NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Supply runs such as I’ve described in earlier posts began in the 1950′s and continued over several decades after which time commercial operators were hired to transport the supplies and fuel. During those early years not too much was happening in the line of commerce up those rivers and serious transportation options hadn’t been developed.  There were some people working the rubber, chiquichique and chicle trees plus you could find a trading post or two on the lower reaches of the rivers but dependable commercial transportation would not become available till much later.

Thus the supply trips I’ve spoken of.  Between trips the boats were docked in the area where the missionaries were working, hundreds of river miles from town.  In anticipation of a trip the boats would be caulked, patched, lashed together and loaded up with the empty fuel drums to be filled out in town. Many times the tribal folks would take advantage of the trip downriver and catch a ride to town.  They usually took products such as pineapples, cassava cereal, cassava bread, bananas or plantains to sell. Usually there were missionaries other than the boat crew traveling to town as well.  They went for paper work, medical work etc. The crew itself was made up of the captain who in the early days was usually my Father, plus an experienced Indian river guide and of course several young men to help load, bail and tend to the 101 details on board. Sometimes these young men would be young tribal guys and sometimes they’d be mk’s. Usually there would be one or two of each.

For several reasons the trip down river was always easier than the the trip back up. For one,  you were going with instead of against the swift current. Then too the boats weren’t nearly as heavily loaded as they would be when headed back up river. Another good thing was that the trip down wasn’t usually more than three days over against four days to two weeks pushing back up.

The port in town was actually 60 kilometers from town. The mk’s would stay with the boats at the port while the captain took all the empty fuel drums by truck to get filled up in town.  The responsibility of the guys staying with the boats was to guard and protect the equipment from thieves, and to keep the boats bailed.  It often took two weeks for the several truck loads of supplies and fuel to be transported from town to the port. At times it would rain all night long for night after night.  If one of your boats happened to be a large dugout without a roof the guys would spend hour after hour hand bailing.  You’d have to bail every couple of hours all night long.  As the cargo from the trucks coming from town was transferred to the boats, the boats of course settled further and further into the water. Now the guys really had to be serious about bailing.  If a boat sprang an undetected leak, it could sink within a few hours.  The supplies of course had to secured safely away. The fuel drums were the hardest to handle and get loaded.  They often sprang leaks.  Most of the smaller leaks could be stopped by vigorously rubbing and working a certain kind of soap we called “blue soap” because of it’s color, into the area of the leak.  Finally the last truck load with the passengers and last minute supplies, usually the food for the trip itself, would arrive.

Now came the critical job of the final repositioning and securing of each of the boats relative to  the others.  If for instance there were three boats tied together the middle boat would have the biggest engine and the entire rig would be steered from there.  The outside boats were secured to the middle boat by means of long poles that stretched across all three of the boats.  It was absolutely necessary the boats be positioned correctly and securely held there.  If while navigating through rapids and whirlpools a boat should happen to get out of position the rig would flounder, and be swept backwards into dangerous water and everything could be lost.  This positioning and securing took hours of measuring the optimum distance you wanted between the boats, tying, untying, and retying till every every detail passed the critical inspection of the captain.  After all he was responsible for all the cargo and most important of all, the people on board.  All this meticulous preparation was put to the test within minutes of leaving port. Each of the three boats was loaded to the max,meaning you had to angle into the rapids just right, and all your positioning and tying of the boats had to have been just right.  The steering cables and engines were immediately stressed to the maximum in these swift waters. Even though several rapids and much swift, dangerous water lie ahead, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief after the first hour and everything was all right.

The crew had lots of things to do as the rig pushed it’s way up river.  The ropes tying the boats together had to be keep tight which meant that sometimes they had to be retied.  Another way of keeping the ropes tight was to pour water on them if the sun had dried them out.  If it rained a lot of course you didn’t have that problem.  The fuel tanks feeding the engines ( usually at least three) had to kept full, and there was the never ending job of keeping the boats bailed; by hand. A crew member had to be within close proximity of each of the engines at all times in case of some emergency.  There were long stretches of river where someone had to be constantly probing the depth of the water so the river guide would have a better feel of where the deepest channel was.  This was done by plunging a long pole into the water from the prow of one of the boats. There was no end to the responsibilities of the crew.  Oh and by the way  there was no rest for the weary at night.  Once the rig stopped for the night, ideally at a sandbar or nice flat rock each motor had to be checked over and serviced for the next days running. And all through the night the boats had to be bailed.

But I must end on a fun note.  The crew didn’t spend every minute of every day working.  One of the fun things we did on these long trips up river was to get into our swim trunks and hang off the poles that were holding the boats together. Especially on a hot day the water was so refreshing.  The boats weren’t going super fast but you did have to hang on pretty tightly. It was imperative of course that you secured your swim suit very, very well. If you’ve ever attempted something like this you’ll understand the reason why.

There is so much to write about when it comes to boats, the river and supply trips. More will be coming.

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DDT means different things to different people. It may indeed have bad things inherent in its application.  However for those of us who lived on the upper reaches of the big rivers where decent sized boats could still navigate, the arrival of the DDT men was just another part of jungle life routine.  Their bright yellow built up dugouts arrived like clockwork (more or less) every three to four months at all the little jungle communities persevering on the river banks. I say persevering because the jungle itself seemed to be alive and in a constant state of reclaiming the pitiful little plots of cleared area where the people lived. The common perception is that humans are destroying the rain forrest; maybe so but it wasn’t true of the humans in those places at that time in history.  If the jungle man didn’t keep his machete sharp and active the jungle would take back everything that man had worked so hard for in an amazingly short period of time.

Of course everyone knew when the DDT boat arrived for two reasons. 1. The arrival of any boat was something special and 2. you couldn’t miss that bright yellow color.  Greetings and news would be exchanged between the men and the villagers.  Most of the DDT men had been hired by the health department right out of the villages they serviced so they were no strangers to these jungle villagers.  The men were never in any great yank to get down to business so maybe later in the afternoon they would go from house to house letting everyone know they’d be spraying the next day.  Each house whether there were twenty or just one, had a number painted on it. The numbers had to be updated as houses were added or taken down.  To get your place ready for the men to spray (in the beginning days the spraying of each house was mandatory) really meant “getting ready”.  Everything in the house you didn’t want to be soaked in DDT had to be covered up.  Mostly this meant moving everything in every room, including pictures on the walls, EVERYTHING, to the center of the room and covering it up with anything you might have.  In those days people didn’t have tarps as much as today so folks used anything they could come up with.

The powerful hand pump spraying unite would reach way up into the palm roof and cover every wall, sometimes till everything dripped with DDT.  You really didn’t want to go back inside till things dried out a little.  Inevitably some one in the village would forget to pen up their handful of chickens and before next morning light the rooster would crow no more.  The chickens would all have died from eating roaches or spiders poisoned by the DDT.

Of course if those famous jungle ants that march in columns of thousands upon thousands had recently paid the village a visit there wouldn’t be as many dead bugs for the chickens to have eaten, consequently the chickens would have fared better. About these famous “make myself right at home ants”. For the uninitiated these critters can be a little unnerving.  They will seemingly appear out of nowhere advancing with purpose over a wide area in columns up to several inches wide.  The experienced jungle folk know that trying to stop this relentless advance is pretty much futile.  The secret is to “go with the flow” which being interpreted means you move out of your home so this flowing mass can take your place over.  They are there to help!  If you’d been plagued by roaches or crickets or spiders they will clean all these bugs out for you and won’t even send you a bill.  They do an especially good job cleaning out your palm roof which tends to become home to all manner of unwelcome pests. As the ants move out the back door and down the back walls you return to your home which has been rid of all the pests through the front door.  Easy as pie!  So the guy that forgot to pen his chickens up won’t have fared too badly if the ants had recently been through.

In spite of the success at wiping chickens out the real purpose of the spraying had nothing to do with chickens or roaches or spiders.  The DDT men came to spray for one purpose only, that purpose being to exterminate the anopheles mosquito.  The female of this species spreads malaria and is responsible for more human deaths and misery than we can imagine.  The periodic spraying of DDT did help keep the mosquito population under control. That fact became clearly evident when the spraying was halted because studies shows DDT is harmful to humans. After the spraying was stopped malaria became much more of a problem and many, many jungle people died with both the vivax and the falciparum strains of the desease.

After the DDT boat had moved on to the next village everything in your house had to be washed down.  Except, how do you wash a palm roof down or how do you wash down a dried earthen wall or the dirt floor?  Inside the house about the best thing you could do is sweep up the mess, move your belongings back and carry on till the DDT boat comes again.

If it has been determined that DDT is bad for humans then it must indeed be bad. What I am equally sure of is that these DDT men who came in their bright yellow boats helped keep death dealing mosquitos at bay and for that many of us are grateful.

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                                                   The vast expanse of green the first missionaries entered in the middle to late 1940’s still looks pretty much the same today as it did back years ago. The difference is in the hearts of many of the people who live in this vast jungle. This wilderness stretches over one third of the entire country. As far as we know the Gospel had never been made known in any of the few, small National towns nestled along the middle reaches of the large rivers, and certainly not in any of the Tribal groups hidden away in that vast expanse reaching out toward the headwaters of those rivers. 

It was in one of those small National towns the missionaries first began to share Christ and to work toward the goal of taking the gospel to all the Tribes people.  It would turn out to be an undertaking (still going on today) costing up to this point the lives of 15 adult missionaries plus a number of missionary children. 

It was in that town Don Jose heard and embraced the Gospel.  He became the first fruit and in a sense the representative of all the multitudes of jungle folk who would place their faith in Christ.  My parents had left their very successful farm in Pennsylvania and come to begin their missionary work in Don Jose’s town. Their front room became the meeting place where Don Jose and other believers met to worship and take in the life giving Word of God.  As a 6 year old I remember helping set up the wooden benches for meeting time.  Years passed and Don Jose went to be with his Lord. But that new life which had taken deep root in his heart had born fruit first in his own family and eventually through out that whole jungle region.

For you see Don Jose’s son, Silverio had come to life in Christ along with other members of his family.  Silverio worked closely with the missionaries as they ventured out into the largely unexplored reaches of the upper rivers and jungles. His knowledge of the river systems and of the ways of the tribal peoples was invaluable to the early efforts of those first missionaries.

Again the years passed by.  Don Jose’s grandson also named Silverio after his father, became a pastor shepherding a group of believers in a large town located at the Northern edge of the jungle.  Some of his flock are local townspeople and some are children and or grandchildren of the tribesman his father had helped carry the Gospel to years before.  These young people who come to town for education or work opportunities benefit greatly from the stability Silverio’s church provides them in a home away from home.

As a child years many years ago I saw my Father and other missionaries disciple and work with Don Jose and Silverio as they moved toward the goal of taking the Gospel to all the tribes.  Today, my two sons  have opportunity to work with Don Jose’s grandson, always with the goal of taking the life changing message  to those groups still out there, those groups still beyond the reach of the gospel.  Yes of course, so much has been accomplished! There are hundreds and hundreds of believers, dozens and dozens of churches, the New Testament and portions of the old have been translated into four  languages, and there are three more translations in progress. There are however, still language groups with no witness, and of course no scripture.  Today’s reality is that for reasons beyond the missionaries control the work in the jungle is limited and very difficult these, but of course that’s the way it’s always been. 

Ps: In the years prior to Don Jose going to be with his Lord, he had moved to the town where eventually his grandson would become a pastor.  In that time period I was out in town training at the local hospital in preparation for the work with the health department described in a previous post, “That Awful Taste”.  I became aware that Don Jose was in financial need and I also knew he wouldn’t easily accept an out right gift.  I asked him to build me a wooden box to store things in called a “baul”.  I was able to pay him more than his asking price which was a help to him and for me an opportunity to help this faithful servant of the Lord. In the many moves our family has made in ministry over the years we’ve always taken the “baul”, the work of Don Jose’s hands with us.  It remains with us to this very day, reminding us that though the jungle looks pretty much the same today as it did in the 1940s the difference is in the hearts of many, many of the people who live there. It all started with Don Jose, a trophy of God’s Grace.

If you happen to read this post would you please pray for the ongoing work of God there in the jungle.

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In the jungle you could make a difference for many people on so many levels.  You could be teaching a tribal friend to read when with no warning out of the blue (or gray as the case might be) in would swoop a helicopter full of officials.  Whether for the after noon or longer the missionary was there to help as guide, interpreter and to answer a hundred and one questions.  One was always ready to provide meals and accommodations for the night and on some occasions for weeks at a time.

We especially worked very closely with the officials who were in charge of providing healthcare for the tribal villages.   For several reasons  those officials were eager to enlist the missionaries help in caring for the health of the jungle folks.  In looking for the best way to provide more comprehensive healthcare in the villages the authorities decided to train local folks, that is tribal men and women to become “rural medics”.  Several missionaries were invited to train along side their tribal counterparts in order to go out into the villages and help them get set up and going once the training was finished.  I was chosen to accompany two tribal friends to a certain village and help in any way I could, get them off to a good start. I could speak the villagers language but not my fellow medics language so we communicated with each other in Spanish and with the villagers  in their language, which was other than my co-workers language.

There was a malaria epidemic sweeping through the area and we were working night and day with the medical besides building ourselves a very small, very rustic jungle house which would serve as our living quarters and a place from which to dispense medications, do the required record keeping etc.  The floor of the house was dirt, the walls one kind of palm leaf, the roof another kind of palm leaf, and all tied together with vines.

In those days the common malarial treatment was a very, very bitter substance to be taken in pill form.  Our patients did not like to take these pills, especially if  their prescribed dose included part of a pill.  Part of a pill was bad because  that awful taste escaped into the taste glands of the patient.  Even the whole pills were bad because the sickest were unable to swallow them whole.  So we’d grind them up, mix in some sugar water and spoon feed them.  It still tasted awful!  When we’d treat the well with a preventative dose many times they’d pretend to put the pills in their mouths  but would in fact keep them in their hand to throw away later.  Who could blame them but we knew if the  preventative dose wasn’t taken  they’d get sick and possibly die.  I can tell you we were very insistent our patients took that awful tasting stuff.  It was a matter of life and death.

My fellow medics didn’t have any money with which to buy supplies or gasoline for my outboard motor and I had precious little of it myself.  Mostly we lived from hunting and fishing plus what little we medics could contribute to the pantry.  My friends brought bundles of cassava bread from their village and I contributed things like rice, cooking oil, sugar and salt.  We did trade some things we had for food items from the villagers but their food supplies were very limited because of so many people being down sick with malaria.

My two co-workers and I took turns cooking the once a day hot meal we ate.  Depending on what our day looked like we’d eat early or late.  Our usual meal consisted of some rice with a little oil mixed in to give it some flavor especially if we didn’t have any fish or wild game  that day.  For several weeks, no matter which one of us did the cooking, our rice had been tasting more and more, well pretty much awful!  Our cooking oil was stored in a gallon tin for which we’d carved a wooden plug for the pour hole. Our oil was almost all gone and more and more you’d have to tip it almost upside down to coach the oil out.  This one day two of us were sitting there waiting for our buddy to cook and serve the rice with the usual cooking oil.  All of a sudden the cook began the most horrible gagging and retching .  Was he having  a sudden onslaught of malaria we wondered?  As the two of us moved over to help him the cause of  those  awful sounds became apparent.  There he stood with the oil can upside down over the pot of rice.  From  the pour hole there was hanging out a very long tail of a very long time  very dead rat.  Obviously one of us had left the wooden plug out overnight weeks ago, I say weeks ago because  the rice had begun to taste awful, weeks ago!   Well, we survived and you can be sure nobody ever forgot to put the plug back in the next can of oil.  If some of our patients we’d been practically forcing  that oh, so bitter malaria medicine down had been around  they would likely have thought “it serves them right”.

We needed something on the lighter side such as the rat episode to help us get through the utter seriousness  of our work.  In spite of our best efforts we lost some patients to malaria and that was very hard for us.  Thinking of malaria brings to mind the role DDT played in our lives there in the jungle.  I want to do a post on the  use of DDT in the future.

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February is still very much a dry season happening here in the jungle. There are indicators however that the dry season is slipping by.  First off the dry season winds so prominent in December and early January have pretty much shut down.  Then the advancing season is betrayed by the burning off of garden sites in anticipation of the rains which could begin as early as March.  Most years the rainy season begins with the mid afternoon thunderstorms so typical of April, but one can never be absolutely sure.  By February the constellation “the seven sisters” is no longer directly overhead at sundown as was the case in early December.

The turkeys however are still singing every morning and the river is very low.  This means continued good hunting for the jungle folks.  By now most of the smaller turtles have laid their eggs but the larger species are still going strong.

Another tell tale sign the dry season is wearing on is that the bigger, flatter rocks along the river banks and mid river are getting smelly.  River travelers and hunters stop here to fish and and camp or maybe just to cook a meal before moving on.  Like anywhere else some people tend to leave discarded items strewn around.  We’re talking fish bones or maybe some bait items and  often a dead electric eel or sting ray will be left on the rock to rot. Of course the vultures will take care of any carrion they can reach with their beaks but somehow a dead eel will end up in a crevasse where even the vultures can’t reach. What had surfaced as clean river washed rocks in December have become littered and smelly places awaiting the rising water’s cleansing wash when the rains begin. Folks will still stop by these rocks till the rising waters cover them once again but for now the smell lets you know it’s February and not December.

One February in an unusually dry El Nino year smoke blowing in from brush fires burning in a neighboring country many,  many miles away made flying, even for experienced jungle pilots, extremely dangerous.  You wouldn’t have thought smoke would be a problem in the “rain forrest”.  By the end of February the dry season usually has another month or so before it runs it’s course but it definitely is running out of time.

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As the heavily loaded supply boats labored against the swift current hour after hour and day after day you could almost reach out and feel the excitement on the other end as the folks anxiously waited for their arrival.  This was the era when river transportation was the only way to get people, mail and supplies out to the villages. The supply boats (several boats tied together) made the trip about 5 times a year.  That meant the missionaries could look forward to getting fresh supplies and mail at best every two months or so.

Imagine the anticipation of the folks on shore as the boats finally after made their way into port.   Their would be fresh flour to bake bread and other goodies.  By now the flour from last trip would be almost gone. And the little that was left, well you could sift (the ladies had been doing it for weeks) the weevils out but you could not get rid of the characteristic weevil taste in the bread.  Many would go ahead and sift the new flour to begin with because, you guessed right, it often came from the store with weevils. Folks taped cotton doused with something (dare I say formaldehyde)  inside the flour containers but even that didn’t stop the little critters.  I should add that the formaldehyde didn’t actually touch the flour.

And the mail, yes the mail!  In this day of instant communication it’s hard to imagine going for months without hearing from home.

People had been running out of literally everything that didn’t originate there in the jungle. Some foods did of course come from the jungle and all missionaries at some point did live on that food and it was good food even if there was no salt, sugar or cooking oil.  In this day and age we’re taught to cast a baleful eye at these ingredients but try and live without them for awhile.  Speaking of salt.  At times a missionary family would order a hundred pound sack of rock salt complete with seashells and other “things”.  The rock salt would be ground by a hand grinder as it was needed.  One supply trip a sack of this rock was left by mistake in an area of the boat not under a roof or canvas tarp.  On that trip it rained almost constantly. Not good for rock salt. When the sack was unloaded at the destination all that was left of the hundred pounds were the seashells.  If the chaps bailing that particular boat had tasted the bilge water it would have been very, very salty.

In those beginning days trade goods were more valuable than money to the tribal folks so the missionaries planned to always keep a supply of the most common items on hand. Fishing line, fish hooks, knives, machetes, files, cooking pots, matches, red cloth for making loincloths etc. were all greatly needed and desired.

But probably the most important items the missionaries would be running low on would be medical supplies. And hopefully on those boats pulling into port would be quantities of penicillin, eye salve for pink eye, worm treatments, antiseptics, suture material,  pain medication, alcohol, cotton and of course the list went on and on.

To put the importance of these medical supplies in perspective, think of this:  There were no doctors or clinics within hundreds of river miles.  But each of  the missionaries had at least some medical training and at times there were missionaries who were actual trained nurses working in some locations there in the villages.  Of course this fact was known far and wide. Later we actually had a dentist out there in the jungle. So the combination of loving, caring missionaries with medical training, having at last some medical supplies available, drew the jungle folks like a magnet.  Many patients went home well but there were too many we were unable to help. I think of the girl who died giving birth. Her people had left her not knowing all was not well. It would have taken days just to get to her people so we had no choice but to bury her along with her baby who died as well Another time a sick man was left by his friends who planned to come back for him when he got better.  He thought he’d been poisoned by an enemy who’d slipped something into a cup of coffee.  It was plain to us however he was in the last stages of tuberculosis. We buried him as well. We grieved when in spite of our best efforts we were not able to help some of the folks.  It was occasion for great joy when someone we’d been able to help placed their faith in the Lord Jesus.

Life however wasn’t all work and sickness and serious stuff.  At one jungle location because of  the bend in the river and if the wind was blowing just right you could hear the supply boats for an hour before they pulled into port.  So one day when all ears were straining to hear the first faint noise of the supply boat’s engines, several teenage boys (don’t ask for names) decided to trick everyone into thinking they heard the boats coming. By rigging the exhaust sound of a little outboard motor to sound like the much bigger engines, and by simulating the slow progress of the much bigger boats, these mischievous boys were responsible for making the whole village wind their way down to the port to welcome what they thought was the arrival of the supply boats. As they wound their way down the trail one might be thinking, “wow tonight I get to take a bath with real soap”, another could hardly wait to get her hands on mail from home and of course everyone was thinking of something good on that cargo.  What they saw however was those boys trying to keep their sides from splitting with laughter.  They had succeeded against all odds because everyone knows it’s not easy to trick missionaries. Fortunately however most missionaries have a, well let’s say, a decent sense of humor.  In the end everyone had a good laugh and the real boats and the real goodies soon arrived. Now you understand how totally important the “supply boats” were.

Life howev

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Some jungle dwellers are aware of days, weeks, months and have added the understanding of  these outside elements to their world view.  For other more remote jungle folks the concept of the days, weeks, and months is unknown.  They live their lives by the change of the seasons.  But no matter if December means just a change of seasons or if it includes an understanding of the holidays it’s a big deal for the jungle folk.

All the rivers and streams are confined within their banks for good till April or May of the next year. The sand bars will be out till the same time. Now the two main species of turtles will begin laying in earnest. That is great news for the folks living along the bigger streams and rivers.  Turtle egg hunters will be out every morning, each dugout canoe load of searchers hoping their’s will be the first one to the turtles favorite laying spots.

Low water means better hunting and fishing.  Better hunting because thirst forces the animals out to the banks of the streams where  hunters are active day and night hoping to bag a tapir, a capybara, a paca or a caiman.  The several species of wild turkeys that live along the river banks will now be singing every morning leading the careful hunter right to the tree they happen to be roosting in.  And how great the fishing becomes!  The fish are now all concentrated in the rivers and lagoons instead of cruising around in the flooded rain forrest.  Fish can be caught on hook and line in the daytime and speared at night. All things being equal, night hunting is probably the preferred way to hunt for the jungle dweller.   He paddles his dugout oh so quietly along the river bank hunting dinner for his hungry family back home.  The night is full of dangers and the hunter can quickly become the hunted.  There are caimans and  anacondas about. Poisonous snakes abound. The hunters spotlight finds them hanging from the vines their eyes glistening white against the dark of the jungle.  Night wasps love to swam to the light and will nail a sleepy hunter but good.   Imagine yourself paddling ever so quietly along a jungle stream near the  river bank, your ears straining to place the direction of the tapir’s whistle you’ve just heard.  You try not to make even the slightest of sounds as you  glide toward the spot on the bank you’ve chosen to climb out and try and whistle the tapir in. And it will be just at that moment the water all around your canoe literally explodes with dozens of fish rocketing straight out of the water.  Some of these fish will clobber you before falling back into the water and always but always some will land in your canoe and turn your quite approach to the bank into the biggest commotion you’ve hard in your life. It’ll be wonpity ,clompity, flopity, bangity, wapity, and on and on.  If the tapir was far enough away he may not have heard the commotion but if he was close by  he’ll be long gone.  And another angle on the rocketing fish is that if you get smashed in the face by a two foot peacock bass you won’t forget it for a long time.  Actually hunters have gotten seriously injured by these spooked fish.

If you live far inland, away from the bigger rivers and streams and you move about by foot on the jungle trails you love December (you just know it as the real beginning of the dry season) because the walking and camping out is so much more pleasant. So many jungle fruits are coming into season and the new blossoms on many jungle trees mean the honey harvest will be good.  That dry season breeze sweeps over the jungle as well as the rivers and dries things out nicely.

There are so many facets of what December in the jungle means but I want to focus on what December in the jungle meant to our family.  It all goes back to my first post about community.  Our experience there begins back in 1949 when my parents arrived at a little riverside village on the banks of a midsize river to  begin ministry.  Eventually my Father moved his family several days travel by dugout canoe further into the rain forrest to the site which would become a Tribal center for three diverse Indigenous groups. In the course of time Diana’s family moved there for ministry as well.   Her Father Russ taught the tribal men outboard motor mechanics and was the only dentist for days and days travel in any direction.  We became good friends with our tribal neighbors.  We shared the blessings and difficulties of life together, we laughed and cried together.  My brother Joel and my father Robert died there and are buried there.

Years passed and Diana and I were married. More years passed and the time came in our lives when our there kids were grown and gone, either doing ministry themselves or preparing for ministry.  And now in December at Christmas time the kids were coming home to the jungle where we still ministered.  What an indescribably exciting and joyous time!  All the complex travel arrangements and details were behind us and now the kids were on the final leg of the journey home for Christmas in the little one engine airplane.  Note. In the beginning days there was no airplane, all travel was by boat or trail.  We would eagerly follow the one and one half hour flight as the pilot reported in every time he passed one of the familiar land marks along the way.  Finally you could hear the plane and then you could see it and then they were on the ground and then came the hugs and more hugs. As we’d walk hand in hand out to the house on the river bank we’d all be talking at once and making plans for the next few weeks we’d be at home together for Christmas. How good it was to be together for Christmas.  Some days we’d just hang out and enjoy being together. The kids got to spent time with their Tribal friends. Some afternoons we’d motor up river, jump over the side and let the current take us back home.  At night we might motor over to one of the now huge sand bars and walk marveling at God’s handiwork in the night sky.  We’d go fishing and we’d usually bag a turkey for our Christmas Day feast.  I can’t forget to mention that most of every day we spent  working together, Indians and missionaries on some project for the community.

How soon our time together would come to an end.  How fast the days passed and it would be time for the kids to leave.  But even as the kids flew away in that little airplane we were all thinking of next year’s Christmas when we’d all be together again at home for Christmas.

I can’t wait for that final home going, that for which we were created, where we’ll be forever at home, living at home in that perfect community with our Creator forever and forever!  Amen and Amen.  Rev. 22:20b “Surely I come quickly. Amen, Even so come Lord Jesus”.

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I’m always so blessed by going over in my mind what being “In Christ means for believers. I was doing just that this very early morning and wanted to note a few thoughts, not new thoughts or concepts but oh so good.  How refreshing to know we are no longer in Adam as defining who and what we are.  In Adam we were dead in trespasses and sins and we have passed from death to Life.  The Person of Christ now defines who and what we are.  He Himself is our Life.  Christ is the Head of our race, we having been created in Him.  Being “In Christ” means we are spiritually alive, because He Christ is our life.  To be spiritually alive means we are no longer spiritually dead as we where in Adam. In Adam we were not only spiritually dead but our minds had suffered the consequences of that spiritual death.  We were dysfunctional in our thinking no matter how good we may have looked on the outside. This was because our creator had designed our minds to work with our spirits alive unto and focused on God.

Adam ,Eve and their descendants became defined by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which they had partaken.  The fruit of that tree was DEATH.  They were forbidden access to the TREE of LIFE lest they eat of that tree and live forever in their sinful out of God state and condition.  When Christ died as our representative He took who we were in Adam to Himself there on the cross and we died with Him there and then He took us with Him to the grave.  Christ died to sin and  who we were in Adam died with Him there.  But Christ rose from that grave and we rose with Him a new creation “IN CHRIST”, alive unto God as God had designed us to be.  We are still in these bodies, still susceptible to sinning, still have the ‘old man’ with us but we are no longer defined by God as being “in Adam”.  We are “IN CHRIST” and can experience victory over sin in our lives by reckoning ourselves to be “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Romans 610b.

I hope very soon to put up a post on what the month of December meat to us out there in the jungle.

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