The trip was part of a 40-year-old Peru-based mission called MEPI Mision Evangelica Pentecostal Independiente to train leaders and establish churches. Participants over the years have helped build dozens of churches in communities along the Amazon River in Peru that are connected to the rest of the world only by air or water.

It was the first trip to Peru for Taylor, who moved to Homer last year from the Los Angeles area to fill the position of pastor at Homer's Christian Community Church.

The team of 10 individuals, including seven from Alaska, spent a week in Caballo Cocha, Peru, a regional hub about the size of Homer. The team worked with local residents to set trusses and build the roof on a new church there and also provided money for a septic system.

Taylor raised money locally before going on the trip, and said he and the other participants each contributed $600 as well.

During the evenings, Taylor, with the help of a translator, visited and prayed with sick residents. He said it quickly became obvious that people around Caballo Cocha were desperate for some of the basic medical facilities that people in the United States take for granted.

"I saw, for a snake bite, that they were (using) some kind of leaves on it," Taylor said. "I'm sure that's for medicinal value but it just wasn't working."

Taylor said he and others in the group offered some tips in that case and others.

"We just communicated a basic simple thing," he said.

Many of the sick individuals Taylor saw responded well to prayer, he said.

Political unrest in Peru has led to tens of thousands of deaths over the past two decades a 20-year war between the national government and the rebel group Shining Path was a major contributing factor. The country has been slightly more stable in recent years, but Taylor said Caballo Cocha was restless during the group's visit. He witnessed an incident before leaving in which residents burned down the mayor's office and attacked a hotel. One villager died in the incident, he said.

The incident was sparked by residents unhappy with the local government, whose members allegedly were assigning government jobs to their close friends, said Steve Tutt of Homer, who helped church members organize the trip.

Tutt said local police stood by as villagers, fed up with a string of string of supposedly corrupt mayors, trashed numerous municipally owned buildings, including the hotel where the mission group was staying.

"It was a little lesson in local politics," Tutt said.

Both he and Taylor said the people in Caballo Cocha were appreciative of the group's mission work.

"They're very open people, very receptive to having visitors," said Tutt.

Taylor said he brought back two lessons from the trip to share with his congregation.

The first was a new understanding of how dependent those in this country are on technology and luxuries which so many take for granted too often we think we are the center of the universe, he said.

The second is how God met his team's needs in Peru.

"It enlarged my perception of what God is doing in other parts of the world," he said.

Taylor said he would like to return to Caballo Cocha and has ideas for training local leaders, not only as pastors but also helping them learn fishing or trades.

"It's a very poor demographic," he said. "If they can develop profitable enterprises, that could be another way they could develop their ministry."

Taylor said Caballo Cocha has one modern pickup truck, which is used mostly as a police vehicle. Taxis, however, are there in abundance in the form of three-wheeled motorcars.

Taylor envisions local church leaders running their own taxi service. They could use the profits to learn a trade or to build churches and train other pastors, he said.

Chris Eshleman can be reached at chris.eshleman@homernews.com.