I recently went on a mission trip to the Ucayali River in the Peruvian jungle. While not technically backroads or Brazil, the riverine communities there are similar with those downriver in Brazil and, in the Amazon, rivers are the roads. With a small group from my church in Miami Beach (Calvary Chapel), and with a team from Calvary Chapel Lima, we helped the local church Iglesia Biblica Galilea with a half-week summer Bible School for 16 lovely children from surrounding communities, some as far as a 4 hour motored canoe ride further upriver. Along with the spiritual, we also performed medical outreach, as one of our members is a doctor, bringing sufficient supplies to attend to 800+ people, who are typically 12-16 hours away from the nearest hospital in Pulcallpa. Doc Pitcher estimated he saw as many as 600 people, with the rest of the medicines donated to Galilea’s under-supplied clinic. Some of the children suffer, or have suffered, from abuse, so the time together in Galilea was a boon to us all. [please hover over images for captions]
