Post 1 - 1949: Arriving in San Joaquin, El Beni, Bolivia

The DC3 made a wide circle over the Cochabamba valley to gain altitude, taking us close to Mt. Tunari, snow-capped and majestic in the early morning light.  It headed east to negotiate the pass in the Andes and then turned north flying towards the Beni.  Flying at about 18,000 ft, we were up in the bright sunshine with a vast sea of white cotton wool beneath us, the high peaks of the mountains poking up through it, giving the impression of rugged foreshores and jutting headlands. 

Gradually the clouds began to thin out, and through the mist below we could see endless forests, with rivers turning back and forth like sinuous reptiles.The forest gradually thinned out into vast plains or pampas. Across these the rivers still maintained their tortuous routes, and the river banks were covered with dense forest stretching out into the pampas. Here and there, an "island" appeared on the pampas, an area of slightly higher ground covered with jungle. During the wet season the rivers overflow their banks and the pampas become flooded to form a great inland sea. As the rains cease, the pampas become vast swamps.

It was the 26th July 1949, and to Jim and me this was the opening up of a new chapter in our lives as well as the fulfillment of many years of prayerful desire to take the Gospel to the peoples of the forest in the Bolivian Amazon.

For Jim it was 19 years earlier that the Lord had given him this challenge, and for me it was 9 years. Eventually the Lord in His own wonderful way had brought us to know one another. In 1945 we were engaged to be married, and I went to Bolivia a year later. Jim arrived the following year, and in April 1948 we were married in the city of Cochabamba.

We went to live with a minister in the town of Totora about 100 miles from the city at an altitude of almost 10,000 ft in the Andes Mountains. A year later our son was born very prematurely, and ten days later he went to be with the Lord. 

Some few months previously the Council of the Bolivian Indian Mission had asked us about going to the river-work in the Beni, and we believed this was the Lord's answer to our prayers. 

However, this sphere of ministry did not eventuate, but we were asked to consider opening up a work in San Joaquin, a town with an Army garrison, on the Machupo River some thirty miles from the Brazilian frontier. 

There were no believers in the town, and the small protestant church in San Ramon, a day's journey upstream by canoe, was having a hard time due to immorality in the life of the local pastor.

A sickening blast of hot, heavy, humid air greeted us as the plane door was opened on landing at Trinidad, capital of the Beni Department. We were really in El Beni, an entirely different country from the Bolivia of the Andes. 

Our next stop was Magdalena where Emily Herron and her little girl met us, Wally being away on a trip to the Leprosarium at Tane.  Standing in the shade under the wing of the plane, we talked and exchanged news as fast as we could in the fifteen minutes before the gong rang and we went aboard for the last hop of our trip.  

It was about twenty minutes across the pampas to San Joaquin - a bumpy ride, the terrain being so flat the pilot did not bother to gain much altitude for the short distance!  About three hours after leaving Cochabamba Airport we landed at San Joaquin, a trip that otherwise could have taken some months by truck, river launch and ox-cart.

The grassy airstrip seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but among the small group of people awaiting the plane there was someone to meet us. A short time before leaving the city, an educated German lady, besides arranging a place for us to rent in the town, had asked her daughter, Edith, to look after us on arrival.  Sra. Edith was married to a captain in the Bolivian army, who was stationed at the garrison in San Joaquin. 

Our few suitcases were loaded onto the airline company's ox-cart for transport to the town, and we walked along the gravel road in the hot tropical sun, objects of interest and curiosity to all. Sra. Edith and her husband invited us to have meals at their home, and we gladly accepted their invitation to our first meal in San Joaquin. 

We had brought a primus and some basic essentials with us, and decided to start up housekeeping in the rooms already rented for us. In the religious climate of this town it was a brave stand for them even to show friendship towards us.

Jim and Joy Hadfield 1946