Shell Baptist Church
At the Shell IBC, we continue with the children’s Bible club, on this occasion we have 30 children who every Saturday are learning Bible stories and how to apply the Word of God to their lives. We are blessed to have been able to approach a family that was about to get divorced and through the boy who attends the Bible club we have contacted their parents, and we have open doors in that home to start Bible studies with this couple. We thank the Lord they realized that they were going to do something crazy by getting divorced.
In addition, we are a week away from starting to build the enclosure of the land where we will later build the temple for the Shell IBC. Let us continue to pray for provision for this project.
With the Church of Morete Cocha we were able to carry out the missionary trip that we had been planning and with the help of our Good Lord, everything turned out well. We began our trip on Monday, September 11, one day after the birthday of my beloved wife. The weather was optimal to fly from Shell to Morete, so I arrived early to Morete and immediately loaded the three canoes in which we would begin our first missionary trip with the IBC of Morete Cocha. Undertaken this trip was Edwin Illanez, David Santi, Sabino Canelos, Lenin Cuji, Elías Suárez and his wife and Manuel Macancela.
The first community we arrived at was two hours away, it was Matzacaw. Here we had time to sing praises and read the Word of God with everyone who attended, then we ask them to attend the services on Sundays in Moret. We told them that the Morete IBC would provide fuel for their canoes, and they agreed to congregate every 15 days in Morete. Also some brothers from Morete could come down to worship every 15 days and so we will take turns.
Next, we arrived at Llanchama; they did not welcome us here since they said that they had a different way of living, and although they respected what we did, we left the place for the next community, which was Naruká. Here they welcomed us kindly and invited us to stay for the night in this community. We prayed with them, we studied the Word of God, they asked us questions, and the next day we studied the Word of God before saying goodbye.
The longest journey was from Naruká to Ripano, which was 10 hours in a row by peque peque (canoe). We stopped every 2 hours for the ritual to drink chicha. On this journey we found a very difficult road. The entire river was completely blocked by a large palisade and the only way to get through was to unload our canoes and pass with the canoes dragging them over the palisade. So, with the help of balsa shells, we were able to make the canoes slip, and by pulling them with our strength we were able to reach the other side after 2 hours of work in the full sun.
We arrived very late in Ripano and we stayed there, they gave us a lodging to stay the night, with them we also studied the Bible and we distributed the Gospel of John. This we did in each community we arrived at. The next day we advanced to Jandiayaku, there we stopped all day because we were waiting for some supplies that my wife sent us from Shell in the Aerofor plane, in which the missionaries from Ecuador for Christ entered. Brothers Jeremías Vargas and Patricio Tapia from EC arrived on that flight.
Brother Patricio and Brother Jeremía shared their lunch with us (This act comforted the hearts of each one of the group, since they stopped eating to give it to us) and after preaching the Word of God with a few women and two men who They listened to us, we left for the next community. I felt a lot of pain for this community, since they do not have a Church and people are more interested in material things than spiritual things, they believe that they do not need God. The entire group came out challenged to pray for Jandiayaku.
From there we moved on to the next community, which was Mazaramo, the people were very kind there. They lit a fire for us to prepare something to eat and after sharing the Word of God with them we went to sleep. From there the next day we left for Tzizano, then to Nimamuricha and from there to Conambo. We completed this entire journey in 5 days since we stayed overnight in different communities to share the Gospel with them.
When we arrived in Conambo we were sad to see the spiritual condition of the leaders and in short of the entire community, they need a lot of help and training for the Sunday school teachers, since there are none and even the leaders are very far from knowing how guide the Church in that place. We return challenged to be able to help them from the outside and every Wednesday some of them will connect to continue learning something more about the Bible together with the Morete brothers. In Conambo, among other things, we joined a minga* that had been scheduled at the school. In this minga, we support building two beds for teachers, a table, a kitchen counter and a shelf, bookcase. They were very happy with our help, and we learned that (in the future) on each visit to any community we arrive, we must bring tools and nails in different sizes.
To God be the glory! God has been good and allowed us to share with my brothers from Morete, my objective on this trip was them, it was my desire to train them so that they can bring the Gospel to other communities and with the help of the Lord I believe that they returned challenged to serve the Lord.
From Conambo, I left by small plane and my brothers returned in their canoes to Morete. Thank the Lord that I left by plane because I was able to help my group of brothers who were returning in a small plane. One of their engines burned out in Nimamuricha and from there Brother Edwin, with Brother Sabino, advanced to Jandiayaku to communicate with me so that I could help them. Thank the Lord, an AEROFOR plane entered Morete and from there we paid for a flight to Jandiayaku to take another child so they could return to Morete. It was a tremendous blessing to be able to help my brothers in this way. They arrived in Morete on Friday, September 22 as planned, and on their way back they came visiting each community once again, praying for them and challenging them to live in a way that pleases the Lord.