Ixiamas, Bolivia

Your tropial mission adventure begins at the newest SIFAT site, on the outskirts of the Madidi National Park--the most pristine rain forest in the world (and featured in National Geographic, March 2002). Traversing the dirt streets of the village, you will notice brilliant birds flying above, talking incessantly and offering a sample of the jungle's many "voices".

Bolivian homesteaders are moving deeper into the jungle with hopes of escaping poverty and beginning anew with their families. They push on into the wilderness, only to meet with polluted water, lack of schools and churches, new insects, parasites, tropical diseases, and lack of basic health care.

SIFAT, with Bolivian brothers and sisters, has started a mission in this area to help provide a basic Christian infrastructure. The help of work teams is needed to complete the basic buildings: a church, a children's boarding home, and a training center to teach sustainable community development and alternative agriculture that will not damage the rainforest. Your team may even have the opportunity to go farther into the rainforest to build a storage shelter on the site known as Two Trees.

As part of a work team, you will spend a week working beside people of the community and helping in projects, as well as sharing your faith with these new Christians through videos or an interpretor. Children are never far away, and you will have many opportunities to share games, stories, or even VBS during the day.

Lodging for teams is in a new eco-hotel with bathrooms and showers in every room. Meals are eaten at a local restaurant in the village. Upon arrival, SIFAT staff will meet you and accompany you on a hour-and-a-half charter flight directly to the landing strip in Ixiamas, only blocks from the training site.

Teams have the option of returning directly to La Paz, or traveling at the end of the week to Rurrenabaque for an evening a day before flying back In "Rurry", as it is affectionately called, you will take a trip downriver in a motor-driven canoe. Pushing into the rainforest, you will learn about its medicinal mysteries and witness the amazing "wall of pappagallos"--a sheer cliff where a colony of parrots have chosen their lifetime mates and built nests. Upon arrival back in La Paz, the team will have a day to shop and visit many places of historical and cultural interest. Optional day trips at the end of the mission include Lake Titicaca, Macchu Picchu, Solar de Uyuni, extended trips into the Madidi National Park, and many others.

Learn more! Click on titles below:
Details of Ixiamas work teams.
Details of our ongoing work in Ixiamas.