Jesus in the Jungle

This an except from an email sent to our Director, Joseph by the team leader in Ahuano, Ecuador:

Luis Checking in. We are so blessed brother. Congratulations on the new baby may God make a mighty witness of the Lord through him. Praise God for our new pope and for the many blessings coming to our Church. Last week as I told you we stayed in Union Lojana, one of the communities. Everything went terrific. We were able to work 24/7. We visited people all day long. We probably visit all the families in the community and nearby. We also gave a series of talks at night and watched the passion of our Lord. It was an awesome time we saw God working in so many ways. We were able to help build God’s kingdom there and help out those in need. It was a blessed time.

We came back on Thursday and we have started the to have more ministries and people to visit. I think we are finally on our feet here and our schedule is beginning to take off. It is looking like we are going to be even more busy with the weeks that are coming. Life here is great. We are used to the heat and the culture. Yesterday we had to cross a river to get to a community. We walked through the river holding our stuff. It was pretty missionary. We are really developing a team with Father and we seem to be more on our own now. It is kind of hard to follow our schedule precisely, but we stay faithful. To our liturgy of the hours community prayer, desert day, praise and worship, time for scripture reading, and our group study. I feel like we are getting into a rhythm and everything is looking better. We are going to more communities now. We usually give talks before mass or Father lets us share something with his homilies.

Father Jose mentioned to us that they are currently building a church in one of the communities. The community is called “Jose de Shontapunta”. He mentioned that they need some help to finish it because the bishop gave $10,000 and the building costs around $15,000. The rest of the money would have to come from the community. This amount of money is almost impossible for them to raise. We told father that we would help with anything that we can. Ryan and I have already worked at the site and the foundation is built already. I think we are going to try to get our benefactors to help us with this project, but we also want to invite more people to become part of this. We want to spread the word out for anyone who would be interested in helping.

We are praying for you guys and for all of our FMC family especially for the come and see. Pray for us and for the mission here. We are always eager to hear from you guys and thankful for all the moral support and the advices we receive. God bless.

In Him,
Luis Blanco