Dallen – April 2010
I am alive and well in Dallas Texas. I returned from Colombia in the beginning of April. March was excellent! As always the projects and people I was involved with were diverse. Teenagers from Leticia Colombia, Tikuna children from Brazil or aspiring adult boat drivers from various regions of Colombia. I was able to help with the feeding program, take a river navigation course, assist with a local church in Leticia and I finished my time in the Amazon by helping install a water purification system in Perú.
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Dallen Drollette – January 2010
After arriving to the Amazon, the first event that I was able to help with was an annual bible-training seminar in Sabonete Brazil. The majority of the students were Tikuna youths from nearby areas. A handful of the individuals there had to travel as long as two weeks by canoe to arrive for these classes. This was exciting for me because on my very first trip to the Amazon in May of 2006 I helped construct the actual building for this purpose. I mixed the cement and stacked the bricks for the walls almost four years ago! As the older missionaries taught I helped purify rain water filled with debris so that the students would be able to have clean water for drinking and cooking.
During the second day of courses I was extended the opportunity to help a team of Brazilian medical personal in Filadelfia, Brazil. I spent the next two afternoons checking the blood pressure of older patients. This was useful because it freed up the Doctor from simple triage duties and made her work a little more time efficient. I benefited from it by being able to practice rudimentary medical skills, and the best part is that people mistakenly called me Doctor all afternoon!
The days following the Filadelfia medical clinic and the bible teaching at Sabonete were spent helping with a Youth conference in a Baptist Church in Filadelfia Brazil. I helped a wonderful lady from Colorado named Connie perform activities for the youth, she would explain games and different activities in English and then I would interpret to Spanish. They understood very well. Filadelfia is a Tikuna community where the majority of the population speaks Tikuna. This is their mother tongue learned in the home and then the children learn Portuguese when they go to school. So because Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelligible I was able to explain the games for Connie and during times of ministry pray for individuals without miscommunication. The last night of the youth conference was almost cancelled because of a community wide power outage. After walking to the church to see if anyone would be there we found a rather lively group of people waiting for a service. Adam Bostic a missionary from Iquitos Peru preached a very relevant message that night. He used sword fighting as an illustration. He literally used machetes to convey the sword-fighting as described in the text he was teaching. He was illuminated by flashlight and as soon as we finished praying for the people at the conclusion of his message the power came back!
After the youth conference we left Filadelfia to meet up with a medical team from Savannah, Georgia. The medical team consisted of one doctor, a pediatrician, three nurses and then more than a dozen mixed short term and long term missionaries ready to help with anything they could.
The first medical clinic was located in Islandia Peru. The next set of communities we visited were located off of the Javari river on the Peruvian side. Our final medical clinic took place in a Colombian community called Santa Sofia. During these clinics I helped by distributing reading glasses and Christian literature, and praying for the sick. A highlight for me was seeing an active church in Buen Suceso Peru. This is the same community where I was able to participate with YWAM and be a part of their medical clinics during June of last year. At that time there was not an established church in Buen Suceso. Now there are enough believers in this community to meet together and worship corporately!
I am currently enrolled in a river navigation course in Leticia Colombia, upon completion of this program I will be certified motorist! Another major endeavor I will assist with will be to store the fortified rice we use for the children’s feeding program. A huge shipment will be arriving by boat from the States any day now.
Thank you for being a part of Gods plan for my life and enabling me to work with the people down here once again. Your prayers and support made this a reality for me! I still have a little over a month to be here! Please keep praying!
Dallen Drollette
DallenDrollette@yahoo.com
Dallen – June 09
I have been able to be a part in bringing pure water to three communities in three countries. I have worked as an interpreter to explain to hundreds of Peruvians and two Brazilians living off of the Yavarí River how to properly take their medicine. I was one in a handful of leaders to a group of over 20 young people on their first trip to South America. I’ve only been in the Amazon for five weeks!
I am very thankful that I have been sent here. I am grateful that I have been working with individuals that are providing necessary commodities to the underprivileged. I have been learning so much. I can be content with what has happened so far although personally this experience didn’t start off on the right foot for me.
It is discouraging to make plans, put your hope in them and then watch circumstances change those plans. For example in my case for months I was looking forward to the medical clinics that Amazon Xpeditions would be bringing during the summer. In late April a few weeks before my departure date, the medical team cancelled their plans for various reasons. How discouraging. What could I do now? Crying seemed like a good idea but not a productive one. I had already set dates, made plans and put my hopes into being in the Amazon for two months. I wasn’t sure how was going to spend the extra time I had set aside to be available to serve in the Amazon. Two days after the CFNI team left I was invited to help in a Medical Brigade in a community called Buen Suceso Perú. That was God’s answer to my prayers and preparations! I was crazy ecstatic! Crazy happy! Once again the great idea of crying came up! …but again I saw no productivity from that even if they were tears of joy! So, I grab my back pack and went to work!
In a nutshell, the trip was planned by YWAM (Youth with a Mission) they had over 50 people in three boats to do this brigade. Dentists, Doctors, Pastors, Respiratory Therapists, Colombians, Teachers, Americans YWAMers and one Texan (me). We spent 5 days in this community. We invaded a school and the classrooms served as our housing, pharmacy, visitation rooms and the dentist office. In 5 days we treated over 500 people.
My responsibility was in the pharmacy. I worked with a team of about seven people. My responsibility was to disperse, label and explain how to take the medicine to the patients. We had special labels to put with the medicine for those of the patients that were illiterate. To me it was very encouraging to have the task at hand that requires communication in Spanish. Two years ago I would have only been able to tell everyone; Buenos Días! and ¿Como estás? But this time I was in direct verbal contact with a great majority of the patients. The most beautiful part of this experience is that the whole purpose of all of this is to tell them and show them who Christ is and to share His Love.
This work we are doing is making an eternal difference in the lives of individuals. As of right now there isn’t an established church in Buen Suceso yet. The night before we left a man volunteered to be a spiritual leader and he committed to meeting together with the new Christians and sharing with them from the bible and to praying with them on a regular basis. He committed to doing this until a pastor is raised up and put to work officially. Until they are able to build a church they will meet together regularly in his home. This is very exciting.
Before the medical brigade I was able to help assemble three water purification systems in Islandia Perú, Filadelfia Brazil and Barrio Nuevo Colombia. The majority of the communities in this area receive drinking water from rain. When there is no rain they drink from the river. The Amazon River is huge, it is beautiful. But it is not clean, it is not suitable for drinking by any means. Thank God we at least have three communities that have access to clear, pure, healthy drinking water! And we assembled them all in less than a week! From here on out I will be spending the majority of my time in Leticia in the La Aljaba helping with the children. I am also regularly going to be checking up on the water systems to make repairs or bring extra equipment if necessary. I was extended the opportunity to help with English classes in Filadelfia Brazil and I was invited to a help with ministry and construction in Iquitos Perú so I know I definitely have places to put my hands to work.
Thank you for supporting me! Thank you for enabling me to make a difference in the lives of people in three different countries! Thank you for
praying!
May God Bless you!
Dallen
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