Flights, Headdresses, and Stranded in a Village

What a week that last week was for Jeyson.  He went along as a copilot to a village where he stayed for 6 days.  What was going on in the village was no small deal.  A conference was taking place called "CONPLEI"  made up of native indigenous Christian pastors and leaders all around Brazil.  Their goal is to encourage and train other native Christians and to do that they put on conferences throughout the year in different villages.  The village is from a people group called the Hyxkaryana but there were 4 other tribes represented speaking their own languages. The natives come from LONG distances to make it, and from all different tribes too.  Some even came from French Guyana and Suriname!  Some come by boat, others on foot, (one even took 2 months....I repeat 2 months to arrive by foot and boat!!!), but the ones who can, come by plane.  Annually CONPLEI reaches about 1,000 native Christian leaders!   So when the conference was over, Jeyson and the other pilot, Heber, flew to the village to act as a taxi service returning the people to their homes. 

 The pilots stayed in the village with a Brazilian missionary family (On right is the husband) and the timing of being there was amazing too.  Right when the plane arrived, the missionary family's son, who is about 1 1/2, developed a very serious rash that was both an infection and allergy.  The plane was able to take the boy and his mom to a hospital in Manaus.  Otherwise they would have had to take a 4 day boat trip!!

 So with just the missionary husband and their other child at home, it was quite the bachelor party, especially since a few visiting missionary pastors stayed at the house too. So what do Pastors and Missionaries from different denominational backgrounds talk about? Jeyson said they would stay up past midnight mostly telling jokes, discussing theology, and encouraging each other!

As the main conference came to a close, one of the visiting missionaries taught a smaller part of the group (above) biblical truths. Though all of the participants were Christian, they do not have the whole Bible in their language, only the New Testament and a part of Genesis. The missionary was teaching them a little about the old testament in Portuguese through a translator to the Hyxkaryana language.

The village was right on the water

Such gorgeous weaving in the roof!

Are you getting the hint for the NEED for missionary aviation?  One word....TREES! The other pilot who had lived in France said the trip from Boa Vista to the village was farther than crossing all of France, with only jungle below!

People always love the shade the wings provide.

 Each day the plane took MANY short trips to drop off people.  It's crazy that a hike that could take days or weeks by foot can take 15 minutes  by plane.  Some days 7 or more short flights were done, so it was quite the production

Around the village

 Here in the RAINforest, you never know what the weather will bring.  But these downpours are usually really fast!

Waiting for the rain to pass

And it's time for takeoff again !  Muddy, slippery runway!

                                The wood for the houses is all cut from the surrounding jungle using only              chainsaws!

Oops completely out of order, but this was before Jeyson left.  Him and Elijah were testing out Jeyson's sleeping arrangements, a hammock with a serious mosquito net over it.  It's BYOH (bring your own hammock) around here!

In between flights there was lots of this...refueling!  And since there's no big pump system, each jug of fuel had to be hoisted up onto your shoulder in order to get into the wings (fuel tanks) of the plane.  Very sore muscles by the end of the day.  It's not all just glorious flying when you're a pilot!!

Mass production around the plane as people load

Jeyson said it was so interesting to se how different the pastors dressed from different tribes.  Some are very conservative, always wearing suits and ties and others are very informal.  It all depends on what customs the natives wanted to adapt when contact began with the outside.

Next time you check in your bags at the airport, remember this scene.  This was the official bag check and person weigh in station, as the pilots always have to be careful to not go overweight.  When the person's allotted weight was passed, just like when you fly American or South West, people were unloading and abandoning their excess baggage by the scale.

I love this shot because you can just understand exactly what this woman is thinking.  No matter what culture, us ladies don't love to be weighed...especially in front of men!  :)

 So how about a few pictures of the conference itself?  The story behind the picture below was one of the ones that stuck with me the most.  This young man, who is holding the gun, is one of the only, if not THE only believer from his village, he is basically all alone in his faith.  As a surprise, many of the native pastors chipped in to buy him a gun so he can have it to hunt.  That may sound weird, pastors buying a new believer a gun!  But you have to understand in the cultural context what a gift of provision a gun is for the young man!  It wasn't cheap at all either!  Jeyson told me it cost them almost $1000!  (Things are really expensive in Brazil!)  So it was a huge symbol of support and backing this young man up.  So moving!

Here is the last session, wrapping things up.  Jeyson said they sang and sang and sang!  They even and a song about the CONPLEI being over and them all going home.  Song clearly is a big part of the culture, so it's awesome to see how they have incorporated that in their faith.

These ladies did a little dance and song.  I love how technology has reached so many of the natives.  Look at the guy in the front filming on a cell phone!  (Although there definitely was not reception that village!)

And the headdresses!  Don't even get me started on how much I loved them!  Look at this one!  Feathers on top of feathers!  Beautiful!

During one song towards the end, many of the leaders were dismissed, holding their Bibles up high

 And have I mentioned how the coolest part is these are NATIVES, not foreigners or even Brazilians living in cities, but natives from all different tribes coming up with the activities and styles of worship and teaching each other.  SO neat to see! The only ones who didn't like the whole thing were all the birds that had to give up their feathers to adorn everyone!

If you notice, this man's headdress even has CONPELI woven into it since he is one of the leaders.

 Ok so all went smoothly right?  Ummm... not so much! in the middle of it all, a major problem happened, an airplane problem.  Heber an Jeyson noticed there was a problem and started working to find out what it was.

 Turns out it was the alternator that broke needed to be replaced!  Unfortunately, it's not like there was a stock of them in the village!  So, through the radio, the word was passed on to the two pilots back here in Boa Vista.  A new alternator was needed ASAP as the plane was now stranded without being able to fly out of the village until it was replaced.  

People here in Boa Vista, and even at the base in Anapolis went into immediate action to locate one.  Turns out there were NONE in Boa Vista.  It looked like one would have to be ordered from Manaus to be shipped to Boa Vista and then flown to the village.  But, praise God, one was found at a tiny airstrip nearby where Asas had sold one of its old airplanes to an air-taxi almost a decade ago.  On Wednesday morning (the day the plane was supposed to have returned to Boa Vista), one of our pilots flew out in our second plane to the airstrip to get the part and then flew it to the village.  

 Once the plane was up and running, Denis did a few of the flights to help make up for lost time and then headed back to Boa Vista.  Heber and Jeyson stayed until Friday and got every last person delivered.  Mission complete!

Back home we missed Jeyson a lot, but are so glad to be a tiny part of the bigger picture of what God is doing.  Thank you also so much for having been part of that by praying for safety and for many of you who prayed for that alternator to be located!!!  Isn't it so great to step back and see what God is doing that's so much bigger than our own lives?