Welcome to The Jungle

Chuquibambilla. Week 2.

We travelled 12 hours by bus from Lima, through the mountains to the jungle community of Chuquibambilla.

David and Marita’s daughter; Belen and her husband Pablo are missionaries to the Nomatsiguenga people of Chuquibambilla and have established Base Misionera Antioquia where they live, host missionaries, and have church (it’s 98% children and it’s beautiful).

Pablo challenged us to learn a word in Nomatsiguenga everyday (IT’S SO HARD); I stuck to colors because they were easier.

We collected and painted rocks to put around some trees, the boys worked on leveling ground for a prayer house that will be built in the near future. But we were mainly there for the children. Belen and Pablo have hosted a few World Race teams and they’ve mostly focused on different construction projects and such but they specifically wanted our team to focus on relationships with the people And the kids. They set us up with art and music “classes“ to happen most days and Sammeira (the artist of the team) led the art while Paul led the music classes.

We also had the opportunity to go to the home/plantation of a lady named Margarita. Margarita‘s father helped some missionaries translate a hymnal from Spanish to Nomatsiguenga and she still has that same hymnal and even sang a few songs from it. She’s such an amazing woman!

Hiking plantations to get fresh fruits that are non-existent in the US.

Time spent at a river.

Hiking to a waterfall.

All of these were nothing compared to the time spent with the kids and getting to see just how much they’ve learned. Belen and Pablo are taking them through the Bible from the beginning to give the foundation of who God even is and it’s so cool to see how interactive the lessons are and how passionate they are for the kids to truly understand what they’re telling them.

I learned a lot in the jungle about my team, myself, our hosts, the Nomatsiguenga people and about the heart of the Father. I’ll be sharing more of what God taught me in the jungle soon.