Graduation & Trip

Hope that you enjoy these pictures. Click on any picture to see an enlarged version!

We graduated five students on December 8 from the Bible School. There were actually 10 who were part of this class, but the the other 5 lack a few credits.


This is Beto, he has a university degree in Spanish, and has been helping us better our language ability. He graduated this year, but his wife is one of the ones who lacks a few credits. He has a great heart for the other students, and we have asked him to stay and help us in discipling and teaching for this coming year at the Bible School (His daughter, Irlen, is pictured lower-left).


We were able to take this year's class to the jungle for a whirlwind graduation trip. We saw some amazing scenery including a herd of very inquisitive llamas. We covered a lot of ground in only four days, and had multitudes of discipling opportunities!


Loren and Alicia (as well as the rest of us) enjoyed some mangoes on Alicia's family farm. Alicia was saved about 3 1/2 years ago at this same location when we visited the family. What a privilege to lead a young person to the Lord, train them in Bible-school, co-labor with them in the church, and disciple them "in the way"! She will be graduating next year, Lord-willing!


We had to cross some fairly deep water in order to get down to the jungle. The rainy season started last month, so the rivers are all growing.


We also got to see some amazing scenery! This is called "seven pools" for rather obvious reasons. We had a great time climbing, although Loren was the only girl to make it to the top.


This is one of our graduates, Wilfredo, who I have spent much time discipling.


While we were on the trip, we held open air meetings, passed out hundreds of tracts, and got to witness to multitudes of people!


The the man in the center of the front row is the pastor of the first church that we visited. His name is Hernan, and he and his wife, Diana, graduated from the Bible school a few years ago. They told us over and over again what a great blessing it was to have us there.


This the church in Quillabamba, another jungle town. The pastor recently slid into immorality, so they were in desperate need of strengthening and encouragement. The young man in blue in the center of the picture is the youth pastor. We had a tremendous time here as well.


We had a different young man preach in each location. It was a joy to hear them preach the word of God after working with them on preaching this year in Seminary.


On the way home we stopped at a recently discovered ancient Inca site where we photographed this Inca altar. It is reported that they made human sacrifices upon these altars for many, many years before the Spaniards arrived.



This is Elmer, otherwise known as "the bone". I think he was the only one who fit through this amazingly thin wonder of ancient engineering and construction.


This is a granite stone cut from the mountain in the background. It measures roughly 6 feet wide, by 6 feet deep, but 22 feet long. According to the calculations that I found, that means it weighs over 160.000 pounds. No one knows for sure how the "uneducated savages" moved such heavy chunks of rock.


Also on the trip home, we encountered a land slide of many, many tons of earth and rocks covering the roadway. There were about a dozen cars lined up on each side of the land slide waiting to get through. Because we had a tall four wheel drive truck, we decided to pioneer the pass, hoping not to be crushed by additional tumbling boulders, or slide off the edge to plummet to the bottom of the gorge roughly 1000 feet below. We had all the students run across in case of mishap, but the Lord protected!