The ride along the Amazon river was fairly uneventful. And that is a good thing. We watched the jungle pass by along the waters edge, waived to the people at the shore, marveled at how they could live this type of existence. They raise everything they eat and then often travel an entire day or longer just to get to a bigger city, like Nalta where we departed from, to sell their extra crops in order to get a few soles (Peruvian currency) to buy everything else they need. They travel in open canoes powered by a small motor. And if you break down – well – sorry about your luck since no one has even a paddle in the canoe.

And may I just point out there are no bathrooms on board. Nor were there any on our boat either! It’s not easy to stop along the shoreline to “take care of business! After about 5 hours on the river we arrived at the first village. We saw lots of kids lined up on top of the embankment.  They surrounded us as we got out of the boat, looking at us, walking closely by our sides, pushing closer and closer. All I wanted to do was to reach out and hug each on of them non-stop.

Our partial welcoming committee. My biggest fan is below…………

Wish I could have brough this little one home.

We started off this program with kids games. The joy and laughter were indescribable. Think about the laughter that you hear when children are playing, the kind that comes from their bellies – from uncontrollable fun. Everywhere we went we heard this type of laughter and you couldn’t help but smile and laugh with them.

Once the games were over I handed out a few bracelets. I was sooooo excited to see the reaction of the kids. To pass them out one at a time and look into their eyes. All the hours spent stringing them was all worth the effort as I pulled the bracelets out of the bag and put one on each of the kids. They were thrilled. You would have thought that they were getting pearls and diamonds instead of glass beads. And it wasn’t only the girls who wanted them, the boys did too! At one point I kneeled down to get into the other bag and get to the smaller children and I thought I was going to get mauled! After all was said and done I had tears in my eyes as Pastor Marcos told the kids to raise up their wrists and show their bracelets so he could take pictures.

Even this baby and her young mother had bracelets!

With all the wrists covered in bracelets it was time to get our beds set up and the mosquito nets hung before nightfall. No electricity so we had to prepare ahead of time. Stay tuned! for this would be a night that never seemed to end. Five of us got very, very sick…not good in the jungle. Not good when there are mosquitos ready to bite any part of your body that is exposed.

🙂  it’s all part of the adventure!

Lots of “jewelry” in His Mighty Grip,

Stephanie