
Let's Fly Away!
We have a great update for you – the youth retreat in Rio Branco went wonderful! Thank you for all your prayers, for a great retreat, safe travels, and a good time: they were sure answered powerfully. Now come with us and see what our trip was like!
Don’t forget, you can click any one of these photos to see them in a larger slideshow window.
Traveling Through the Amazon
We left super early Thursday, Feb 19 – a 2 am flight from here to Manaus, a large city of several million people situated another 500 miles up the Amazon River. This is our preferred entrance point when coming from the States, as it cuts several thousand miles and many hours off of a trip that otherwise goes way far south to São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.

The amazon river near Manaus is just enormous - planting churches in remote villages like these is expensive and challenging
We arrived in Manaus around 3:30 AM and were graciously picked up by fellow missionaries Grant & Regina Cail and Jim & Julie Benson (actually just Grant and Jim came to the airport!). We crashed at their house and got a few hours of sleep before getting up and touring the new houses they’re building. It’s a beautiful plot of land in a good area of town. The Cails and Benson just recently moved to Manaus from Santarém to help the base develop their medical and church planting program.

The beautiful piece of land where the Cails and Bensons are building
They live very close to the PAZ campground in Manaus, so we also went there to visit and see around as well. The campground is a nice piece of property in the middle of Manaus, although you wouldn’t be able to tell because the grounds are surrounded by jungle. They also were preparing for their big youth camp. There were lots of great plants and flowers to photograph, so I had a particularly good time!

PAZ's jungle campgrounds in the middle of Manaus

Folks, this is how a pinapple grows.

Jungle foliage is quite festive

Bees and flowers have got to be one of the oldest love affairs
That afternoon we left to go to Porto Velho (“Old Port”), where we had a one day layover! Porto Velho is one home to one of our PAZ bases; a city of over a half a million people. It is also capital of the small Brazilian state of Rodônia. We stayed with Pastor Jango and his family. There, we were thrilled to go to a real shopping mall and have real mall food! That may not sound great, but when you’re away from it for over a year, it tastes great!
We staked out the deals so that when we came back through Porto Velho, we could take advantage and do some necessary shopping.
Click on Page 2 to continue reading!
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Recent Comments