Post clinic: Fire, water, bees, and other exciting experiences

Balancing manuevers

Pulling the tank back up

Painting the tower

Fun in the mud

Carrying wood
After finishing up the clinic with the Gordon group we stayed in Contomana for an extra day to visit the hot springs for a team bonding trip. Dr. Matthews borrowed a dirt bike to take to the hot springs which was cool because I got to ride on the back! Unfortunately halfway there it started raining turning the dirt road into mud. Because the other half of our group were in motokars we had to help push to get them up some of the hills. We finally made it the 20 km to the hot springs. It was really nice to be able to sit in the hot water and take a break from the crazy pace of the past week. That night we stayed in a “tree hut” by the hot springs in hammocks. After supper we had team evaluations which not only were fun but also bonded us as a team. One “sad” thing that I realized that night was that I had officially lost my Michigan cold weather endurance. I was literally freezing in 65 degree weather! Because it rained most of the night the motokars couldn’t get through to pick us up in the morning. We decided to stick 3 girls on the back of the bike with Dr. Matthews while the rest of us walked. The plan was that he would come back and pick the rest of us up when he got them to a place were motos were running. Unfortunately that plan was nixed because one of the girls backpack straps got stuck in the chain causing the back wheel to lock up. We decided push the bike and try to get it working again. It was quite a site to see Dr. Matthews, Manuel, and I trying to push a dirt bike with a locked back wheel through about 6 inches of mud. We would push for about 10 feet and then take a break and then do it all over again. Finally, we got the bike started again and Dr. Matthews rode off. I thought that would be the end of it but after another hour of hiking we found him along side the road. After trying to restart the bike for about a half hour we left it at a school on the side of the road. We had about 12 km more to hike and then we caught motos into town, ate lunch, and went and picked the bike up from the school after the mud dried.
Because our launcha was leaving at 5 am the next morning we carried our stuff to the port and slept on some extremely hard benches until the boat arrived. This launcha was different from the last one in that it was packed with people. We barely had enough room to put our hammocks up. On the one floor there was close to 100 people smashed together like sardines. Needless to say it didn’t make for the most relaxing of trips. Because it was really hot in the room I spent quality time with my journal on the front of the boat were there was a nice breeze. We spent all day and all night on the boat and arrived in Pulcallpa at around 6 am Sabbath morning. Once we finally got all of the stuff off the boat we caught taxis back to km. 38. We got back just in time for church. Also we met the new SM, David. He is really cool and he knows Spanish really well, which will hopefully help me to learn it faster! On Sunday we washed laundry (my least favorite activity) and unpacked.
The next couple of days were spent reorganizing the medicines at the other house which doubles as our pharmacy. On the last day of organization the African killer bees that we have decided to swarm the outside of the house. We were held hostage by them for a couple of hours but they eventually calmed down. Later in the week we worked around the house putting up “bump outs” over the windows to prevent rain from coming in. While I was nailing one of the boards up a wasp stung me in my finger. I though it would just leave a little mark but instead my finger decided to balloon to a couple times its normal size. In the morning my whole hand was swollen but it finally dispersed a day later. On Thursday we had an extremely exciting day! It started out pretty normal. We took down the water tank so that we could put stronger boards under it. After we got those up we went to cut some wood for the top. While we were cutting we saw smoke coming from the pineapple field. Mauro ran to see what was happening and David and I followed close behind. Unfortunately as we came around the corner we saw that about one-quarter of the field on fire. We picked up some long sticks and started frantically trying to keep it from spreading. Eventually everyone got involved and with God’s help we put it out. It took most of the afternoon to put the fire out and by the time we got back to the house we were tired, hot, and sweaty. That night we had another scare because Cheva, our rotweiler, almost killed the monkey. She ran into the house and grabbed Franky but Kaitlin ran inside and started screaming at Cheva. For some reason she let him go and ran out the door. Needless to say the monkey was pretty excited to have survived its brush with death. On friday Mauro and I started painting the tower and by the end of the day we had it up and running again. These past two weeks have been really exciting and I have seen God working each and every day. Please continue to keep our team in your prayers as we continue to have new experiences!