Light on Light: Surprises and Delights: Casanare and Vichada

On the 25th of June Nathaly and I left for a mission trip to the departments of Casanare and la Vichada (less than 48 hours after I arrived in Colombia) with the intention of sharing Christ's love with those who we met along the way. The trip was organized by a very capable and efficient woman, Marisol, who has been visiting these parts of Colombia for 20 years and who is part of Nathaly's denomination El Movimiento Missional del Mundo. There were 12 of us on the trip from Bogota and we joined up along the way with Marisol's aunt and uncle who are pastors in a village along the Rio Meta. This trip was part of a larger meeting among the churches in the Vichada and Casanare departments, but for the first time the meetings were to take place in the indigenous village of Morichito on the Rio Casanare. We began our trip in a claustrophobic mini van that seats 14 (hence the claustrophobia) that took us to one of the main bus stations in order to catch the night bus from Bogota to Puerto Gaitan. We were stopped by police at the bus station and hassled about having the correct permit to bring people of various churches in a van authorized under only one church, but luckily when pressed further about the legitimacy of the fine that the police officer wanted to charge, he let it go. The bus ride to Puerto Gaitan was actually quicker than expected as the bus didn't stop much and there was no traffic at night; we arrived at 4 a.m. and hauled our bags to the port to await our boat. We were informed that we should store our luggage in garbage bags in case of inundation; this proved to be a useful tip once I got a look at the boat (see photo below). After a good deal of hurry up and wait we were crammed into the boat along with huge sacks of food and clothing heaped on the top and away we went. The boat had two motors and was able to cut through the calm river efficiently and got us to our destination, Primavera de la Vichada, in a short 4 hours. We arrived at 10 a.m. and hurried to have breakfast while a larger boat with a small motor : ( waited for us. After a breakfast of caldo (soup of beef broth with a huge chunk of beef, potatoes, yucha, and platano) and arepas we headed down to the riverside only to find that it had been decided we would take a different boat as the first one was too slow and so we settled into the shade as the temperature was 30 at least. 2 hours later we were told we could board a smaller boat with a slightly bigger motor so we lugged our stuff to the side of the river, but it was then decided, for reasons unknown to most of us, that now was not the time to leave so we shuffled back into the shade leaving our food bag with our blankets (for padding for the concrete floors we would sleep on), treats for the children, and sweatshirts (my favorite blue hoodie and only sweatshirt in Colombia and Nathaly's prized Minnesota sweatshirt) behind alongside other smaller bags our colleagues had left. An hour later when we got the okay to board the boat again (this time for real) the bag was no longer there and thus Nathaly and I were left without sweatshirts or blankets making our sleeping arrangements less luxurious than previously anticipated. Another 5 hours later, during a rainy trip down the Rio Meta where the tarped roof of the boat worked spottily to protect us from the gusty rain, we arrived in Agua Verde for the night. In Agua Verde we were served a big bowl of caldo and some rice and meat before quickly setting up our tent on a concrete patio and laying down our 1/8 inch sleeping mats and then we were off to a church service. The church service was in the rural Pentecostal style where we all joined together in the white plastic chairs in rousing hand clapping chorals and long slower alabanzas, where the older women bring hand towels which they wave around intermittently to ward off mosquitoes and to create a slight artificial breeze in the midst of a poorly ventilated church, throughout the prayers and preaching cries of "bendito," "gloria!" "hallelujah!" and "amen!" can be heard, and the pastor brings the Word of God to the people with passion and gusto. The entire team from Bogota was also brought in front of the church to bring greetings and introductions. I was especially singled out by Pastor Bermudes from Bogota who took a liking to me and who pondered aloud to the congregation that God has great plans for my life and who knows but I might be a pastor to these parts (these ponderings may have been sparked because a woman from the United States served as a missionary to the Vichada years ago and is credited with bringing the gospel to many in these parts) -- upon hearing this I sat up a little straighter in my seat (where I admittedly had been struggling not to drift off to sleep from exhaustion) and gulped because I knew from previous experience what would follow. Sure enough, I was asked to "give a few words" to the congregation as we all stood in a line at the front; the Lord is gracious and He helped me muster some recollections from my time in Europe and the diversity of the Body of Christ that I have been privileged to see. After the service we stumbled in the dark (literally, as the lights go off at 10 p.m.) to our "beds."
Colombian Map with Departments

Question of the morning: will this boat sink once people are added?

Nathaly, the dentist, and Juliana

Rio Meta at daybreak

The scene of the crime of our stolen bag

The Bogota team at lunch

All that is between us and the concrete floor below

Nathaly giving drum lessons in the Agua Verde church

Our fashionable white boots

Nathaly, Leidy and I

La lancha that took us all around the rivers

Nathaly and the remnants of our meal

Leaky tarp roofs

Alice and I

Our kitchen - if you squint you can see the meat hanging to dry

bathroom - no flush needed, just a bucket of water

Bath

The next day we again boarded our faithful boat and set out for Morichito, a mere 3 hours and 15 minutes further downstream. It rained on the way to Morichito, following the pattern of the previous day: rain starts when we enter the boat. Choosing your seat in the boat is a little like playing Russian roulette in that you don't know which tarp may leak or if the wind will be spraying water from the right or the left (and of course if the bottle of antifreeze doesn't have a cap on it your white rain boots may turn red) so no seat is a guaranteed "safe" seat. Morichito is populated by the Sáliba people and it located on the Casanare river in the department of Casanare -- very close to the border of Venezuela. Located 3 km down the river from Morichito is the village of Getsemane which is populated by the Sikuani people and 5 km further is the village of Caño Mochuelo, home of the Kuiba people. On Monday we visited both Getsemane and Caño Mochuelo and invited the people to join us during the week for the activities. Of the villages Caño Mochuelo is the poorest and also the biggest. Many of the families from Getsemane and Caño Mochuelo came during the week and Nathaly and I got to work with the boys from 2-12. It was a bit difficult to find activities for such a big age range, but the boys were surprisingly well behaved and seemed to genuinely enjoy the stories, songs, and games we had planned for them. The biggest difficulty that we had was the language barrier that existed for the youngest Kuiba boys as they spoke Kuiba in the home and had not yet learned Spanish. The indigenous people tend to be more reserved and the Kuiba were even more so (probably due to the language barrier), therefore Nathaly and I had to be strategic to make sure that everyone was able to participate. With the bible story we ended up splitting into groups so that the older Kuiba boys could translate for us to the younger Kuiba children. At the beginning of the week we had 50 boys, but by the end we had 80 which made for sweaty afternoons as we ran around in the heat playing duck, duck, grey duck, sharks and minnows, and cat and mouse under the sweltering sun. There was not a plumbing system in Morichito or running water so we had to conserve the water that was held in big tanks, therefore baths consisted of one bucket of water in a tarped area. The people of Morichito like to pray before dawn so we too were up at 4 a.m. to pray with them to start the day. The food available in this area was similar to that which I had eaten on a mission trip into the interior of Honduras: yucha, platano, potatoes, casave -- in other words: starch. We also had caldo soup two times a day and plenty of chiguiro meat (see photo of chiguiro below) and cow meat. As most of you know, I am not a fan of meat in general and the portions of meat that were generously provided for us were large enough that I resorted to sweetly imploring other people to take eat my meat for me by the middle of the week.

Un Chiguiro

The indigenous people in this area get married at a very young age and have children at a very young age as well. While we were in Morichito two babies were born. I got to visit one mother with her baby several hours after the baby was born. The mother was only 15 years old, but she looked calm and comfortable when we saw her; her grandmother had come to help her with her labor. The other mother who had a baby had difficulties during the labor and one of the pastors staying with us was called to help in the middle of the night. There is not a doctor in the village and I didn't hear of any midwives either so it appears that each women invites whomever she thinks best to help her. The dentist who came on the mission trip was very busy as there is not a practicing dentist in any of the nearby villages; he mainly cleaned teeth and extracted teeth as he was not able to bring sophisticated equipment. Although the Sáliba, Kuiba, and Sikuani people are timid in nature, they enjoy observing and they often looked on from the windows of our classroom as we prepared materials or watched the dentist as he extracted teeth.

A map of the local villages painted on the wall of the classroom

Some of "my" boys checking out what we are doing

My favorite parts of the trip revolved around seeing how God works in the lives of people in big and small ways. I so enjoyed working with the younger boys and it was gratifying to see them open up more and more during the week as they got to know Nathaly and I. It was a delight to hear them singing the songs we taught them with gusto and to know that they truly captured some of what we were trying to teach them about Jesus. We didn't have materials to work with for the classes so we had to be a bit more creative; one day Nathaly asked the kids to draw in the dirt pictures of the story of Naman who was healed by God of leprosy (2 Kings chapter 5) and the elements that the kids included in their crude drawings were insightful and showed that they had understood elements of the story such as obedience, faith, and God's supernatural healing.

Most of them are paying attention -- not bad?!

What am I supposed to be doing?

My 2 year old buddy Samuel who sang and did cartwheels at random, distracting others, but was so darn cute (and little) that I had to excuse him : )

And one little girl who wandered into the class

It fills me with joy to see how God delights in surprising His children as He works in mysterious ways. Among the team from Bogota, was a woman who has been visiting the Vichada for 5 years twice a year to share Jesus with others. She is a true servant and thoroughly enjoys letting people know that God loves them; she takes on whatever task needs to be done, even the less desirable ones like cleaning a little one's festering wound. She is 39 and a teacher who loves kids; she always had wanted to be married, but as the years went by she laid the desire down. On this trip however a man whom she had met a year ago on a similar trip let her know that he had been thinking about her for the past year and that he admired the way she served and he had sat behind her during a prayer gathering and he delighted in her prayer and now he wanted her to know that he would like to marry her. This wasn't an official proposal since they barely know each other, but as they spent time together during the week it became clear that they both saw admirable qualities in one another and they thoroughly enjoyed each other's presence. They were both quite giddy as they parted on our last day and my friend told me she couldn't believe how sweetly the Lord was fulfilling the desires of her heart. Of course every wish of each child of God is not fulfilled according to their specifications, but how beautiful it is to see the sheer joy of those who receive God's blessings in His timing. It was a true blessing to rejoice with my friend as she contemplated the possibility of a new chapter of her life that God had laid before her.
The final way that I want to share of how I saw God fulfilling the desires of His children's hearts was the instillation of a new pastor at the village of Getsemane. Getsemane had a pastor years ago, but the pastor had passed away and the community has been without a pastor for quite a while. Daniel is a man from the neighboring department in Colombia who has been acting as a pastor in his village for many years and he has now responded to the call that God placed on his heart to move himself and his family to this unknown area and village to fulfill their need for a pastor. I was blessed to meet Daniel and his wife and three of his children who arrived a day after we did to visit the village where they would live. Daniel and his wife have three other children, but they had to leave them with family as they did not have enough money to bring them as well (money is now being raised to bring them as soon as possible). I was blessed to be at the service that installed Daniel as the pastor of Getsemane and to see the surprise and delight on the people's faces as he addressed them in Sikuani, their native language. Although the transition to a new village and new people will be difficult for Daniel and his family it is obvious that he is excited to follow God and to bless this precious group of people.

Pastor Daniel and his family

We arrived back in Bogota on Sunday night after a couple of long days of travel and although my body won't miss the starchy food or the mosquitoes, I will miss the people of the Vichada and Casanare.