January- Auxildadora

In early January, when my uncle Philip and his family were here, Dad & I & U. Philip & Naomi & Derek & Chloe & Rudy, along with Frank (the Brazilian leader) & his son, Michael, took an overnight trip to Auxiliadora to visit the two families living there.

We took off Saturday morning by speedboat. It’s a 5 hour ride by speedboat, better than 12 hours on a line boat, however it’s constant wind in your face so you decide which you’d like more 🙂

We had a pretty smooth going, thank God it wasn’t bumpy on the way there or on the way back (I think we were pretty heavy hehe). About half way there we stopped at a bunch of what look kinda like house boats, but what are actually gold mines. They have big tubes hanging off the back, and when they start the motor up it goes down in the water & pounds the bottom of the river till it makes a hole, and sucks up the water and dirt. The water and dirt then runs across a carpet on top of the boat, and they then scoop the water off and sift it till they find gold. It’s a long, ardurous process, and all for little speckles of gold J these particular people had about 7 of these boats lined up, and a ‘stock’ boat with a little store tied to one of them. On the way back we stopped there as well & they made us a bit of lunch & gave us acai.

Arriving in Auxiliadora, Jadilson & Joao Paulo came to meet the boat and helped us carry our things to their house. We greeted everyone after we arrived & they had prepared a delicious lunch for us so we ate almost right away. The afternoon was spent sleeping, reading, relaxing in hammocks, playing four square and other games with their kiddos, and talking and discipling.

Saturday evening we had a cell group with two teenage girls visiting. Our family spent the night in the hotel in town to support local business 🙂

Sunday morning we got up and had a little devotional and then some of us along with the two husbands and some kids walked to another community about 20 minutes away from Auxiliadora. It had rained allllll night long so we thought it was going to take us about 40 minutes. it was, indeed, super muddy (some of us ended up just taking our shoes off, me being one of them hehe) but we did make it in about 20 minutes click here to see video 🙂 We didn’t stay for long as we were planning on leaving about 10:30am because heading back it was upriver so it was going to take longer. We made the trek back to their house, washed our feet off and headed down to the boat.

Said our goodbyes, hopped on, and off we went again 🙂

Below are some pictures: