Week 8: The End Has Come … But We Went Out With A Bang ☺

Ahhh, the sweet life in the city – oh how I missed you! How grateful I am for my a/c and my refrigerator and my microwave and separate rooms for the children J However, as luck would have it, I have been a bit on the sick side since returning back to the land of plenty. I was feeling ok, then I was feeling not ok, then I felt icky and then I felt flat out horrible – so I finally went to the doctor yesterday (its just so hard to write and work and do things when you feel so awful!) Of course it was a family affair in which I was already sweating at 9am in my cute skirt and top… love it. Finally at 10 the doctor calls us into the office – by this point Sophia is going CRAZY and rearranging all the furniture in the office – Samuel is hungry – I am coughing up my lung while trying to keep my nose from running down my face (I had run out of toilet tissue so I was using Samuel’s blanket to blow my nose….awesome). Adam was just pretending like he was somewhere else --- maybe a deserted island somewhere J haha. 


So I tell the kind doctor all my symptoms and she is super worried, especially because our kids are so young and she is freaked out that I am going to get them sick…. Because of this she gave me a prescription for 3 shots and 6 different medications (of course we haven’t heard of any of them….) But we buy them all because we live so far away from the clinic. I get the shots there (of course it was more like a mini-i.v. thing…. I asked how long it was gonna take cause I could hear Samuel screaming outside….poor Adam).  


Anyways, we finally leave and get home. We try to research the medicines and they all look ok – but we write our field medical lady anyways – just to be safe, since I am nursing Samuel. While waiting for her to respond I decided to just take all of it….. one could not have forseen what happened next (or maybe you can) but I get in bed and I am wide awake …. I am jittery, my heart is racing and I am having hot flashes --- I try to stand up and I am dizzy and almost pass out, I don’t know about you but I don’t think that is a good sign …. I wake up adam cause by now I have been laying in bed awake for a couple of hours and tell him what is going on …. Of course, what do you do at this point!? I had already taken all of the medicine L So I just tried to relax and I finally feel asleep and I hoped Samuel would be ok…. This morning I was still super dizzy and couldn’t really walk around without thinking I was gonna faint. Our medical person wrote back and she said I only needed 2 of the medications so I am not going to take the rest – what a nightmare.

All that to say – I am finally feeling a bit better, I am only ‘sorta’ medicated and so here I am trying to put my scattered thoughts together to write our blog J I don’t know what is worse - having a fuzzy foggy cold head or being so medicated you can’t move J ha.

Well, on to the important stuff!! We finished our last week of training!!! It went so amazingly well. Adam only had 4 classes to teach so we were able to just teach one class a day and spend the rest of the time just hanging out with the guys – hearing about what they were learning, seeing what they liked about the training and what they thought the future held for them. We spent one day just ‘playing’ and since we were just hanging out we decided that it would be fun to have a big lunch all together. 


The guys had been wanting to kill several chickens ever since training started so we thought it would be a good time to kill a few and to eat good J I didn’t realize how much fun guys get out of killing small animals… it’s a bit disconcerting J Adam slit the throat of his chicken, while Jim just twisted his chicken’s head clean off, Edwin was a bit more humane and just broke his chicken’s neck…. Yeah, I know – its traumatizing. Fortunately we only killed 3!!! Then the guys de-feathered the poor creatures and we let them cook up 1 and a ½ while we cooked up the other 1 and a ½ we wanted to see who could cook the best food J We made fried chicken and biscuits and the guys just dumped their chickens (guts and skin and all) in a big pot and dumped a TON of oil in it --- then they boiled them…in the oil with some spices…. You can guess which we liked the best J But it was a great time of fellowship and it rained that afternoon and washed all the blood away…. Whew.

The next day a sweet family from Libertad (the community where the guys are from) stopped by for a visit. They love Sophia and Samuel – they played with them and wore Sophia out (I love that!) and we had a great chat with the parents. The father, Pedro, had a boat and he offered to come and help us take all of our gear back to the port – which turned out to be awesome cause we had quite a bit of stuff and it allowed us to do it all in one trip!

The rest of the week went rather quickly although the mosquitos seemed to get worse by the hour – we were definitely ready when Monday morning arrived and we packed everything up!! It only took a couple of hours --- it was actually kinda sad to see the empty house that had been our home for 2 months (but not sad enough to stick around!) We jumped in the boat and headed to the port. Adam was able to get our truck super close to the water so we didn’t have to haul everything up the huge hill. I will have to admit though, we looked kinda like the jungle version of the Beverly Hillbillies with all of our junk and our chickens and Alias all crammed in the back of the truck! It was hilarious. 


We drove home and unloaded everything and then Adam went back to the port to get the guys and the boat. We were all unloaded and home by lunch! We spent the rest of the day getting settled and had the guys over for dinner and then on Tuesday we had their tests, graduation and celebration lunch. They left to go back to their community right after lunch ready to go home and see their families. It was a bittersweet moment – we will really miss them!! But hopefully we will stay in touch and will be able to see them a few more times before we leave in December. All in all it ended even better than it started and we loved being able to share our lives with these 3 guys for 2 months. It was a pleasure to be able to see Christ work in their lives and we can’t wait to see how He will use them in the future!

Adam actually went out this past Wednesday to fix the wells in their community and was able to see them all again. They were doing well and were excited to see him – one prayer request though, Jim has had a hernia in his chest or something… he is going to come into town on Monday and we are going to take him to the clinic – hopefully it will be an easy fix and he will be ok.

We do have two praises though!! Cesar’s wife, Julie Anna finally had her baby!!! After weeks and weeks of waiting, their daughter was born yesterday. We are going to go see them this afternoon – we will take pictures and find our her name and post them soon!!! Our second praise is that … wait for it … I get to go to the Women’s Retreat in Lima next week!!!! Someone had to cancel and I get to go!! I am so so excited J

Thank you so much for following our blog – for praying for us in our time of need – and for living this adventure with us. We love you guys!

The Killing of the Chickens .... This one is getting his neck broke....

Sophia and her 'pony'

boiling the chicken so we can pull the feathers off :)

It is super hot water and they put their hands in it - they are crazy!!!

the de-feathering ...

cutting off their hands and feet - yum

getting out the guts and eggs and whatnot .... did you know that chickens can still have eggs inside them after they are dead and you can eat them??? sick.

our chicken and its eggs and guts and other 'stuff'

Samuel watching the festivities

Sophia getting corn to feed the lucky chickens who are still alive  :)

Feeding them -- she loves it (and I think she felt sorry for them!) can I just say that chickens basically living with you, along with a dog is not fun!! Thank goodness it was just for a week (we had to move them cause their house flooded) It smelled so bad those last few days....nasty

Jim teaching Sophia how to color on the floor....thanks Jim

Lunch is served!!!!

Our visiting friends from Libertad :)

Sophia only wanted to be in the hammock when I was in it with Samuel :) Nothing like trying to keep two wiggly babies in a hammock to give you a good work out!

Playing Games :)

I know you are wondering what this is --- well folks it is a trash can ... with our laundry hose attached to it ... it was our make shift shower those last few weeks.... good times. Nothing like trying to shower super fast while you are in your birthday suit trying to keep a lookout for boats going by ... ah the memories

Packing up!

Getting ready to leave :)

In the boat and ready to go

last pictures of our empty house!

Say GOODBYE - GOODBYE RIVER HOUSE!

the flooded chicken coop

the guys house!

It was so crazy how high the water came up!

Sophia trying to drive the boat - she wants to be just like her daddy!

there was an older American couple that lived on this port - they do medical trips up and down the river in these launchas!!! They have a/c and all kinds of accommodations - it costs $1,000 a week to ride in it!!! CRAZY. But they were super nice and let us keep our boat docked there when we were in town :)

The Beverly Hillbillies have left the river :)

The story test - we put all the stories the guys had learned into a hat and then they had to pick one - whichever one they picked they had to tell!! They all did soooo good!!!

Their Shirts :) Official Members of the Xtreme Team :)

Their nicknames :) I have one too but they just put Jessica on the back - they couldn't think of anything else to say, haha. Of course its the same size as Adam's so I won't be wearing it, lol.