San Buena Ventura and beyond

I think a list of modes of transportation that I have used in the last week would be a good descriptor of what life has been like during my travels:
Bus Cama (big bus with wide soft chairs that lean way back and foot rests so you are practically travelling in bed)
minivan
barge
motorcycle
on foot (on road and bushwacking through jungle)
on roof rack of an old land cruiser (with 3 other grown men)
canoe with outboard motor
pickup truck (inside)
pickup truck (outside)
bus, standing in the aisle with a dog sitting on my feet
6-person cessna airplane
moped

I think that´s it. Anyways, I spent the last week travelling to a few different places, for a few different reasons. It was also my first time to visit Beni, one of the departments (like our States) of Bolivia north of here in the Amazon region of the country. I traveled with Elmer Terrazas, a Bolivian pastor/missionary who has worked for many years with missions to different indigenous groups. He invited me to go with him to San Buena Ventura on the Beni River to speak at a church where a few pastors from nearby Tacana villages would be meeting. It on the way we stopped in Trinidad and San Borja where I got to meet a few more pastors who are very interested in serving the nearby indigenous peoples in their areas.

view of San Buena Ventura from Rurrenabaque, accross the river

The three days we took to speak and visit with pastors in San Buena Ventura was a great time of learning for all of us. The pastors and church members really appreciated what I spoke about and I was able to get a better understanding of the contexts of these churches and the indigenous people in the area, their needs and challenges and their joys and hard work. Many pastors there were eager to dig deeper into the theme of the integral mission of the church and were excited to return home to begin exploring with their churches how they could become more involved in serving their communities. It also was a time for reflection on the purpose and vision of the churches. The churches in this area were started by New Tribes Missions efforts around 40 years ago, however many of them are struggling to keep the doors open and have many internal issues today. We had an amazing time reflecting on the legacy of the mission, both the blessings they brought and the good and bad consequences that they left the local church to deal with, and to take that and challenge one another in their future work.
Some of the great opportunities I had there were:
Spending lots of time with the new pastor of the church we met at. His name is Daniel, he is Tacana, my age and he and his wife, Milka, were just married in December and moved to pastor this church in March. It was a good time to talk through their struggles and encourage them in their work.

The road to Tumupasa was rough.
We had to get out and push  4 times.

A visit to Tumupasa, a small town inside the Tacana reserve on the edge of the Madidi National Park. It was a beautiful place (one square mile of Madidi contains more bird species than all of North America), but best of all was the time spent with pastor Benjamin and his wife. Benjamin was at our workshop and I was able to go visit him in their community to talk more about the struggles of the church and community. We decided that we would return to Tumupaza later to help address some of these issues.

Meeting and getting to know the people in the church in San Buena. It was great to get to go with them to visit their fields and homes and it was a blessing to receive their hospitality.

I left Elmer in Tumupaza and began the trip back towards home. After one last night in San Buena, I left for San Borja in the morning. I was blessed to squeeze onto the only bus headed out that day. To give a little context, because of a blockade on the road, life was becoming difficult because the area depends on that single road as its connection to the outside world. In fact, Elmer and I traveled to the area on the second day the blockade had started and they would not even let passengers through. We ended up hiking through the jungle for an hour to get around them, then hitching a ride on the luggage rack of an old land cruiser the rest of the way (which was not comfortable at all on a bumpy dirt road for over an hour). Anyways, after a few days fuel was drying up and there was only one bus willing to take us to the blockade. So the bus was packed because there are usually many buses and I ended up standing in the aisle with a dog on my feet between a Brazilian hippy and a fat sweaty man with gangrene in his foot who was going to look for a doctor. At the blockade, the protesters had mellowed a bit and were letting passengers through, so we had to walk a couple miles in the hot sun to get to the other side and look for a ride. I caught a van going to Yucumo, and from there I got another van headed back to San Borja. However, for some reason it seems like everyone in this country with a problem decided to let it out this week and we ran into another blockade in another town. These people were slashing tires of any vehicle who got near, so the driver let us off a long way from town and we set off walking again. We got to the other side and found only a van with 3 flat tires due to the protesters and we were still a long way from our destination. Thankfully an old land cruiser once again saved the day, but this one had a truck bed and my travel companions and I climbed in the back and arrived a couple hours later all the same shade of reddish-brown thanks to the dirt road.
I spent the night in San Borja with the pastor's family I had met on the way there. It was another good time of learning and just good fellowship and of seeing how Paz y Esperanza might be able to help pastors like this one who want to help indigenous groups. He was very excited about beginning a mission with the Chiman people who live around San Borja.
The next morning I had to take drastic measures to get back to Trinidad. There was another, much more violent and angry, blockade between San Borja and Trinidad, this one organized by the government to prevent the Indigenous March to protect the TIPNIS (a national park and indigenous reservation). I won't go into detail about the conflict here, but you can google it if you want to know more. It has to do with the government wanting to build a highway through the territory, explore for gas, as well as logging and narcotrafficking interests, all of which threaten the Yurakaré, Mojeño, and Chiman people who live there (they actually have legal title to the land). I knew that this blockade was not going away any time soon, and there were others on the road to La Paz so if I ever wanted to get home I would have to get out by air. So I got a pilot in San Borja to take me and a few other passengers to Trinidad in his Cessna. April 25 was also the supposed start date of the march, which is to leave from Trinidad and walk all the way to La Paz, which will probably take two months. Due to some organization issues thanks to the blockades they postponed it to the 27th, but I was able to meet with some key organizers of the march, many of whom are Christians, and get their approval to let us accompany them during the march, documenting what goes on but more importantly encouraging the Christian marchers to connect their faith with their actions. I also explained to them that we want this to be the beginning of a relationship between us and the churches in the TIPNIS where we can come alongside and help strengthen them.
So I cam home on the overnight bus, but I will be back in the march probably during various times. The whole trip was very fruitful in many aspects and I am looking forward to developing these connections with time. One big thing it confirmed for me was that there are many Bolivians who want to do missions to their indigenous compatriots but lack the cultural and theological tools to do so effectively without causing more damage than good. I talked with Elmer about this and we are going to see if I can't start a course on cross-cultural mission for Bolivians that want to serve, or already are, in indigenous communities. This is something that I did not anticipate when we came here, but with each trip and the people I meet I am more convinced that this is a need in the Bolivian church that I can help meet which can have very good long-term consequences for the gospel in Bolivia. Please pray that I will be led down the right path with this effort if it is where we should be heading.
Continue to pray for us as we continue to meet these new people and opportunities and learn better what direction to best serve in. Also pray for the peaceful resolution of the many social problems Bolivia is facing right now.