Holy Week in the Amazon: Walking with Jesus

Happy Easter indeed! He was, is, and will be Risen and we are the witness of that. Praise God for this time of the year and for a blessed holy week.

This is the update for the Ahuano team during Holy week. We are so blessed to be part of this community. During Holy week we spent a week in Colonia Los Rios which is a community 2 hours away from Ahuano. We also served the community of Runashito and Selva amazonica which are “close” communities. Actually they are hour and a half away from Rios our base community on foot. We had to walk there Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to give a first communion cathequises. I will lay out the schedule of our Holy week and then go into detail for the awesome parts.

The Most Active Week of Our Lives

Monday: Woke up 6:30 am., morning prayer at 7:00. We left to go visit the families at 8. We walked all the way to San Jose another community where we visited a childrens school. We sang and prayed with them. We actually got a ride back that afternoon. Then we left around 12 to make it to Runashito at 1. We got there at 2 and did our catequeses. Then we came back around 4:30 to prepare for our celebration in Rios at 6. We celebrated until 8:30. That day we walked everywhere and visited many families.

Tuesday: We pretty much did the same, but we visited the school in los Rios and talked to the kids about our call to be missionaries. 

Wednesday: This day we decided to visit the families and Runashito and dedicate some time for them. We finished the three day cathequises and played a movie for the kids about the life of our Lord. Later that day we celebrated at Los Rios.

Thursday: We went to Shontapunta to get some empanadas for our “goodbye party”. We wanted to celebrate before the death of our lord and because we were going back to Ahuano on Saturday. We visited families there with the nuns. Later that day we did praise and worship and then celebrate in Rios. We talked about the sacraments and answer many questions about our faith. This community is evangelical. The catholics are only the minority so they are persecuted everyday and have really good questions about some of the things that the evangelicals say.

Friday: In the morning we visited families. We did stations of the cross as usual and later that night we played the movie The passion of Christ. 

Saturday: We went to Selva Amazonica which is a community hour an a half away from Rios. There we visited some families and came back around 2. After that, we went to Florida (another community) to celebrate mass with Father and returned to Ahuano.

We bid farewell to our host family as we realized that the most active week in our lives had ended.

Longest Most Blessed Week

Last week was definitely the longest most blessed week in missions. We serve and saw God working in so many ways every second of our time there. We persevere in our prayers, prayed rosaries and divine mercies on our 4 hours walks to the communities and back. We share the faith at every opportunity the Lord gave us. Every person we meet we got to talk to them about God and his love for us. I know it sounds too good to be true, but not admitting it would not be fair to the work that the team did in Rios.

Everything seems to get better with time here. Our struggles are being change slowly by the Lord to our routine. We feel more comfortable and at home everyday we spend here. We are meeting more people and sharing more and more. This week we also started this new ministry where we visit the sick in Tena. We go to the hospital and visit our brothers who are suffering and desperately need some prayers and company.

We are always praying for you guys for the Big Woods community and the missions teams in Mexico, and the Philippines. We hope yall had a blessed week also. God bless.

– Luis Blanco

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