I have watched floods sweep across northern Peru, a blanket of rushing and ugly brown water, drowning people as others watched helplessly. I've seen mud covered people straining to escape the cloying waves and garbage filled rivers. Yesterday I glimpsed a video of a newly abandoned home as the ground benath it washed away in real time and the building fell into the rapids, it's concrete walls cracking as it sank into the unrelenting wash. People stood aside the bank of the engorged river, numb with fear.

Most of Peru is jungle, making supply runs by helicopter or bush plane nearly impossible. Barely paved two lane roads and short-line railroads marked the tenuous communications between poor towns, transient villages, and the ever present barrier, the Andes Mountains. There is little to support infrastructure as there is little money to maintain the links. Daily jets can reach a few centers. Beyond that, it's local trucks which branch out into the rainforest as far as the roads reach...then donkeys laden with supplies for stranded families.

As with many South American countries, corrupt governments and officials have long been sucking away aid in the millions of dollars and built their comfy villas further up a hill or mountainside. For the last 150 years, Peru has mostly languished in the shadowy backside of civilization, only a few cities surviving the yearly rainy seasons, with the periodic Ninos quick to destroy the little which was built. It truly is hard to lay down macadam with the distinct possibility that the river nearby will overflow next year and wipe out the foundation of the pavement. It's just happened too many times, and the money for the highway was often siphoned off by corruption and greed.

The remoteness of most towns makes it difficult to transport goods to market, and the inevitable suffering from tropical deseases creates bad atmospheres for success. One native pastor has prayerfully built a farm to support his life while he preaches to the five surrounding villages around Nueva Luz (New Light). He was a child when Wayne and Betty Snell first settled in his home village near the Amazon, building a hut to enable them to stay and learn the language of the Matses, and to bring the Gospel fo these dirt poor people.

Now that he's grown, minister Fermin has taken the very hard task of church planter, Bible study leader, farmer, part time medical tech, and soccer coach, a handful of men and women to help him in the arduous task of keeping the faith there on the edges of their tribe. He's been threatened, boat stolen, gas for their generator mysteriously disappear, and frequently unable to reach and update Betty, now in her early eighties, as she wires funds from supporters to help him keep going.

I watch and pray, that Fermin's courage will not melt into the jungle like the broken roads and railroad tracks have in the north.

Lord, as I peer with held breath, the young man who grew up just a hundred miles from our home in the jungles, I ask You to sustain him and his work with the rest of his people and to prosper his farm, soccer league and protect him.