Week 2: Jungle Rains

As I mentioned before, it is summertime here in the jungle – which means that it doesn’t rain much.  By ‘not much’ I mean it might rain once every 7-10 days, at times even less than that.  For this reason it has been awesome that we are living on a river because with no rain and cloudless skies it makes for a very very hot time of year. So when it rained 4 times this week and was cloudy when it wasn’t raining it made for a wet, dreary and even cold time (with unhappy children to boot)!! I got a cold but everyone else stayed healthy and well. Sophia’s spirits were a bit down because she absolutely loves the water and couldn’t understand why we weren’t swimming in it --- she just sat on our front step and pointed at her wet swim suit on the clothes line saying things (I can only assume meant – lets go swimming, can we go now!?) However, the sun has returned – and amazingly enough I was ready to see it! Something I never thought could happen in the jungle, that I would actually wish for the sun to shine!! J It will be nice to sleep on dry sheets – the constant wetness makes everything damp and I am finally feeling better, thank goodness.

The guys are persevering and didn’t allow the rain to dampen their spirits.  They built a well and filtered water in the rain – finished their house and memorized the Creation story.  They will begin the “Fall of Man” story this week and we also had classes on culture and worldview. 

There were two hard things though this week. The first was just for us personally. As I mentioned in our last post Adam is taking two online seminary classes.  We had his books sent to us through DHL (and spent a pretty penny) in order to insure their speedy arrival (since classes started two weeks ago) but unfortunately we have yet to receive them.  We spent all day Friday trying to get it all sorted out because they are still being held in customs in Lima. The DHL people here told us that we would have to fly to Lima to get them out of customs (which is time we don’t have and it costs $300 round trip). Then they said if we sent them a copy of Adam’s passport that would work and they could get them sent to Iquitos and we could pay the customs fee then.  But of course the airline DHL uses to ship their packages from Lima to Iquitos has been shut down for 90 days and they are trying to get another airline to send them… they are saying they should get here Monday but we have our doubts. As we were trying to do all of this (I was sick of course) so Adam went to the pharmacy to get me medicine and after waiting in line for an hour they gave him the wrong medicine – after that we went to buy boots for 2 of the guys in the training and they gave us 4 boots … but they were all the same side (the left foot – awesome…. Of course we didn’t realize this until we returned to the river) then we went home to discover that rats had taken over and eaten through the wiring on our washer and dryer (so Adam got to chase and kill 8 large rats – instead of doing his seminary class) and the insurance company emailed to say that our boat and motor that exploded wasn’t covered and we would not be reimbursed.  It was a bad day.

The second thing is that Beltran has decided to leave the training and return home.  It is always sad to see someone go – but this is especially hard because Beltran cannot read or write and his knowledge of the Bible is based on sermons he has heard from pastor’s who never preach twice out of the same book, etc.  We were really excited for him to memorize the stories and to finally have a clearer understanding of the order of the Bible in its entirety.  But he has decided that this isn’t for him and so we have to let him go.

Please pray for these things.  That Adam’s books will get here soon – because it is really hard to work through this issue in the jungle and is a huge stress on us. That the guys will stay encouraged and will continue to work hard and learn what the Lord has for them here in the training.  Also pray for Beltran as he returns home that he will not be discouraged but will continue to seek the Lord and learn from him at his own pace.

As far as crazy animal experiences go – we had one this week (there are always these types of things happening when Adam is around… haha) He had just finished working out with the guys on the beach and him and Alias were rinsing off in the river … he stood up and opened his eyes and right in front of him was a baby dolphin!! He was so startled he couldn’t move – he walked down the beach toward our house and it followed him in the water!! Of course by the time I got the camera the dolphin (whom we will call flipper) was gone but he was able to take Sophia out there and she got to see it jump and swim and spray water J It was very exciting.  We also had the privilege to see a 9 foot rainbow boa slither across our path to the bathroom… Adam thinks they are very beautiful…. I only saw its tail but that was enough for me to know that I will not be going to the bathroom alone again. He assured me that you don’t often see these types of snakes in the wild and I should be excited/grateful that I was able to see it….  But the idea of it reappearing ‘in the wild’ again makes me think that I probably am not grateful or excited J

Edwin, Hector and Jim building their house

We had a challenge to see who could get a fire started and built first (and it had to burn for 2 minutes!) Beltran won :)

Airing out our sheets and pillows when the sun finally came out!

Samuel chillin in the hammock while we swam

Sophia has decided that Alias is indeed her best friend -- after we took this picture she began to hug her and sit on her  :)