Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Iquitos, the largest known city (pop. 400,000) with no roads connecting to the outside world

      On September 8th,  the short term volunteers (STV) Ray and Judy Davis, John Garnica, Mary Heater, Marvin Kossman, Dirk Scott, and Amie Del Vecchio descended on Iquitos Peru ready to get started on whatever God would desire them to do to further His Kingdom for the next 13 days.   Cold showers in the hotel room did not seem to be such a negative thing because of the extreme heat and humidity that was quickly experienced.   Beginning with the challenge of building 28 church benches, which ended up being a daily activity most days, gave us immediate hands on construction activities.   In the next coming days we also fixed a roof of a woman who was recently robbed, fixed bridging plank walkways for a few homes, and built a set of new stairs for a home.  Medical screening and medicine distribution was accomplished by our STV nurse, Mary Heater.  John Garnica preached some great sermons several times in Spanish.  In addition to many other activities, Ray and Judy were our experts at making balloon animals.  That and Amie’s candy/gum distribution were big hits among the many children.   Food distribution, clean water distribution, many kids events, treating over 100 children for lice, helping with services and Sunday school, handing out bags full of hygiene items to 250 kids, participating in several activities at an orphanage, hosting a volleyball and soccer tournament, helping a flooded community by shoveling and transporting by hand dirt from one area to many homes to fill in their flooded areas around their home, and feeding a lot of kids breakfast, were among some of the other activities that we participated in.   
      For best viewing click on the small "youtube" icon at the bottom of the video (this will take you to the youtube website) - then click on the arrows at the far bottom left of the video to enlarge for better viewing.

Eating Grubs in Iquitos, Peru...we'll send you some for a small fee;)