Amazons 2015

AMAZONS 2015

After months of preparation,  the 29 team members flew down to Leticia, Colombia to begin their 10 day trip.  The team went to two communities, an indigenous community, Zaragoza, that has received mission teams in the past, but unfortunately did not receive the correct God-following example and a smaller community, San Francisco,  that currently no church where the team began the process of researching the place, culture, history, and economics to eventually develop  a church there.  

 

If we could sum up the trip in one phrase it would be, “WE WERE GOD’S ANSWERS TO PRAYERS”  

 

Two out of the many stories we could tell are moments that challenged us as a team. 

 The first happened the first day arriving to Zaragoza, the leaders Cara and Michele sat down with the present pastor of the community to discuss the work the team would do.  Being so deep in the jungle,  there was no way to communicate with the pastor before hand.  In this meeting,  the girls began to discuss the workshops prepared by the trained psychologist of the group, and the medicine the doctor would be giving out during the home visits.  They also discuss the skits and worship prepared for the night services and the hours of fun teaching activities prepared for the kids festival.   The pastor listened and expressed his concern for the community.  He didn’t want yet another group, come and shake things up for a bit, but not have any lasting impact and much less, negative impact.  As they began to tell him about CPN’s mission is to always raise the arms of the ministers in the area, equipping, empowering and launching,  he began to get excited.

 As the conversation went on,  Cara remembered one last activity she hadn’t mentioned earlier.  She interjected to the conversation “Pastor, I forgot,  we also have a trained team and equipment to create a garden!”. Side note,  this was easily forgettable, because in other years, the project budget was dedicated to a simple church building project, yet the leader in charge of projects this year felt lead to do something different:  Gardening.  Immediately after Cara mentioned the gardening team, the pastor, who used to be so defensive and cold,  stood up from the table and hugged both girls with tears dripping from his cheeks.   He told the girls that a few months earlier, he and his wife wanted a project to bring the youth from the community together with a goal.  They chose to give the property of land behind there house to make a chicken hut and a large garden.  He promised them that if they cleared the land,  he would buy the seeds, and the produce would be for the youth’s families consumption.  He made a financial promise with no money to his name but with a very big God.  We brought the seed he had promised months earlier.

At the other community,  an old lady was very ill.  Dario and Jefferson, two participants of the team went to visit her and shared with her the love of Christ.  Because of her delicate state, she could not talk but she would listen to everything Dario had to say.  They presented the gospel to her, and at the end, they asked her to squeeze Jefferson’s hand if she wanted to make a commitment to give her life to Jesus.  She squeezed his hand giving a meek smile.  The very next day, she went to see her Lord and Savior face-to-face.  The team had the opportunity to accompany the family through the funeral rituals and show their support.  At the end of the week, Dario had the second privilege to lead her grandson to surrender his life to the Lord and commit to following Jesus.