My first year in the jungle.

Bobby

From the time that I arrived in Peru I knew that my life was about to undergo a dramatic change.  Hardly anything was as I expected. My first month in Puerto Maldonado was a constant struggle with the Spanish language, even though earlier that year I had spent weeks in a language school in Guatemala.  However, the basic skills I had learned proved to be quite valuable.  While in Puerto Maldonado I lived with a loving Christian family whose warm hospitality helped me to feel at ease.  The first weeks of my training I spent time with Jeremy and Susan Taliaferro exploring concepts in Church Planting and Christian Living also I was practicing my Spanish and Bible storying with the people of Puerto Maldonado.   This month came to an end and I found myself better prepared for the next two years and more specifically for the next step: 3 months of jungle training.

Our first month of training was busy with getting to know each other and coming together as a team. Were four, Efrain from Columbia . Magno Javier and Edon from Peru in addiction to myself. We quickly began learning jungle living skills and chronological Bible storying. The living was primitive as we lived in huts that we had built ourselves. We were presented with many challenges but the Bible storying proved to be my greatest challenge yet. We learned our stories in Spanish which only enriched the depth or blessing I received through this Scripture memorization and teaching. Never in my life had I fought so hard to write God's word in my heart. We worked hard to form ourselves into a church, but because we were from three different cultures, none of this came easy.  However, by God's grace were we able to love each other and serve Christ as a community.

Through the next three months we were challenged with many things both spiritually and physically and through it all, the Lord blessed and gave us a church. It was at this point of our training that I was blessed to have a special friendship with Efrain Mosquera. Efrain would later become my partner for the majority of my two years in South America.  Though the three months of training were rigorous and demanding, that time spent with the three men that I trained with formed a bond that will last a lifetime.

At the completion of our training I said good-by to my new-found South American brothers, this was difficult, for when we parted ways, I remained in Puerto Maldonado for the next month and they returned to their respective villages.  Yet, this was a wonderful time to grow in community with the missionaries of the Xtreme Team. The house was full with an eclectic group of young men.  And while we all had our differences, by God's grace covered our community in depth and a church was formed.  The time in Maldonado passed quickly.  As the holidays came I was put through many cultural experiences as God taught and grew us daily.

After Christmas I headed out on my first trip out of Maldonado. This was the trip of a lifetime. A trip which proved to be both educational and tiring. It was also my first time of extensive travel through out South America.  I was paired up with Jody Johnson. Johnson was in his last year of a three year stent with the team he had been working with the peoples of the Madre de Dios  region. He pushed me in many ways and I was both challenged and stretched but my time with him.   We headed out on a four week trip through southern Peru informing the churches of mission opportunities and recruiting those who were interested in training and/or serving with the Xtreme Team. During this trip I grew close to my partner, Jody Johnson, as the trip's challenges sealed our friendship.   One of the most difficult and discouraging experiences of the trip was seeing the disinterest many Latin churches have for the unreached. But we saw much interest stirred among the young men excited by the opportunity.

But then February came and we all were excited because the time had come for the yearly missions meeting for the Xterem team. This is a very exciting and special time because this is the one time of the year when the missionaries are able to get together. The week of togetherness was wonderful. We enjoyed Cusco as well as the blessing of community. Not only was our team together in its completeness but a few new faces had been added. These new faces brought much excitement and encouragement to the team. This time was rich with community. We saw old friends and met new ones. But the most consequential information acquired there were these two names, the Yaminahua and the Yurua. The first was the name of the unevangelized people group that Efrain and I would be working with; the latter was the river where we would find them.

I went to the internet and searched but to no avail. Information on this people group was almost non existent. But still we left Puerto Maldonado the 23rd of March. Traveling by bus, we arrived in Lima , where the final stage of my Peruvian residency was processed and Efraín's visa was extended with a trip to Ecuador and the paying of a dollar-a-day-fine. This took a few days, which put us in Pucallpa the first week of August. Upon arriving in Pucallpa we contacted César, a Peruvian missionary already working with the Yaminahua. César took excellent care of us, and got us set up in the house of Ivagene Shrive, an SIL missionary who had been working with the Yaminahua. Ms. Ivagene was in the States but opened her home to us which was extremely helpful. From our base here we set out, gathering all the information possible. We were provided with the lesson book and the Old Testament story-sets in two volumes, as well as the New Testament in the dialect of the key men of the communities along with their names. We set out to familiarize ourselves with this material and to make all the necessary contacts in order to begin the process of traveling to the Yurúa. The lessons proved to be very helpful and we spent much time simply studying and practicing the language while there in Pucallpa.                       

Early one morning, we received a surprise visit from César. He had with him a Yaminahu chief, along with several other men from the community. We talked with them and gathered more information and permission to come and live in San Pablo . We were very excited and blown away by the way God had worked out this contact that we didn't even know was possible.

Within a few days, we were off.