Week 1: Living in the Jungle

Life with two children under the age of two is not only crazy but down right scary!! Scary because not only are you living in a constant state of zombie-ness but you don’t even realize it anymore!! Its not a surprise when you find your toothbrush in your sock drawer or your keys in the fridge :) When both kids are up at four you just go with it and start your day… it truly is a miracle that we are all still breathing, are clothed (have our teeth brushed…????) and no one has been forgotten somewhere dangerous! (for those of you who do not know, we had our second child, Samuel Clovis on May 26^th --- he is 15 months younger than our daughter Sophia).

So what I am about to tell you will come as no surprise if you have ever had children this young and so close together …. We made a family decision to live on the river in a jungle house with the guys in our current training (most likely this was made while sleep deprived, high on caffeine and with crying babies in the background)!! Either way – it seemed like a good idea at the time – and now that we are one week into our last training here in Iquitos, it would seem that it actually was the best decision we could have made.

We are really enjoying our time out here on the Nani River. We have four guys; Edwin, Jim, Beltran and Hector who are participating in the training.  They are all from the same village, Libertad, which is also on the Nani.  Adam was able to go out and find some land just 15 minutes up-river where we could do the training and it is beautiful.  It worked out wonderfully because it is summertime right now – which in the jungle just means it doesn’t really rain.  This worked out amazingly for us because our water supply at our home in Iquitos is solely from the rain and summer is not that fun for us – especially with two kids … trying to play indoors is just as hot as the outdoors… no good. So living right on the river is not only cooler but Sophia can play in the water all day if she wanted!

Of course, I am saying this a week into the training… things were not looking so bright two weeks before it started.  Adam was desperately trying to find a location for the training, interview all the guys interested and buy all the supplies that we needed.  The first time he went out in the boat in search of land the motor broke 15 minutes into the trip and he had to paddle the boat back to shore… 15 minutes with a motor takes 2 hours when you are paddling… the next time we had a new motor but the prop broke and this time no paddle…so Adam got to swim/pull the boat back…the third time the motor actually blew up…yeah it did.  Adam had taken 3 guys with him and only one of them could swim… he went to put gas in it (with a full 10 gallon tank of gas) and when the gas hit the motor it literally exploded throwing all of the guys out of the boat…it was on fire for a good 30 minutes (thanks to the full gas tank in the bottom of the boat) but they all survived and only Adam’s hands were burned (but not badly).  Thankfully a fellow missionary loaned us their 15 horse outboard motor and so we have been able to continue on with our training until we are able to afford a new one.  Adam did find land that last time though and so here we are. 

The day we left to come out here it was nuts … we had way to many things to do but somehow we accomplished them and finally had our stuff and the kids in the truck (Adam had left earlier in the day to taken the majority of our stuff out to our house … which he and 3 other guys had built beforehand, for us).  We get to the port and Adam took the rest of our things down to the boat while I waited in the truck with the kids. When he was ready for us I turned the truck off and we all got out – finally we were going!! We walked away from the truck toward the boat and it locked automatically….with the keys still in it. I will have you know that this was actually the first time I had ever locked the keys in a car before – and what a day to do it!!! In order to unlock it, Adam would have to take a motor car back to the house (which on this road would take an hour) get our extra key and come back (another hour) while I just sat outside with the kids… no good. So we just left and went out to our river house.  He decided to deal with it the next day – so we came out to the house. We had 3 hours before dark to get our mosquito nets and beds all up and ready and to try and organize all our food/clothes etc. We got out of the boat to go look at the finished house – it has 4 steps up to it and Sophia wanted to go up them herself, and as she went up she smashed a wasp with her hand… wasps were everywhere. Adam said that they had gotten better but there were still about a hundred flying about …. Sophia finally stopped crying and started walking around our open-air house (it has a floor and a roof and that’s all …when she started crying again … she had just smashed a wasp into her face right below her eye… what a way to start. Poor little sucker, I was watching her I thought but in one second it got her --- so we decided that the kids and me should go play in the cool water while Adam got everything together. We somehow made it through that first night (although we didn’t sleep much…we did have pancakes for dinner though so that was fun). But since then the days have been so much better. With the help of bug spray and a fly swatter there are only a bout 15 wasps left … and we finally got everything situated and on shelves so the ants cant eat it and carry it away – we have our beds all fixed up and a strategic plan for getting ourselves down to the water with our dirty dishes, laundry and children :)

Enough about us. The guys are doing exceptionally well – they hiked into the port 30 kilometers with all there gear (as is the Xtreme tradition) and they did it in 8 hours (2 walked in rubber boots and the other 2 in sandals…) I don’t know if you have ever hiked 8 hours in rubber boots out in the sun… but they get rather hot and toasty… they are now in the process of building their house and have had classes on filtering water, building a fire and are learning the Creation story.  All in all it has been a very successful week and we look forward to the second.

Adam is also taking 2 online seminary classes so we will be coming in once a week if possible to post for his classes and hopefully to post our blog to keep you updated on our lives out here in the jungle. It will be a 2-month long training so be ready for some stories!!

The hike begins (note the rubber boots)

Getting on the boat after the 30 km hike...

From right to left: Edwin, Hector, Beltran and Jim (in front)

the 'fixed' boat ... (it got a new paint job and they chopped off the back end...it was too burnt up to salvage)

Going out to the jungle!!

Building our House

The completed jungle house - our home for the next two months!

washing clothes with Sophia ... she loves to help (by putting all the cleaned clothes in the sand) Alias is standing guard :)

We don't have baking soda to treat a wasp sting but chocolate cereal does wonders :)

Hanging out in the house -- I think Adam is cooking lunch :)

Our little Samuel Clovis ... now 3 months old!