The red dot is Nuevo Chanchomayo. Caspizapa is the first red dot on the yellow line depicting the road. |
Our drive to Nuevo Chanchomayo was beautiful. The rode is extremely bumpy but the scenery takes your breath away. Surprisingly the drive only took two and a half hours. When Taylor went on his motorcycle it took eight hours before he arrived.
My first impression of Nuevo Chanchomayo is that it looks nothing like any of the other pueblos we have visited. All of the streets are dirt. Normally the towns have a few paved roads or gravel roads, but this wasn't the case here. The streets were no longer dirt when we arrived. They were all mud. Deep layers of mud. It looked like a fun track to drive on but I wasn't excited to walk on it. All I could think about was how I was going to keep the kids clean. The houses are also very different. Every house was made out of wood. I figured out very quickly why they are two story houses.
Our ride into Nuevo Chanchomayo. |
We were welcomed into town immediately by a man named Gato. Taylor and Max met him on their last visit. He asked us to rest in his house while Taylor went to find one of the town animadors. Blanca, his wife, quickly went to the store to by food to make us lunch. During our time in their home we witnessed Gato carrying bags of coffee beans to his house from someone's chacra. These bags weighed over 50 kilos and he carried bag after bag into his home. We had arrived right in the middle of the coffee harvest. The town was a ghost town since everyone was trying to harvest their coffee beans. We were so blessed to chat with Blanca and Gato over the wonderful soup of chicken feet and organs they had prepared for us. Adele absolutely loved eating the organs. She refused to eat the actual meat and cried until she had an organ in front of her.
Blanca and Gato introduced us to a single mother with six children. This mother is having a hard time supporting her children. They are all malnourished and underweight. She has no support from the father and desperately wants a better life for her children. She asked us to find them a home out of Chanchomayo. She doesn't want to see them suffer anymore and she knows that she needs to find them a better home. It broke my heart to hear her story and to see the pain in her face. She loves her children so much and doesn't want to see them die. She sees that sending them away will most likely be the only thing that can save them. Please I beg you to pray for this mother and her children. Please pray that God will send us an answer for this situation!
Hiking to the next town. We are still fairly clean. |
The hike down the mountain was much more difficult than the hike up. Of course silly me wore sandals on our trip. I didn't realize that it was a mud town otherwise I would have worn my other shoes. The kids really enjoyed the muddy slip and slide. I was struggling to stay on my feet most of the time. Then we came to the steep mountain. I thought it was slippery on the way up but now we had a fresh rain and had to navigate the way down. Taylor, Ruth, and Leo seemed to navigate the mountain easily. Anthony, Malachi, and myself had problems. Anthony conceded to the mountain and slid on his butt down the mountain. Malachi took off his shoes and found a better footing. I just struggled. Praise be to Jesus that a young girl from Chanchomayo was walking down the mountain at the exact same time. She saw how difficult it was for me so she offered to take Faustina. Thank you Jesus. I continued to struggle all the way down. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. The Lord humbled me and I was able to praise Him through it all.
This is what I looked like after the hike. |
We all arrived back to the home we were staying for the evening covered in mud, some more than others. We were so blessed to be able to take showers as soon as we arrived. I was so excited to wash the mud off but then I stepped into the water. The water in Chanchomayo is fresh from a mountain stream. As you can imagine it was cold, the take-your-breath-away cold. Thankful to be clean it was time to bath the children. Taylor was so gracious to bath the little boys. I knew exactly when they stepped into the water. I don't think Leo and Anthony has ever screamed so loud. We were so thankful for a warm meal and hot coffee. Coffee is a main drink for the people since it is quite chilly and for us chilly is in the 60's. We headed off to the church for our talk. So much for nice clean kids. By the time we reached the church our legs were all muddy once again.
After our talk we were thankful to be heading to bed. We had a long day of traveling and when 10:00 came around we were excited to sleep. We made our way up to the second floor. Here we learned we would be sleeping in the same room as our generous hosts. Our hosts had a bed, the three boys shared a bed, Ruth had a small bed, and they laid a mattress on the floor for Taylor, Faustina, Adele, and I to share. We prayed with the kids, kissed them, and climbed onto the mattress. Then it happened. Our gracious hosts proceeded to tuck Taylor and I into bed. They placed the blankets around us, wished us a good night, and tucked the mosquito net under us. Taylor and I were at a loss for words. We looked at each other and asked if we were imagining it. Nope we both agreed that it definitely happened and that was an experience we never thought would happen. Last year Noah, a fellow missionary, mentioned that this exact thing happened to him. We didn't believe him and we teased him. Well it happened to us. We were tucked in.
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ReplyDeleteHa, that is awesome.
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