Amazonas

I made a video of my Sao Paulo, but have trouble uploading so you will need to wait a bit for that update.

Sao Paulo Airport experience:

The flight from Sao Paulo was very early and the airport far out of the city and this meant that we had to sleep the night in the airport. This was the teams first sleep in airport experience (but not the last). At about 2 am 2 guys from Chile ended up at our corner looking for help. Since Luiza in our team is from Brazil she offered her help and I went along. In the end we could help them and ended up ministering and praying for the informations desk lady at 3am. It just blew my mind afresh how God wants to use us to reach people, even at 3am in an almost empty airport.

Manaus

This is the Amazon, in the forest and next to the river. We were based at the YWAM Jocum base outside Manaus. It was in the jungle and it is next to a river (even if they call it a creek, see picture) that feeds the Amazon river. The forest and river is awe inspiring and full of life, it just seems that most of the life wants to eat you in one form or another. Jocum started an orphanage / house of protection and they also have a ministry of sending people to the river tribes. We spent our time at the Jocum base helping with task around the base and orphanage. We also went into Manaus to help a church and went too a river community on one day, this was done via a canoe ride up the river and then a 2 hour hike through the forest along a road and path. It was an great experience to walk there and experience more of the jungle and see some live red parrots like in the movies. The only surprise is that when you get to the river community, they live in small wooden houses but they have flat screen TV's and satellites since they receive grants from the Brazil government. This leads to a big problem of laziness and “the government needs to provide” attitude amongst the people. In Manous in general there is a great air of laziness, incompleteness and not looking after what you have, it is very sad to see the very low level of maintenance and kids not going to school and those that does go to public school for only 2-3h a day, and people doing nothing.

It was the first time the team was together as a whole and it took a few days for the team to get going, but it was still good to see how God used us too encourage the people at the Jocum base. There is great excitement for the things that the base has planned, after 25 years of being there they are in a phase of change and doing new things and starting a new discipleship course in August where whole families from the river communities will come live on base and be discipled before being send back to the tribes.

River Slow boat

We spent the next 6 days on a boat from Manaus to Tabatinga. Getting tickets for the boat that we can afford was quite a challenge, but after a few tries we got a boat owner that gave us discount. When we arrived at the docks we were informed of a type of harbour tax that is way out of our budget, but that is when Rebecca walked in, she works at the harbour office and can speak english and she organised that we can go to the boat for free. She also helped us buy hammocks that is used for sleeping on the boat. So only by grace we ended up on the boat. The days on the boat were relaxed since there is not a lot to do, but it was a good time of resting (even if a hammock is not the most comfortable thing to sleep in) and reading and spending time with God and the team. We did get the opportunity to share the gospel and our lives with some of the people on the boat and encourage the boat owner and his wife. It was again surprising to see how people was drawn to us and treated us different because they saw something different in us. We also fasted for 2 days as a team and it was very good to see how God worked with all of us in that time. We got to Tabatinga at 3 am and the place where we had to get our passports stamped to leave the country only opened at 8am so we slept the night on the harbour, or rather the large roofed floating thing, then we hiked to the passport office and on the way to to the airport the Tabatinga tourist centre picked us up and dropped us at the airport for free.

My personal journey

Manaus was difficult for me for a few reasons, one was the feeling of incompleteness that was there and as you know I am one that like to complete things. Communication was also difficult at times and since you don’t know the language it makes it even more so. I was also away from the team a lot since there was a funny withdraw limit that meant I could only draw small amounts of cash and had to go into town the whole time to draw money, but a general trip looks like 3-4 hours of commuting to spend 5 min at an ATM. The time away from the tema made me sad and the time “wasted” commuting with the incompleteness and me not being able to help them work just make me irritated. The boat trip was good since it gave me time to find some peace and the time of fasting was good for me just to hear God's voice again and He also went past my expectations and stirred up the hunger to learn in me again. I am going into Columbia with great expectations for what we are going to experience.