The final jungle trip

Brothers and sisters in the Lord,

To start I would like to thank each of you for your faithful prayers. I certainly feel them each day.  I can’t believe I’m down to only two and a half weeks left in Ecuador.  We have come to the conclusion of our jungle trips, which is bittersweet for sure.  I have greatly enjoyed each one and will never forget the things I’ve learned, and the people I’ve met there. 

We spent our last jungle trip this past week in the community of Wayusentsa, the same community as our first jungle trip.  It was nice to reconnect with some of the people there and come back to a familiar place.  I would love to report that we had a perfect time, and everything went as planned, however that would be far from the truth. From the start we had upsets and problems such as bags being lost and people getting sick all in the midst of very hot weather.  God was faithful though, and we were able to accomplish almost everything we had set out to do.  I think it was appropriate to have such a crazy trip to end things.  It serves as a reminder that nothing ever follows our plan.  As it says in Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”  I’ve seen the hard evidence of this fact during my time here in Ecuador.

In light of planning our ways, I’ve found that it is so incredibly important to build relationship as a foundation for preaching the gospel.  Each time we would venture into the jungle, we would go with the desire and intention of directly preaching the gospel in the community.  As it turned out, we rarely found a culturally fitting and opportune moment.  This leads me to two conclusions.  Firstly, preaching the gospel is not all about how well we can elaborate and expand upon the word of God.  As Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the gospel: if necessary, use words.”  By spending time with the Ecuadorian natives we brought light into their lives through the love of Christ.  Conversely, my second conclusion is that there will never be a PERFECT moment.  We will never find ourselves in a position where everything is perfectly laid for a conversation that is totally culturally relative and inoffensive.  The fact of the matter is that the gospel is offensive.  It totally goes against human nature a.k.a. sin nature, and calls people to step out of the muck that they have built their lives upon and into totally new and uncharted territory.  It’s scary, but oh so worth it.  I want to live a life that is deeply rooted in the culture of Christ.  I want to live in a kingdom bound, God ordained, sin rejecting culture that pleases our Lord. 

Up to this point in Ecuador, I have not had any moments where I’ve shared the gospel and seen someone drop to their knees in repentance (I’ve still got time though!)  However, if not anything else, I’ve learned and grown so that I can better represent our Lord and someday see just that; men and women realizing their desperation and turning to the Lord.  I am now back in the city of Chillanes for the rest of this week, and will be working on the beginning stages of a project here.  Please pray for health as we are all feeling the toll of the travel and the chicha. Also be in prayer for this weekend, as we will be running an outreach at a startup church a few hours from Shell.  Pray that the hearts of the children and youth we speak to would be open and receptive to the gospel.  Thanks to each one of you for your love and support.  I pray that each of you would continue your service as the Lord’s missionary wherever He has you.

In Him,

Sam

Yet another beautiful rainbow

The kiddos helping Emily in the tank

My little buddies Darwin (left) and Christian (right)

The stereotypical plane shot #cannotresist

The crew all hot and sweaty

The piedra de llevar (or wash stone) that we poured for the women of the community

Mi, el presidente de la comunidad (derecha), y el presidentes hermano (izquierda)

Wayusentsa again!

Ladies and gents,

As the Lord would have it, I'm headed back to the jungle!  I will be leaving tomorrow and returning Friday.  We will be continuing the projects we started last time.  I'm especially excited to go this time around, because I now have some jungle experience and can hopefully focus more on the spiritual side of things.  Our main (physical) purpose is to continue with the work on the water system, however this creates an entire week of interaction with the community.  Therefore I would like to request your prayer.  Pray that God would open the eyes and hearts of those in Wayusentsa.  Pray that God will open opportunities for us to be able to share the gospel and minister to those who need the Lord.  I'm very excited to see what the Lord will do in and through our team.  Please rally behind us and we can make a difference in the kingdom.  I look forward to being able to report about our trip.  God can do this, and more than that, He wants to!  Thanks for your support.

In Him,

Sam

Washintsa Jungle Trip

The trip to Washintsa was full of exciting moments and rewarding results.  It would be hard to pick out one point and say that it was the best, but the whole trip was great and I didn’t want to come back.  

After two trips, I have realized that the jungle tests every area of a person.   Physically, it is challenging living in less than ideal circumstances.  Bathing in the river, sleeping on the ground, eating the native food, etc.  In addition to this you are also working physically, so it can be less than comfortable. 

Emotionally, I found many moments where I had to take a step back and discern what was the reality in a situation.  It is very challenging stepping away from everything that you’ve known, comforts and all, and living in an entirely different culture.  It is super challenging to not be able to communicate well with the locals and the culture shock is more than real. 

Spiritually, I found many challenges as well as I sought to represent Christ to the best of my ability without being able to communicate with words.  The whole experience can weigh on you, but it is so powerful and has and will change me for life.

We showed up in Washintsa on Monday around 10:30 with our task well laid out before us.  The first thing that had to be accomplished was to convince the people to dig a trench for a widow in the community.  Many of them were reluctant to do this task.  This reluctance comes from their culture.  In their minds, the widow had no man to help with the project and therefore she had no right to the water.  This goes along with the fact that widows are seen as half a person in the community and generally must fend for themselves.  In this case we felt it important to oppose this specific part of Ecuadorian culture.  It clearly goes against scripture where it says in James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

We told the people that no other work would be done until a trench for the widow was dug.  They were reluctant at first and only a few men showed up on Monday to dig.  Nevertheless, we held our ground, and on Tuesday almost every man in the community showed up to help.  With such a large crew, we had the trench sufficiently dug by the end of the day!  What a victory in the development of this community.  Everyone came together to accomplish the task, and because of the community, this widow will have water just like the rest. 

Personally this meant a lot to me, to be able to fulfill the Bible’s command to care for widows and orphans in their need.  The question previously asked was, “ where is the church in all of the work we are doing?”  I have been pondering this for some time and I believe I had the privilege of seeing the church come alive in Washintsa. 

After the whole process of getting the widows trench dug was accomplished, we started work on the house connections.  The whole community was very excited to get started and so we decided to have a community meeting Tuesday night to explain the house connections to everyone hoping it would get them even more excited to start early in the morning.  Since we had everyone gathered we took the opportunity to share a short message from the Bible and to sing a few songs.  This seemed to be received fairly well and the community blessed us in return when they sang for us in their native tongue.  We also intended to do a hygiene lesson during this time however we didn’t seem to find a good opportunity to fit it in.  We believed the spiritual lesson to be of more importance, and when it was over there was not an opportunity to fit the hygiene lesson in. 

Wednesday morning, we started with the connections.  We took an unknowingly bold move, and chose to install the widow’s connection first.  Despite the deviance from cultural boundaries, the community received this perfectly fine, and we moved from house to house afterwards. 

Again, we had intentions of doing a hygiene lesson in the afternoon, but the work was going well, and we didn’t want to interrupt the progress.  By the time work had stopped, and we were all “clean”, it was too dark to do the lesson. 

Wednesday night of each week there is church.  This is their Sunday, and so they requested that we share from the word and lead some songs.  We prepared some fun songs with motions.  Everyone loved the music and they promptly requested we do more.  Without anything prepared, we offered to repeat the first song again and they joined us in the motions.  It was super cool to worship with the international body of Christ, separated by language and culture, but brought together in Christ.

After we did what we had prepared the people sang for us and then Domingo (the church leader) shared with us.  He expressed a great excitement in the number of people in the church and shared that there were Wednesday nights when he and his brother were the only two there.  Despite this they were faithful to come.  He also shared his heart, expressing a desire to see the rest of the community saved and brought to the knowledge of Christ.  It was powerful to see his faith and heart for the lost. 

Thursday, half of the team and myself packed up our things and waited on our flight to arrive.  It came a bit late because of weather, but arrived and took us back to Shell.  I am now back sitting at my computer and writing this post, however I can’t help but feel that a certain part of me is back in Washintsa.  What I learned and observed there will stick with me for life. 

In Him,

Sam

Chris got a claw!

Some of the kids from Washintsa

Beautiful rainbow

Frisbee time

In honor of the fourth and fancy pants Friday Ecuadorian style!

Trenching away

My massive cockroach friend