Arrival to Leticia

Hola from Leticia, Colombia!

The team arrived yesterday afternoon and thankfully so did all our luggage! There is nothing like flying in over the Amazon jungle. It is absolutely beautiful!

Leticia is a happening place this weekend with a festival celebrating Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. All around the city are carnival type games and booths. There’s a lot more traffic and people out and about, but it’s fun to see the city so busy.

Before heading to church we stopped by the old Aljaba. Kind of a bittersweet visit. Everyone is so grateful for the new property, but there’s just something about that red gate and all the memories held inside those four walls. Everything has been moved to new Aljaba except for Lucy’s office, which she plans to move completely out of by the end of next week.

We attended church at Ministerio de Missiones, and while there are similar components, it is definitely a different experience than attending church at Bellevue…or any other church in the US. The service lasted a little over 2 hours, and there was a pastor from Sweden in town preaching. He preached on the shield of God, and honestly, I have no idea what the main point was…or if there was one!…but I’m pretty confident we read every passage of Scripture that contained the word “shield!” And, Pastor Alejandro liked to end every other sentence with “hallelujah.” We got kind of tickled about it, so we’ll probably be saying hallelujah all week long, every chance we get!

One of the first things you learn in Leticia is that traffic rules aren't really rules at all. They are mere suggestions. Scratch that. They're really not even suggestions. I'm pretty sure the stop signs are just for decoration. Needless to say, driving around town is a nightmare adventure! After church we had to take a couple different vehicles to get to dinner so the men rode in what is called a TukTuk. Bottom line, it's a taxi...but what you can picture is a motorized vehicle that is more like a rickshaw. These three fellas were squeezed into the back of one of the TukTuks and their faces really explain it all!

Thanks for praying for us! We look forward to a great day on the Amazon river tomorrow!

Stay tuned!

For the generations...

Sarah

*Note- We have wifi at the hotel, but it is not reliable and very slow. It has taken several hours to get this post updated, but we'll continue to update when we can.