There are no rocks where we live in the Amazon basin. Gravel is trucked in from the Andes mountain riverbeds when the rivers are low at the end of dry season. It is an arduous and expensive ordeal to get gravel in the jungle, and it sometimes takes time to coordinate the delivery of the truckloads. This prolongs our projects at times, as it did for our fence post project, but we have long been accustomed to the slow pace of progress here.
The gravel finally arrived after much anticipation, and Vann, Josiah and our friend Joaquin (who is the same age as Josiah) were able to begin mixing cement. They worked together to make the first fence post molds, tested the mixture, and successfully made the first few batches of posts! This is a fantastic step in the right direction for the maintenance of this base. Josiah is traveling back to the U.S. today after six weeks of working hard and being a great blessing to us and this mission base. He is smart and capable with a servant’s heart, and we look forward to seeing where God will lead him, knowing He has great things in store for his life. We miss him already!
Vann unfortunately makes his own stones in his kidney stone factory. He just passed another kidney stone last night that had been bothering him constantly since he passed two stones last month. Please pray this is the last one and his body can finally heal. It would be nice for him to be able to sleep well and work without being in constant pain for months at a time.
House of Prayer Church from Blairsville, Georgia are faithful supporters of ours of twenty-five years and they just sent a team of young people from their youth group to come on a short-term mission trip. It was a delight to have people from a loving, supporting church family come visit us and see the base we’ve built and the work we do first hand. They encouraged our hearts and sweetly served our community by helping teach in an English class in a local Christian school, they shared the gospel and a message on abstinence after playing soccer with the kids from our neighboring Shipibo village, and they led chapel at our local missionary kid’s school and served at prayer meeting. It was a full and blessed time all together and we are so grateful for their servant’s hearts.
Even with the awful kidney stone pain and the constant challenges that come with running a mission base in the jungle, we are so grateful that we get to do this job. We have confidence in knowing all that is done for Christ will last - it will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Thank you for your faithful support and prayers for us and for lifting us up to the Rock of Ages who is our firm foundation in this busy, wonderful life in the jungle. May His great name be praised and made known in all the Earth!
“When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of nothingness or helplessness, he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages.” - John Piper