Iquitios

Iquitos is a big city in the middle of the Amazon.  It's claim to fame is that it is the largest city that you can't drive too.  Literally there are no roads going to it.  You have to fly or boat there.  Here we met up with a missionary couple, whose names are Osmar and Nicole.  They run a a kid's club called "Sunshine Kids Club," they are also partnered with River Valley Church (our church at home).  We were here for a week and we served for five days and took two days off to do touristy things.

When we first arrived we met up with Osmar, went out to eat and then went to our guest house that we were staying at.  When we first rang the doorbell at the guest house, no one came, so we just went back to Osmar's house.  We later figured out that they didn't know we were coming, so we thought that we were going to have to find a different place to stay until they told us that they had room.  Our lodgings were okay; however, Iquitos was so hot and our rooms didn't have AC, which made it feel like a sauna inside of our rooms.  Serving at Osmar's kids club was really awesome.  In the really poor town that the kids club was located in, it floods for 6 months every year.  This means that they have to redo/rebuild their house every three years.  All of the houses are made out of wood because the people in the town cannot afford more expensive materials that would last longer.  We spent the majority of our time helping Osmar rebuild his kid's club. This was really fun because we were ripping up boards and putting new ones in.  One day we even brought our speaker and played Toby Mac while we worked.  Along with our family, there were two women from Guatemala who came to help out as well.  One of them was a dentist and she let me be her assistant for one day.  I got to prepare needles and pliers and stuff like that.

For our first touristy day we went to the local market and saw a lot of local food items including crocodile, cow heart, piranhas, etc.

a piranha

crocodile

For our other touristy day we took a boat out to a few islands and got to hold monkeys, parrots, sloths, kinkajous, and anacondas.

One day they were having youth group at the kid's club and so we went and sung songs in Spanish and then there was a short talk afterwards.  It was a lot like Castaway Club YL.  Overall our time in Iquitos was really fun and it was super cool to see Osmar's faith in action.  He had no source of income and yet still ran this kid's club while having a family.  It was cool to see how he had to rely on God 100% of the time.