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BY SANDY ROWLAND

About a year-and-a-half ago, Greg Forrester, the Northeastern Jurisdiction Volunteers in Mission (VIM) coordinator, attended our first Baltimore-Washington Conference VIM Rally and spoke about his trip to Peru. I looked at the snakes, crocodiles and sweat rolling down the faces that were on the screen and said to myself, ?I don?t want to go there.?

I have since learned in doing Volunteers in Mission that you should never say ?never.? God usually puts me in the places that I say I am never going to go.

The next year I was asked to lead a team to Peru. ?Let me pray about it,? I said.

Soon I was boarding a plane for Iquitos. It lies north of Lima and at the mouth of the Amazon. Our project was to work with children, do a health clinic and build a bathroom at a school.

My team of eight came from many different states. We bonded quickly and worked well together. Our

devotional time together was very rewarding and an opportunity to grow together in Christ.

Peru is like no other place I have been. It is an exotic, difficult and wonderful place to experience many different types of cultures in one country. The Mosquito taxi rides were amazing as well as the boat rides to get from place to place up the Amazon.

Our two doctors from New York, Sylvia and Marvin Reimer, saw approximately 100 children from the village for check ups and gave out medicine. They also worked with a Peruvian doctor and his assistant. Tuberculosis is one of the biggest threats to the people who live there.

We stayed at the Tucan Lodge where children came three days a week to do arts and crafts, learn English and just have fun together. Two men, Willie and Moises, who are in their 20s and want to make  the lives of the children better, organized all this with not much funding and a great deal of love.

Iquitos is a poverty-ridden town. We got a tour of where the floating houses sit when the water is down. The total income for many people is $30 a month. Sanitation is not good. We had the chance to meet with the officials in the village where we worked as they thanked us for coming. They had waited a long time for someone to help them in their need. We brought them some hope. The bathroom project did not get completed but was started and funds were left for the villagers to finish it.

PHOTOS BY SANDY ROWLAND A Volunteers in Mission team to Peru began to build a bathroom, worked and played with children and provided health checkups and medicines to more than 100 children and their parents. The villagers and team members celebrated with dance and music.