Day 20 our trip to Santa Tomas

Hey all :)

Sorry all of these are being posted late... I'm trying to catch back up...

On Tuesday we went to the village of Santa Tomas, the columbia group bought wood and nails, so the could replace the boards that we eaten away by termites, they planned to spend two days in this village with these people forming relationships and building a church, and teaching bible school, it was a very cool little village unfortunately for us, the weather on Tuesday was not so cool...

I took the late arriving group back to the Butterfly farm to visit my crazy no shoes wearing lady :) too bad she was no where to be found and someone else had to lead us around the property, thankfully I've now been to the butterfly farm enough times to realize that I know the whole tour by memory, for example did you know there are over 135 species of butterfly indigenous to the amazon region but the Peruvian government only let's Pilpintuwasi bread 17 of them... After we finished our tour we headed to Santa Tomas where the rest of our group was already hard at work, hauling lumber

And we had to haul over a hundred pieces of dense Amazonian wood... It was quite a morning full of lots of sweating :) charming right lol, after we were all good and tried from getting all that lumber off the boat, and hauling it the entire length of the town 3/4 of a mile, we all collapses for a lunch break :) then it was time for a bible school prep session :) then bible school

The pastors wife Maria, taught her bible school about the creation story... Our craft was to have the children make a mini book of the seven days of creation showing what God made on each day... For example on the 1st day God separate light from darkness... And so on through the seventh day

Here are some pictures from our first day in Santa Tomas

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 19 working around El Jardin

Hey all :)

Again sorry for the delay... Shoty Amazonian Internet lol

Any who, it's Monday and we spent the morning going over the plans for the rest of the week, today we'll work on the El Jardin property doing yard work, prepping for bible school, and working on the new construction project :)

This group from East Minster Church in Columbia SC help sponsor the new construction project, which will become the new pastor resource center and overflow housing for the mission teams :)

I was inspired by the drive and determination shown by this team, they wanted to get right down to work racking leaves and cleaning the yard,this may seem insignificant but the El Jardin property is quite extensive and with all the rain we've been experiencing it is very important to maintain the leaves left on the group to minimize the ability for water to collect and mosquitoes to bread, we filled about 2 dozen trash bags full of leaves and palm frowns and other yard mess...

Some of the people on this team spent the day on the construction site digging trenches and clearing trash...

We also planned and prepped bible school and visited the SCOTA School

All in all it was a great day :)

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 18 the rest of the team from Columbia arrives

Hey all :)

Sorry this is delayed our Internet was down....

Anyway we went to Pilpintuwasi today which means house of the butterflies :)

Here are some of the things we saw...














Then their was the crazy Austrian woman who runs the farm...


She's a botanist by trade and came to Peru 20 years ago to study the host plants of various butterfly species, the host plant is the specific plant a butterfly lays it's eggs on... She spent six years doing this, during that time she fell in love with Peru and never left :) she's kinda a crazy nature woman, living away from civilization in the woods with her animals, I've been to the butterfly farm three times and never have I seen her wear shoes or a bra... The picture above is of her and Pedro the Jaguar




There was also this monkey that followed us around displaying his male dominance, at one point he demonstrated for us the golden shower, which is when he relieved himself and then bathed in it, it was quite charming... He also tried to steal a member of our groups purse :)




Crazy lady and her baby coati, an Amazonian Raccoon




She has other monkeys too, but this one was much cuter than our golden shower friend

After we got back from the airport we collected the remaining seven members of the mission team from East Minster church in Columbia SC
Had some lunch and took the new arrivals on their own city tour then we turned in early :)

That's all forks

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 17 the Columbia team arrives... Sort of...

Hey all :)

We're back to business as usual around here, we woke up early for final prep for the Columbia team that arrived today, EL JARDIN was all system go today :) Villa, our amazing handyman filled up the team coolers with cokes, water and ice and we arranged them in the team common area so that everything would be ready for their arrival, the ladies Ina and Maria who do the cleaning and cooking, were busy going out and buying last minute things like more pineapple and lettuce... Not too mention chicken, you can never have enough chicken lol

Apparently in the hurry to get everything ready this morning Villa Forgot to close the tap on the cooler, the one you use to drain them out at the end of the day, well I was walking through the little common area and about busted my head opens slipping into a puddle of water, well silly me couldn't figure out where all that water was coming from, never occurred to me to check the coolers, but the second Pam surveyed the scene she knew just what had happened....

After we got the water up, it was off to collect our group from Columbia SC, only problem was, not all of them made it on their international flight leaving from Miami... So we collected 12 out of 19. We got them settled in and had some lunch, then took them on a tour of the El Jardin property, took them to seethe construction site that they'll be working on a little this week... And then it was off for our city tour:) it was an overcast day here, Diego all the rain we've been having and it was actually kind of cool which was nice...


We're about to have dinner and then devotions :) It's just business as usual down here in Iquitos and full steam ahead :)

Tomorrow we go to the butterfly farm :) and then we're having lunch out on the town, tomorrow is also the day when the remain ing seven members of the mission team from Columbia will finally make it to Iquitos... I'll let you know how it all turns out :)

Stay tuned

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 16 Full steam ahead

Hey all :)

Tomorrow our group from Columbia comes in...

So we spent the whole day prepping... Running around cleaning and buying supplies...

But its Ben's birthday :) we're making cookies... That's really it :) more tomorrow


Love ya :)

Stay tuned

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 15 business as usual

Short and sweet :)

Today we administrated :) meaning we all sat in front of our respected CPUs and did work... I work on RPM stuff all day... It was all about emails and prep for what's coming up, we had three different power outages and lots of rain... It's been busy as usual and full steam ahead here, today is Pam anniversary... Two years living in Iquitos full time as a missionary, and tomorrow's Ben's 20th birthday!!! So we have a lot to celebrate this weekend :)

That's all folks...

Stay tuned

Location:Iquitos Peru

Day 14 the Cista Cocha Zoo ;)

Hey all :)


We went to the zoo in Cista Cocha today, it was about a thirty minute motokar ride up the nawto highway :)

It's not your typically zoo, some would probably argue it's not a zoo at all, it lacks organization, direction,support facilities and in several cases a path on which to walk, often your left to truck it in the mud or battle the bugs, I managed to get yet another pair of toms stuck in the mud, but I'm happy to report, I'm getting pretty good at washing my shoes by hand lol, another odd thing about this zoo...





It had a beach... (Can you still call it a beach if it's not the ocean?)


Despite the oddities of the zoo the animals were neat and we had a nice time.....





There were jaguars ....


There were gators :) even in Peru Nancy I find the gator nation is everywhere




There were Macaws.... But they weren't very chatty :)




There were monkeys... Oh lordie there was a ton of monkeys :)




Small ones...




Big ones...





Really cute ones...

Ben got his fill of monkeys....




We saw other animals too... Like




Capybaras... The worlds biggest rodent : /




These things are BIGGER than my dog... Lol




An infestation of these would be a major problem lol


We also so the Peruvian version of a raccoon :) their much cuter over here...



And then we saw another twist on something we have back in the states...




Ants!!! lots of Ants!!!




Ants working hard...




Lots of ants working hard...




Yes I know I shouldn't be this excited about ants...

So just because everyone would mock me if I ended my pictures of the Zoo with pictures of insects, especially insects that weren't even on display in the zoo...

Here look at something the zoo actually prides itself on...




A cayman... Yay for the big lizard... If you ask me the ants were cooler lol

Oh and a... Ahhh I forgot again, 'insert name here'


This animal is apparently like a cow... Hmmm maybe it's just me but I don't get cow from this... Do you? I guessed it was related to an anteater but then again maybe I was just a little too focuses on ants today

I'm my defense the fact that I was so focused on the ants helped me avoid getting bitten by ants, which is quite impressive seeing as they were everywhere, so at least theres that :)

The zoo was really neat, and we had a great time, the rest of the day was a wash because right after we got back from the zoo the rain started again,a pouring thunderous rain, but such is life I guess lol, at least it didn't rain while we were at the zoo :)

That's all I got focus :) hope you enjoyed my ants as much as I did


Stay tuned :)

Location:Iquitos Peru