Day 6 (Monday)

So when I was here I focused a lot on a certain people. Now that we're back for a visit I'm also tagging along with another friend that focuses on a different people for our first few days. Many of them speak the same language as I learned when I was here, but because several hundred years ago they were enemies of the other people in the area, they were run way up into the mountains. Because of this their villages are usually hard to access.

Today we went to visit one of these villages with my friend. It wouldn't have been that far away except we hit a traffic jam in the road that caused us to be stuck for almost an hour. After the traffic jam we jumped on a dirt road and headed straight up the mountain (about a 40 minute drive). We had a truck full of people so Joie and I had to ride in the camper in the back. It was pretty rough on the dirt road and we had to lay down in the back so we wouldn't wreck our backs or hit our heads on the ceiling. I definitely did not miss that part of living out here.

After we arrived in the village, we walked around for a while trying to find a place to visit with people. We came across a family that my friend had met before and we stayed there for lunch. We spent about 3 hours there and talked to them for a while. My friend was able to share with him, but they did not believe. Apparently some people had come through before and shared with some people. A small fellowship was started there, but later a cult came in. Cults here are different than in America. Here they are very aggressive. They will often come in to an area posing as believers and then start talking about teaching that is not in the Bible. Because most people here do not have access to a Bible in their own language and they cannot read, they believe these cult members. The cults end up stealing a lot of money and convincing people that they should not use medicine or go to a doctor. Apparently this is what happened in this village and some people had died from sickness and had money stolen. Whatever had happened, we did not have a very warm reception from them.

After we made the bumpy trek back down the mountain we went into Old Town and treated ourselves to $7.50 massages. We felt like we earned it.