Malaria

Amazonian Wednesdays 🌴

I wrote up this family history in September 2002, a little over a year after my marriage to Israel:

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The children of the village, their brown toes stirring absently in the river bank mud, stand by curiously in the smoldering sunlight as the boatmen carry a dilapidated burden off of the boat. In a hammock carried between four of them is the weakened figure of a man. It is José Arimborgo, stricken gravely with malaria in the midst of his travels around the Peruvian Amazon. Little do these small gawking eyes know that this man has come to bring a message that will transform their lives forever…

1978, Lima, Peru. A very long, very arduous, and very rewarding journey began. Two young Peruvian Christians named José and Carmen Arimborgo felt the call of God on their hearts to preach the gospel in the Amazon jungle. Immediately, they sold their large house, new car, and two pieces of land, and gave most of the money to a church they had recently planted in Lima. Having been disowned by much of their family for their decision to serve the Lord, they set their faces forward. Soon they were crossing the Andes by bus and then boarding a cargo boat to arrive in Iquitos, the capital city of the jungle region named Loreto. An apostle named Samuel Five had promised to support them financially in Iquitos until they got on their feet.

Eight months later, Samuel Five died in a plane crash. Within a few months, the Arimborgo family was kicked out of the house Five’s organization had provided for them. They spent the night on the street and then moved into a makeshift dwelling that Continue reading Weeping, Rejoicing and Reaping in the Uttermost Parts of The Earth