Masisea

About 4 hours by boat up the Ucayali river from Pucallpa lies a little town called Masisea. That´s where Manuel, Brent, and I spent this weekend, visiting a recently planted church. It´s about 7km off of the river, on a dusty dirt road, an easy half-hour trip by mototrycycle when dry, but according to Brent, who experienced it´s muddier joys firsthand a couple weeks ago, it can turn into a real marathon when wet! The road winds through huge fields of caña brava (a relative of sugar cane, used for building), papaya orchards (our moto driver heard us craving them, and gave us two large boxes free - they normally cost 1 sol per box of 5 very large ones here where they´re grown, or 1 sol a piece at a market), and plátano (plantain) groves.

Masisea itself is a fairly little town, but very impressive in its civic pride. With my childhood in Nigeria, I´m used to third-world public spaces being squalid, trash-strewn, and completely unmaintained, when present at all. It blew me away to see the sidewalks beside the dirt road, then a plaza with attractively painted buildings, grass, and shape-trimmed trees, and then on top of that, that people were PAINTING the slightly aged green concrete planter boxes, and not only that, they´re sanding them first, and putting on TWO coats for adequate coverage, with dry time inbetween! INCREDIBLE!

We spent our nights in a hospedaje owned by one of the couple´s in the new and small Adventist church, which meets in a rented 20x12 ft living room a couple blocks away. Our rooms were very small, long enough for a bed with a thin mattress, sheet, and light blanket, and wide enough to fairly comfortably stand beside the bed. Pit toilets are around the corner, with the ingenious odor-reduction system of adding handfuls of wood shavings, abundant from the selva´s booming lumber industry, after each use. The shower was definitely welcome, though the black trash-bag door was prone to windborne adventures, stopped a foot and a half above the ground, and had an 8 inch horizontal rip about a foot above that. Not bad at nightime, but a bit odd when I showered at 4pm before the Sabbath afternoon meeting.

Manuel, the evangelist, led out in Friday night vespers with about 6 members present. He also gave the lesson study for Sabbath School, when we had close to 20 attend. Then came the exciting part for me - the divine service, for which Brent was preaching, with me as the translator! I´m sure I slaughtered a lot, and I didn´t feel like I had the gift of tongues I´d been praying for, but I think people got the message, about the importance of prayer as our lifeline/life ring when we´re drowning.

That afternoon, we took a walk for a couple hours through the fields, and sampled some ripe papaya (Manuel assured us it was ok - once the papaya ripen, they´re worthless to the dueños-owners-because they´ll spoil in transport). They were delicious! About the best I´ve ever had, and I smeared it all over my face eating it watermelon-style, except cut only into thirds, not slices!

Then we returned for the Sabbath night, saying-goodbye-to-Sabbath program. We had a health talk, by Manuel, on water and healthy eating, then I gave a sermon on personal devotions, how they´re the thing that I can look back on and see as the deciding factor in determining whether I´m joyful or stressed; in God´s light and peace regardless of what challenges or hardships I face, or frustrated and discouraged by little things, struggling with all sorts of temptations. I talked about Jesus example, prefering God time to food in the desert, and Enoc, who was so consistently with God that God took him to heaven, the instructions in Deuteronomio 6:5-9 about meditating on God´s word, and the promise in Santiago (James) 1:25 that God will bless the one who ¨looks intently into the perfect law.¨

After that, bedtime, at around 7pm, for our 4 am moto trip to the port, to make a 5 am boat departure. But I couldn´t get to sleep, so spent some extra time working on memorizing Mark and talking with God, while looking at the amazing stars outside - can´t get them much better than when there´s basically no electricity anywhere near! (I´m a little behind in memorising, about 3 days worth, if you´re joining me and discouraged about your own efforts. I´m actually going to put it on pause, since the other SMs have decided to join me, so we can quiz each other, and I´m going to work on some other memorization until they catch up. If you get to Mark 15:29, working from end to beginning, you´ll be ready for when we start back up in a week or so! Or if you hadn´t started and would like to, this is another chance. Why Mark? It´s the shortest Gospel, a doable length for a 8 month span, and I couldn´t think of more important material than the life of Jesus.)

The one place with electricity (generator) was having a party, with music all night, but I got good sleep from about 9-2, then woke up again and couldn´t go back to sleep, so I spent some more God time. It amazes me how intense times I can have with God at the oddest moments, when if I had other options of things to do, I´d probably have missed them. I´m glad for the lack of distractions here - even though it means communication all shoved into a couple hours on s0me weekends!

God bless!