We started with a game of soccer, and then had a time of singing and sharing with the children.
After the time of sharing the gospel, we asked the children if they could take us down to the river. They took us for a 15 min walk on beautiful (muddy) jungle paths. The flowers and plants were just gorgeous if you didn't mind the mud. Thankfully, we were all in boots. After that we arrived at a beautiful sandy beach. There we played in the sand with the kids and some of us jumped off an overhanging tree into the river.
At around noon the weather cleared up and the plane arrived. We were very thankful to see it. We were all fairied back to Shell and caught the return bus to Cuenca at 5:00pm. We arrived home in Cuenca at 3:00am Sunday morning. Just in time to get a few hours of sleep and get to church.
I was blessed in may ways by the trip. It was such a blessing to work together with these godly youth. My prayer is that the Lord would continue grow their vision for missions. The Lord is faithful, and in spite of apparent problems and difficulties, He helped in each. All glory to His name! Ps 36:5 Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Overall, it was an excellent trip!
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