July 9, Jungle Flights

I meant to add all this earlier but didn´t have time/I forgot so I´m just gonna update now.
Since I´ve been studying aviation with the intent of taking it to the mission field, John and Minori arranged for me to take a flight with SAMair which is SAM´s mission aviation organization. Sierra, a modelesque navajo young woman, and I went with Craig, a 50 ish year old whose father started SAMair. We went from Queshibo to Sepoua (I need to check on the spellings for both of those) which is about 1hr 45min ride, to pick up two gringo missionaries and their peruvian friend (btw, gringo is not a harsh term, it just means white). When we picked them up, they told us that that same 2hr flight would be a two day boat trip followed by a two day truck trip. Let me tell you how incredibly long and probably uncomfortable that would be. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous here, there are little Shipibo villages sprinkled along various lakes and rivers. This area, unlike the Andes, is very very flat so the rivers flood the Shipibo villages every year. This is currently the dry season, so we took a wheel plane and landed on a very nice gravel runway. I really enjoyed the flight, Craig let me fly for an hour on the way back, how totally cool. This flying experience was several weeks ago actually but we also got to take the float plane up just the other day.

Everyone else from the team didn´t get to go with me that day to Sepoua and so this time they all got the opportunity to go up in the plane and fly around Pucallpa. David, the mid twenties pilot, took us up in the float plane and towards the end did some zero gravity pushes. Everyone´s stomach jumped except mine and David´s, i think, but it was really cool to see everyone´s glasses float up to their faces haha, never seen that before. A while ago, off the same lake we did this flight, John brought his boat and I got to go water skiing.

This whole trip has been full of totally amazing experiences but what´s more than those is the way my heart has been changing. The people here inspire me, especially the younger ones I mentioned earlier; they are some of the most talented, hardworking, amazing people I´ve ever met and it has slapped me across the face to think that I´ve had soooo mannny opportunities handed to me that I let breeze by and don´t take hold of as my own (in terms of education and work) while the people here have so little but are completely passionate and determined and good at the things they do. I came to Perú rather down with a lackluster perspective on a lot of things but I feel a change. When I return to the States, I hope I don´t give right back into complacency and comfort but that I would challenge myself to be like those Shipibos who were incredibly hospitable and kind, or that I would not settle for doing an okay half-hearted job at anything. I want to return to Perú in the winter and see these amazing people again, I have no idea how I will pay for it, but I´m sure it will work out. I wish that anyone and everyone reading this would have an experience that touches their hearts to want to be a better person, to live better and for the sake of loving others. When giving a testimony (which I did earlier this trip), it is very easy to carp on the old hurts or less than perfect experiences of childhood and adolescence and think that it defines our lives but our life comes from the joy of our hearts, from peace and deep love which manifests itself to others. Our life is that pulse in our chests which convicts us to do what is right, to care for one another, and walk humbly and peacefully with others. I´ve discovered it to be ironic that sometimes those who have gone through the least could be the harshest and most frustratable and that others find a life within themselves amoung hard circumstances. One guy, a hilarious, athletic, talented Peruvian fellow, has an alcoholic abusive father, drug addicted brothers, one brother in jail, he lives in poverty and has no money but he never ceases to smile and sing (song after song like a jukebox), somehow he is immune to it all. I have not gone through what he has but during the harder times of my life I have felt that same immunity or tolerance or endurance, probably endurance is the best word here. On this trip I have truly begun to grasp in my heart that God and I are buddies and He will be the only person,thing,being who will never leave me. He is that endurance and immunity for me, the reason to hum as I work and smile all the time. Over the last couple years, I let that goofy joyful person I used to be slip away for reasons I can explain to people who really want to know, but now, slowly but surely I am being refilled and trying to assist in refilling others. It is my prayer that people would find it within themselves to quit exasperating others.