The first three weeks of outreach have been amazing. Unfortunately my camera is locked in a woman´s apartment right now, so I can upload any pictures. I wanted to share some of the stories though.
We arrived in the river community Filadelfia on October 3rd. It was so great. I stayed there last year for a very short period of time, but for some reason I fell in love with the people there. My heart felt so full to see the missionary and his family again. He is Brazilian and she is Ticuna (an indigenous tribe in the region)and their kids are all adorable.
Our team ended up working with the local church there, staying with the pastor and his wife.
We had our difficulties at first. The culture isn´t given to trusting people immediately, especially after having some bad experiences with missionaries in the past. Normally we give conferences at night, and have one on one counseling session in the afternoon, and prep time in the morning. Well, they were not open to having counseling times. That´s ok, because we´ll just go out in the community and talk to people...no...not that either, you can´t do that without a Ticuna guide or people won´t talk to you. Well maybe we can...NO. Alright. So the first week was complicated in that sense. Oddly, though we are a counseling team, every person on my team is really strong in dance and drama. So we thought of teaching the youth a dance in the mornings so that we could at least have contact with them. They were all about that. We broke up into small groups to begin with and processed what they learned the night before in the classes we were giving.
The trust really grew. People would still not open up though, so I just started talking to them about what God was telling me about their lives. (That is always fun and scary for people- "Hey, this this and this is going on in your life and you feel like this and this. God wants you to know this and this. Do you want to talk about it?") They would affirm everything I was saying, cry, and not respond. Until the last night. One girl I had been praying for finally opened up and shared what was going on in her life. God have given me a really cool word for her and I wrote it down so she wouldn´t forget it.
Then we had a tearful goodbye and made our way to the city.
This week has been full of counseling. Rachel and I took on the teaching load and taught every night. Very receptive. They too, would be very touch and not want to talk about it. That´s ok. We are working with a really neat guy in counseling. I have high hopes that God is going to make some radical decision to change his life. He wants it.
And- No weird illness. Every Fefa, would is allergic to mosquitos (bad for being in the Amazon) has NOT HAD ANY REACTIONS. Thank you for praying.
