Xtreme Training Summary

February 19, we woke up at the crack of dawn, shouldered our packs and headed down the road for our 26km march to the camp that would be our new home. I had stayed up late the night before packing my gear, no surprise to those who know me. We carried all of the gear we would need along with a week´s worth of food, probably the most I´ve had to carry on a march such as this.

We arrived mid-afternoon to what was little more than an overgrown banana field with a mud-hole in the middle, exhausted and craving lunch. The grass was at least three feet tall, so before we could eat we first had to clear out places for our tents and fires with our machettes. Then we could look for firewood and begin the process of starting a fire to cook on.

We finally ate supper sometime after dark, and went to bed immediately afterwards. That is, immediately after we set up our tents and situated our gear. The next morning we once again woke up at dawn for exercise! This consisted of a two mile run, push-ups, and sit-ups.

That more or less set the pace for the next month and a half of training. We exercised every Mon., Wed., Fri. at 6:00am and spent the rest of the mornings doing manual labor such as clearing land by machette or building our houses out of materials we took from the forest. For this we had the instruction of Manuel, a Harakumbet man who had worked with the team before in his home village, Bocanambari. In the afternoons, we had class with Jeremy. In our classes we learned about worldview, medicine, and storying.

On the weekends starting the second week, we went to various communities in the area in pairs to tell the stories we were learning and to learn about culture from them. After about a month and a half, we went for a full week to our communities. My partner was originally Alex, a fifteen year-old son of a missionary who was also in training with us, but he left the week before our long trip to the community and never came back. From that point on, I worked with Jesús. Jesús is Chayahuita from the northern province of Loreto, which consists almost entirely of Amazon rainforest.

For the last month, we focused heavily on memorizing stories, the early church, and how to plant Biblical churches. We also had Alfonso, an older man who suffers from various disabilities, teach us how to make hammocks during the last week of training so that those who do not have the financial support of churches can support their own ministries. It also gave Alfonso, who had felt useless for years, a purpose within the kingdom of God. Many of the guys learned the trade very quickly.

During this last month, all of the Yine realized that they needed to be baptized. So, we went down to the Río Tambopata and in front of the whole team in Puerto as well as some local men who were waiting for a boat, and baptized them all. Jeremy and Corey baptized Edgar who then baptized his brothers and sister in Christ, each one helping those who followed.

We also learned some hard lessons about how the church should function when the same Yine disobeyed the rules and slipped off to town in the middle of the night. Later, some money came up missing, and one of the Yine confessed to stealing it. Through the very painful process of dealing with these issues, the lessons of the Bible came alive to us in a very real way. Please pray for this group as they deal with these temptations that are ingrained in their culture.

Monday, May 14, we walked back to camp by a shorter route, 12km without packs, took our written, oral, and physical tests, and celebrated our graduation the next day. Praise the Lord, we can finally move on!