Hey everyone! I was a little M.I.A. for a while, but now I’m back from the Amazon and ready to share with you all.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with about 59% of the population living in poverty. I could tell you the facts about Bolivia as a whole, but that wouldn’t give you a good depiction of what my month was like. Instead, I’m going to share with you about the small, remote village of Mojos.
Mojos is tucked away in the beautiful area where the Amazon rainforest meets the foothills of the Andes mountains. There’s about 17 families that live in Mojos, and 14 of the families are Christians. The people of Mojos were exposed to Catholicism several years ago, but Christian evangelicals officially made their way into the town only 5 years ago. There is very little to no access to the outside world from Mojos, so we learned that they often found out new information through dreams. Now that’s truly relying on the Lord! Mojos is very secluded from the “outside world” and only has visitors about once a year. This is because it takes great lengths to travel there.
My team took a 13 hour (very bumpy and windy) bus ride from the capital of La Paz to the small town Apolo. After that we took a 4 hour truck ride, which involved a lot of mud and cramming into the cab, to the Tuichi river. We crossed the river in a small canoe and hiked around 32 miles (about 90% of it next to a cliff) to reach Mojos. How’s that for a “travel day”?
Pushing the truck through the mud
Our team near the end of the hike
For this blog I can’t give you the breakdown of ministry days as usual because our ministry was simply living with and loving on the people of Mojos. We joined in their life in whatever ways we could. This looked like leading church services, house visits, helping cook meals, kids ministry, playing sports, herding cattle (no joke), harvesting corn, clearing land, collecting firewood, pressing sugar cane, and so much more. And let me tell you, most of these things were not remotely close to each other. Each day required at least an hour or two of hiking to get to various locations. We were definitely in better shape when we left Mojos than when we arrived. Our tents were our houses for the month, which we placed right in front of the church. The people living in Mojos were very gracious to us during our time with them. The pastor’s wife cooked all of our meals for us, which was quite a bit of work!
Preaching during a church service
Our view after herding cattle
Playing volleyball in the middle of Mojos
Hiking so far into a remote place created so much bonding for my team, but sadly we were fully complete. My teammate Allison ended up getting sick while we were there, so she had to leave early with the other team that hiked in with us. She wrote a great blog about it, check it out here! Since she left we welcomed Ali, one of the members of Team Yebo, with us for the rest of our time.
Pray for my team and I as we are starting our final month of ministry on the World Race! We got re-routed to Ecuador instead of Peru, and we are involved in church planting here. Also, pray for the preparation of our hearts as we get ready to head home in 25 days (yikes!)
