A Long Journey

[Typical river village, we passed hundreds on the way]

After almost 8 days in a boat, I’m back. Brin and the girls seemed to do well in my absence. There were 9 of us on the boat, 5 Americans and 4 Brazilians. The slow, (between 6-8 mph) monotonous journey allowed plenty of time for talking and reflection. I wonder how N. American life would be different if it took 10 hours to go 60 miles. It certainly helps to explain the importance of relationships in this culture.

Overall, we’ve concluded that the trip was a good first step. Our goal is to have a new base location selected by the end of the year, so that leaves plenty of time. Of the two towns, Portel was the most livable. A clean town situated on a peninsula at the headwaters of three clean rivers (in contrast to the dirty Amazon at Breves). After spending a half day in Portel, talking to pastors, towns people, and boat captains, we decided we needed to get a better look at the rivers. We found several well established churches in the town of about 25,000, but our mission specifically targets the hidden villages and communities which have no church, so we really wanted to find out how evangelized the rivers were.

[In Portel a few of us rented scooters to see the city]

We traveled up the Anapu River for about 5 hours, we stopped at a random house and asked if we could dock there for the night. We talked with the family, a Catholic family who were very kind and eager to help. The family had no food, so we gave them what we could for dinner and invited them to eat breakfast with us in the morning. Through our conversations with them, it seemed that stretch of the Anapu had several healthy churches, both Catholic and Evangelical. But we also found that you could travel another 36 hours up river, and they didn’t know as much about this more remote region. We left the next day for home, traveling 30 hours at one point without stopping.

[The family we met on the Anapu]

Our conclusion is that we need to plan another trip upriver to get a better feel for the villages there. There are also 2 other cities, in totally different regions of the state, we are planning on visiting on other trips. Please pray for the vision of the Xingu Mission, as we continue to look towards God for guidance.

Here are a few interesting things I saw on the trip:

[This truck’s body was entirely made of wood]

[One of the Brazilians with us caught a nice Peacock Bass]

[Several times we would see people paddle out from the shore in a canoe to try and catch a ride on a big boat. They would grab onto a rope or tire that is hanging from the boat, if they missed they would just wait for the next boat. This is a common way for people to get up and down the river quickly. In this picture, the guy caught the rope, but his girl missed, he eventually paddled back to her]