Jared and I arrived in Santa Cruz very early Monday morning, or you could say late Sunday night, after a short trip to 3 de Mayo-- an Ayoreo community in Puerto Suarez near the Brazilian border. We traveled along with the Ayoreo church here from Santa Cruz as I have done a couple of time before this year. Since I had done this before, I was assuming it would be the same thing again. In a lot of ways it was, but one thing that was different was the size of the group. When we arrived at Degui, the Ayoreo camp near our house where we were to depart, there were tons of people standing around out there. Turns out that people from many other Ayoreo communities had traveled to Santa Cruz in order to go with us. Pastor Choque hired an entire tour bus and we filled all 50 seats, plus about 15 or 20 kids who were left to sit on parents or in the aisle. When we arrived, 12 hours later (the distance wasn't that long but the Ayoreos never stop drinking mate, even on a road trip, so we stopped frequently for bathroom breaks), there were many others already there from other communities, including 8 people from Paraguay. In all there were people from 9 communities visiting. As before, we had church services morning, noon, and night, with soccer and socializing in between. There were some other Ayoreo communities nearby as well so we also split up and visited them too, sharing the Word and singing. 

Actually, I didn't do too much of the sharing. I see my job on these trips along with the Ayoreos as two-fold. First is simply to help develop our relationship with them. I think I have mentioned earlier that this tribe is a pretty hard nut to crack, but after accompanying them on these trips I have become much more welcome and accepted among them, especially since I travel and sleep with them, which is not always very comfortable, although the bus this time was pleasant. Then for now I simply try to be an encouragement. It would be very easy for me to step up and take over since they are used to that from White foreigners and they even expect it from you sometimes, but this is their trip that they plan and do and I want the Ayoreos to be the ones sharing the Word and leading services. And they do, which is great, so when they do ask me to speak I try to focus on two things: encouraging those who are leading and doing things in the church to continue to do so and exhorting the others to get involved. Through these exhortations I also am gently nudging them towards broadening their vision of mission and the church. We very much want to see an Ayoreo church empowered and equipped to transform their communities for Christ and they are in such a great place to do it (for example, 3 de Mayo is in a rough side of town, between to motels [pay by the hour] and a disco-bar and the Ayoreo community is itself full of drug addiction and sales, alcoholism, and prostitution), but first the transformation of the minds of the church members must begin so that they understand that Christ has put them in a unique place to impact their world for the Kingdom. 

It was an encouraging site to see so many hermanos and hermanas gathered together. I pray that they will unite together under the banner of Christ and that these monthly gatherings would be just the beginning of something much bigger.