A Mission Trip

I have been a christian a long time.  Todd and I hope that the way we live points to Christ.  We have supported missions with prayer and sometimes finances in the past but have never gone on a mission trip to another country before.  We have talked about it in the past and both agreed that one day we would like to do that, but that is really as far as it has ever gone.

When a mission trip to Peru was mentioned in our church we both raised our eyebrows at it.  And almost immediately Todd was totally in.  I was more skeptical.  By that I mean that Todd sometimes is all in for something and then he changes his mind, or something comes up...  So i wasn't so sure that this would actually happen and honestly I just sorta waited for that moment when he would say- no we weren't going to go.  I was certainly not going without him.  So I waited.  And waited.  The point came when I finally realized, okay, wow I think we really are going to go through with this.  And then fears came in.  Sometimes I struggle with "What ifs".  Thats is what happened.  I got a little worried about many different scenarios.  I asked for prayer from Todd and a friend and began to feel better about it all.    Then I finally began to be excited about it all.  The day finally came, so with passports in hand and tickets reserved we were setting off for Iquitos, Peru.  ME AND TODD - leaving the country for a whole lot of unknowns.  FOR REAL!

The first day we woke up very early.  3:45 am.  Excitement was in the air, however Todd knew that I had some anxiety the day before about the whole thing.  As we were getting ready he came in and told me that he looked at it like this:  "THIS IS AN EXCITING JOURNEY THAT IS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW FAITH IN GOD LIKE WE HAVE NEVER SEEN."  I loved those words and I believed them.

So off we went.  We got to Houston to catch our flight.  Thankfully I am not nervous about flying so that was great.  It took 6 1/2 hours to get to Lima, Peru and then we had to wait for an early morning flight out to Iquitos which meant we had to try to catch a little sleep in the airpot.  Yea that didn't go so well.  Not that I thought it would.  We finally got to board that flight and got semi settled in our seats.  Exhausted, I got as comfortable as possible and dozed off as we were taxying off.  The next thing I knew everyone was moving around.  I woke up confused and Chelsey told me that we had to get off the plane.  Something happened with the landing gear or something and we had to get our things, get off the plane and go back into the airport.

A little after that they called us to board another airplane and off we went again.  This time we did take off and made it to Iquitos!

This is the Amazon River as we were coming in to Iquitos.

 We finally made it.

Trent and some of his team were there with a bus to pick us up.  This is our team before getting on the bus.  It was so neat to meet some of these precious people and have this experience with them.

This is the balcony and that door was the door to the room where Todd and I stayed while in Iquitos.

 This is the view from our room/balcony.

We were so exhausted when we got there but we finally got to eat a little and rest a bit before the ministry part began.  We really didn't know what to expect or what all we would see.  But we were up for whatever it was.  I continually prayed for God to use us and that we would be his instruments, his hands, and his feet where ever we went.  In Jesus Name.