A dengue-good christmas

Opening stockings this morning. Amanda, Mia, Gabriella, Ava and a sickly Josh.

Merry Christmas to our friends and family.

I have been meaning to sit down and update you all on Josh’s status since he arrived home from Maribel, knowing that some of you haven’t heard that Josh was ill while others of you are informed but are curious to know how he is doing.

So, the update: he is recuperating from dengue fever. Josh and a small group traveled to Maribel, the Altamira Bases’ most remote work, and also a place that Josh loves to visit. He was into day 3 of 5 when he came down with a fever, headache and body aches. By the time he came home he had fevers reaching 104 and was looking pretty puny. The malaria test came back negative. The other likely culprit was dengue fever which came back positive. Dengue fever is a disease caused by viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes. Josh had the classic case of headache, fever, joint and muscle pain, a red rash, and fatigue. The treatment is rest, fluids, Tylenol and in Josh’s case, an entire season of Lost.

Josh has been fever-free for the last 2 days and was even able to (feebly) attend a Christmas Eve party last night, which had us eating dinner at 10:30pm and us bowing out for our beds a bit before midnight. Other than that our Christmas has been quite still, a pleasant diversion from the chaotic celebration many of you are doing back home. Stripped of all the parties, programs, presents, over indulgence of both cooking and eating, we experience how silently, the wondrous Gift is given.

So, a picture is worth a thousand words. And quite honestly the experiences of the last few weeks could be worthy of those thousand words but I can't quite conjure up the energy to spill it on the keyboard. So here are some pictures and hope it suffices.

Josh expending his limited energy opening his present.

Prior to Josh getting sick, our family made our own Christmas tree out of açai branches that we cut off from trees in our yard.


I know little of what occurred during Josh's trip to Maribel, most of which I learned from Clyde who stayed the night and told me stories while Josh fevered in bed. Josh did tell me it was a great visit in that they were able to encourage and teach some key leaders as well as check in on a local pastor that had recently been outfitted with a boat to do his own outreach.

Having house church. I love this way of doing "church."

Some piranhas Josh caught before dengue caught him.

A peaceful home on the river. A typical dwelling in the Maribel region.

Josh after he got dengue fever. Perhaps Allison was serenading him..."Hush little baby don't say a word...." Probably not.

This is the boat they traveled in, going from one village to another.

Another home that hosted a house church meeting.

We are always humbled to hear of our friends and family supporting us with prayer and lifting up our needs before our Father. The past few weeks has been an especially difficult season, with sickness both in the body and homesickness in the heart. So please know how thankful we are for prayers and attention in our lives.

Travel, and life inbetween

Josh is home. And really I can agree that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or at least it prompts me to work on my marriage more. For one thing, Josh is leaving again in 9 days, so while I was counting down his arrival from Rio Negro, I immediately started another countdown until he leaves for Maribel.


So while Josh was gone the girls and I plugged away at our own daily lives. We had our second to the last Alpha Circles meeting where we celebrated Sharon’s birthday. We made 60 cupcakes that Amanda and Marsha decorated and they turned out to be a hit with the students.


The next day a memorable event was the Festa de Naçoes (Festival of Nations) that the girls’ school puts on, memorable in a way that will remind me not to get too involved next year. Several months ago, each class was assigned a country. The students learn a dance, pray for their assigned country but most of the time was spent raising money for the Baptist church and a new playground for the school. Several months ago Ella arrives home from school to tell me she was voted “Miss South Africa” by her class. I let her accept the offer not entirely understanding what our responsibility would be, but knowing it would once again find me fund raising for missions, this time for the Baptists. Finally the course culminated with an impressively large all-school event. The place was packed, the program running late (as usual, per the culture), and the whole time I had no idea what was going on. Thankfully Ella did and found her way to the stage each time she was supposed to be there. It was 10:00pm by the time Mia’s class (of 4 and 5 year olds, mind you) were called up to do their dance. I literally had to carry her up there she was so tired. She danced and loved it. I contemplated how long it would take for Ava’s class to be called up and I guessed it would probably be around midnight. I did not want to wait until midnight just so I could witness Ava’s refusal to get on stage. She has stage fright, had it for a while now, but we are not sure if it's a classic case or if she is just tired of everyone looking at her all the time. We never blend in you know and it is harder on Ava than any of us. So, pretty sure it was gonna be a long night, I left early. Ella was not happy that she would miss out on all the fun she had been anticipating for months and felt like she had a responsibility to stay until the end, but I didn’t care. I was tired, a (temporary) single mom and still had to pack for my boat trip the next day. I later heard that is ended at 1:30 am.

Mia, representing Japan, admiring the kimonos of her classmates.

All the Mr.'s and Miss's from each class, every class having a different nation

Ella as South Africa, Ava as Spain and Mia as Japan.

The following day I boarded the boat along with 10 visitors from Cleveland for a 5 day trip up the Xingu. Up until the moment I left the house in the back of my mind I was always thinking I could back out if things became too busy at home. Wow, I am I glad I went. This group from Cleveland was eager to experience anything missions and jumped in with both feet everything God placed before them. It was one of those boat trips that could have gone on much longer quite enjoyably. I personally was able to bond with several of women and look forward to where God takes those relationships. It was sad to see them leave but they left us all so encouraged.

David sharing under the mango trees while Denise translated.

While I was on the boat, Amanda ran the house. Amanda? I should properly introduce her. Meet Amanda Kilborn, age 20 from Cambridge, Ontario.

She is my new home school helper. She comes from a mission-hearted family and her mom and dad (Patrick and Laura) had recently visited and that is where she learned of my need for a home school helper. She lives in our back guesthouse and will stay with us until April. She delights my girls with all the craft and art goodies that she pulls out of what appears to be a bottomless suitcase. Amanda is artistic, quiet and gleefully chases down the lizards and bugs in my yard. Some exceptions being the rat that has been antagonizing our family and garden for the past week as well as the ticks that our guard dogs leave in front of her door.
Amanda had her hands full while I was away as Ella decided to unleash her sassy tween on Amanda and all my girlfriends that stayed the night. Things like talking Sheyla into letting her stay up late, even though she had done the same thing with Marilda the night before. So while I love to come home to my kids a refreshed and eager mom, I was immediately burdened to be the disciplinarian. Overall, though, for only being in the country 5 weeks, Amanda did great and I was so, so thankful to have here so that I could travel while Josh was away.


We've had a tough few days just recently. A little homesickness that was magnified by the passing of Josh's grandma Stuber and other things that just add up to make it hard to be away from home. We will post more on that later but for now we would appreciate your prayers.

What we found on the Rio Negro

I've been home from my trip for a few days now, enjoying time with the family and getting back into the flow of life. Part of me though, is still with the rest of our group who continues to visit towns along the Amazon River.Since I only was along for the first half of the trip it will be hard to make an accurate evaluation until they return. In the meantime, I'll try to bring you up to speed on what we experienced...

Upon arriving in Manaus, we were immediately confronted with an obstacle. We had planned on taking a line boat (public boats traveling between cities) to Sao Gabriel, a 72 hour trip up the Rio Negro. However, what we didn't know was the river was so low that line boats were not traveling up-river. We looked into flights, but last minute fares were out of the question. After some scrambling, we learned that we could hire a boat and driver. While this was a much more expensive option, it would give us freedom to stop at river villages. Due to the cost, we decided to only travel as far as Santa Isabel and then down to Barcelos on the way back to Manaus.

The "speedboat" that we hired to take us up-river.

A morning stretch on the beach before leaving, we camped several nights on beaches during the long trips up and down river.

We saw first hand why the line boats were no longer going up-river, this line boat ran aground on this rock a month and half ago, since then the river has dropped another several feet.

Before I go further, some of you may be wondering what we were looking for on this trip. Our goal, to find a region where God may be calling us to open a new work, is easily stated but not so easily executed. We're looking for things like remote interior communities that don't have access to the gospel, but that often depends on how you define "remote", "access" or even "community". In addition, there are some things that we want that would help us not live quite so "remotely", such as internet, access to banking and a reasonable selection of groceries. Most of these qualities are subjective (does the availability of only onions and carrots constitute a "reasonable selection of groceries"?) and often statistics on population and churches working in the interior is very hard to nail down.

Santa Isabel was smaller than we expected, probably around 7,000 people in the town itself, but we were surprised by how clean, well-maintained and safe it was. The town itself only had 6 churches, and only one, that we could tell, was working in the interior. Somewhere around twenty interior communities were in the region of Santa Isabel, only about half have churches. We left thinking there was certainly kingdom work to be done, but not sure if this was THE place.

Government buildings in Santa Isabel; the cleanliness and condition of the city, we learned, was more to do with the local government than any presence of prosperity.

Barcelos was probably twice the size of Santa Isabel, and felt like a big city after eating every meal in the only restaurant in Santa Isabel. Barcelos had twice the number of churches in town, and one was quite large. The church work in the interior was better organized, but the interior region was much larger and had more communities. The town seemed much more comfortable to live in compared to Santa Isabel. Again, Barcelos seemed to have plenty of work in the interior, but is this the place God is calling us?

Ben and I explore Barcelos on a rented motorcycle.

View of Barcelos from our hotel.

The Rio Negro seems to be a needy place, it certainly qualifies for remote. Tim and Kevin, along with Tim's sons Luke and Ben, will be visiting more than 10 communities on the Amazon. When they return we will have a better idea of how the Rio Negro compares to the Amazon. We were hoping for a big "God moment" that would help us know with certainty where He is calling us. That may still happen on the second part of the trip, but most likely, God will speak to us in His "still small voice". Please pray for us, both as a family and mission, as we seek to hear that voice and respond to His call.