Hey all! I got some reflection and photos from my adventures last month. In case you didn’t hear, my team was called to a small village (Mojos), of about 30 people, in the deep amazon rain forest in western Bolivia. The hike one way is 32 miles by way of old Inca trading route and the nearest hospital is so far away it’s not worth knowing about. We were planning on taking 2 days to hike out there and spent 12 days with the village then hike back. Here’s a little of what it was like…
The Hike
The hike was the real deal. I’ve done some long-distance hiking before and although this wasn’t nearly the hardest physical challenge I’ve done, it still was a challenge. The worst past was the fact that I had to carrying in 12 pounds of rice as well as my gear with me the whole way. But the weather was favorable and the pace we took was nice and slow. It ended up taking us 3 days to hike there but only 1.5 days to hike back at the end of the month (the trip there is mostly uphill and we were in better shape by the end of the month).
Some of the team members struggled more than others and would probably put this on their ‘hardest things I’ve done’ list but they made it and grew a lot from it. As far as animals and scenery go, it’s a pretty dense jungle with a lot going on. Tons of bugs the size of gnats that love feasting on any open skin, huge butterflies as big as your face, weird sounding birds, and nasty leaf cutter ants that will take a chunk out of your skin.
I got bit by one of these suckers on my toes and it felt like two pliers being shoved into my skin.
The Village
Once we finally arrived after 3 days of hiking it was the best feeling. Initially the children were frightened by the sight of us but they warmed up to us once we pulled out a soccer ball. Nearly everyone in the village speaks only Quechua, a native language that has no similarities to Spanish, so it was hard to communicate with people. But they opened up their homes to us and were really glad to have us.
During our time there we helped various people with farming, laundry, cow herding, collecting fired wood, teaching English, and other odd jobs. My favorite day was helping a neighbor, Cesar, harvest his corn field (a 2 hour hike form the village). I’ve lived around corn my whole life being from Indiana but had to come to the Amazon to pick it myself.
They fed us their typical food for every meal. Some meals were great and some were hard to put down but we were thankful for what we had and the abundance of orange trees everywhere to supplement us. They usually only get outside visitors once a year so they were really glad to see us and were quick to put us to work.
The Lesson
Well from the hike it was a good time for me to reflect on the race. When I’m hiking I don’t like to talk very much and I like to let my mind wander on whatever the Lord has. I had time to reflect on my past 9 months as well as just enjoy the opportunity to experience a world that he created that I have never seen before. In the village, I was humbled by the spiritual strength the villagers had. They told us that they rarely get visitors and no pastors care to come and visit them yet their spiritual endurance and faith was like nothing I had seen, especially compared to the states. I realized how many resources we have as American Christians. Such as podcasts, any book at our finger tips, worship conferences, mega churches with powerful speakers, access to the internet with endless information and we still, from my perspective, are a breeding ground for lukewarm faith.
The kids had never seen a Kindle before
Yet these people literally only have a bible, the Spirit, and each other for encouragement and their spiritually maturity and level of faith is only explainable by Gods constant presence among them. Maybe that was the original plan for our lives and all the extra stuff is distracting us from a real relationship. It made me grateful for what I have and gave me a new perspective of how I see my faith.
Our time in Mojos was short and a good chunk of the time was traveling there and back but I believe that God sent me there for a reason. And in the deep of the amazon forest, he wanted me to see what a lifetime of unbreakable faith looked like.
I noticed that a lifetime of unbreakable faith is beautiful and mysterious, as beautiful and mysterious as the place in which I discovered it.
