Memory Part 3 – The Peru Years by Bob Holbrook

Peru Years in Youth Ministry by Bob Holbrook Part 3

While searching for some photos for the last two rounds of memories, I came across a few photos that jogged the dormant corners of my brain enough to fill a few sleepless hours in the middle of the night with a few pleasant thoughts worth sharing.

The Setting:

Bob attending camp with his dad – Delmer Holbrook

Since my parents were involved as teachers/administrators at Colegio Union, Ñaña, Peru during much of my childhood years, I had the opportunity on four occasions to spend time in Eastern Peru–the Amazon Basin. (Those trips are for stories of another time. Suffice it to say one trip was when Dad held evangelistic meetings in the town of Lamas, one was for a “summer camp” near the village of Satipo, and two were to our Mission Station of Nevati. One of those 2 trips my little brother and I pulled off by ourselves–ages 9and 12.) These trips, however, instilled a desire to one day return and live on the Amazon–permanently!

The Result:

Many years later, after college days, I was teaching 9th and 10th grades at the West Hartford School in the Southern New England Conference with my young family–a wife and 2 year-old son–when a call came through to go as Youth Director to the East Peru Mission. It took all of one nano-second to accept the invitation. Upon arrival at the Mission headquarters in Iquitos, I found out that it was a bit more than just Youth Ministry. I was to head up the Adventist Book Center, Communications Department, Health and Temperance Department, Colporteur Ministry, and oh yes, the Youth Department. I was fine with it all, as long as administration understood the Youth was to be my primary focus and the others were add-ons to be handled as time might allow.

New Amazon Club Ready for Adventures Ahead

Travel in this part of the world was not easy and considering the meager budgets we operated under, it was expensive.  Iquitos is quite isolated–the navel of South America, situated on the Amazon some 3,000 miles up-river from its mouth in northern Brazil. The only way in and out of the town was by river boat or airplane. So we flew to the various districts. This meant flying out to one of 3 different towns, Tarapoto, Tingo Maria, or Pucallpa. From Tarapoto we would take a “taxi” to Lamas, Juan Jui or Yurmaguas. From Tingo Maria another “taxi” or motorcycle would take us to Tocache. From Pucallpa we flew either in our own single engine mission plane to one of the many outpost mission stations among the native tribes or by commercial float planes to small river towns such as San Roque del Ucayali. Since flying was so expensive leaving Iquitos we’d fly out and not return for 4-6 weeks as we had to make the best of our budgets by trying to get to every church in range for each target location.

Knitting Graduates showing the things they had made

I’d spend a week to 10 days with each church giving Pathfinder Leadership training to a group of senior youth, getting them into uniforms, organizing the club, encouraging youth evangelism, celebrating weddings, child dedications, communions, baptisms and anything else the situation might require. Some districts had as many as 20 or more churches in surrounding villages and I had the awesome privilege of organizing some 20 or more Pathfinder Clubs in the larger churches over a 3 year period. It had been my intent to stay put in that mission until Christ should return but it was cut short rather drastically due to my wife’s serious illness (typhoid twice)–to the point that the Inca Union administration determined to pull us out–we had a choice, either return to the US or take a position in Lima as director of SAWS (today ADRA) country director. I chose staying in Lima.

Bob teaching Life Saving skills

But before leaving the jungle, I must describe our “summer camps”. During those years we had 3 summer camps. One at our base in Pucallpa, one near Tingo Maria and one near Tarapoto. They were essentially the same with the 2 later one complicated by distance and travel issues. So I’ll tell a bit about the last one–Tarapoto. We found a nice soccer field next to a small village halfway between Tarapoto and Yurmaguas so we advertized to both districts. The Youth Department had about a dozen large “family” tents that we loaded onto a commercial flight from our home office to Tarapoto. There we loaded them onto a truck to our village of choice. I had selected a team of 2 awesome young people–a young lady to be our girl’s director and a young man to be our boy’s director. Added to these were the local pastor and 2 local women to handle the cooking. We taught several nature and camping skills honors appropriate to the location. The pastor had our devotionals and taught the Junior Youth Witnessing Honor. Since our youth there are so associated with rivers and all its dangers, I taught the Life Saving Honor as well. It rained the entire week but it never slowed us up. The Inca Union Youth Director dropped in for a visit on the weekend and was amazed at our situation–the rain, mud–and fun energy we all had in spite of everything–and not a sick person among us. From the Junior Youth Witnessing Honor activities, we left the pastor with a nice list of Bible School enrollments to work with and within 6 months a new church was organized. Each summer camp left its mark with new churches being organized nearby. That is our ultimate objective is it not?

Pastor Alejandro Bullon and family

Our move to Lima brought its own challenges. (My wife’s second serious illness, the birth of our second son.., it seems my wife’s North Dakota based immune system was not able to adapt to the tropics ) While I was SAWS director overseeing the management of some 600 development projects nationwide and feeding over 120,000 participants, I spent my weekends helping the Central Peruvian Conference Youth Director–Alejandro Bullòn by giving Pathfinder Leadership training at all the churches in the Greater Lima area. A side benefit was celebrating America’s Bicentennial with a party at the American Ambassador’s home. We were able to re-activate the Miraflores Pathfinder Club which had been the first ever club in South America and from whom the name Conquistadores was chosen as the Spanish equivalent of Pathfinders way back in the early 50’s. I had a Master Guide training club in our apartment where some 30 senior youth met every Sunday afternoon developing their skills and becoming Master Guides.

It took Bob Holbrook four hours to make this beautiful cake

Working on the Cake Decorating and Candle Making Honors with 30 young people in your apartment, going to the nearby beaches and working on Marine Algae and Marine Invertebrates Honors were quite an experience as well as all the other activities. After the first year’s investiture, they went out, organized and led out in new clubs all over the city.–That’s what being a Master Guide means, after all, right?

After a couple years there in Lima, a request came to return to fulltime Youth Ministry–this time in Ecuador. But that’s for another time, another story. (To be continued)