Home Again, Home Again

We got home Saturday evening, the 6th. It is just so wonderful to be home, it’s hard to even describe it! Lisa keeps saying she doesn’t want to travel again for a long, long time. One month away from home is a long time!

The trip went really well. The boys finished all but 10 pieces of siding and a platform for a laundry area. The only reason they didn’t finish was because the wood was all down at the boat and it would’ve taken them another day to pack it all up without help (wood in the jungle is very heavy). All in all, they did a phenomenal amount of work in such a short period of time.

From top to bottom – two lodges (where the campers will sleep), the cafeteria (with kitchen off to the side on the right, not sure if you can see it), and one of the bathrooms (they built two). The cafeteria is big enough that I can’t get it in one picture. The roofing was done by hired men – it was INCREDIBLY high, but just beautiful. The men did a fantastic job. They worked one Saturday and spent one night out there. The rain was making it, towards the end, harder to travel, so to save time, they just slept out there the last night. It saved them about 4 hours, which made a big difference.

God protected our team. One of the men hurt his back and had to come back to Lima early. He’s okay, but he did spend three nights in a clinic. Another guy, a visitor from Canada, had a reaction to all the chiggers out there (there was an enormous amount of chiggers out there!!!!) and then the heat bothered his skin, so he was pretty miserable. But, by the end of our time, everyone was feeling fine and glad to see the job done.

We only saw one poisonous spider. Our friend had a poisonous frog somehow find its way into her suitcase – that was a little nerve-wracking. Brian saw a family trying to kill an 8ft boa on the way out to camp one day. It was coiled up in the middle of the road and striking at the family who was hitting it with sticks. Goodness. The men killed a tarantula out at the camp. They spent like three hours trying to smoke out “the HUGE tarantula” and when it showed up, it was the size of a normal, large spider. Granted, it still needed to die, but it wasn’t six inches round like they’d been told! Which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong!!

Now, we’re home and doing the usual routine things like catching up on laundry. We’ll be sending out a newsletter within the next couple of weeks, so be watching for that!

Thanks for your prayers for this trip. We were so blessed that neither of us got very sick, the heat didn’t get to us, and we weren’t in any kind of accident. God is so good to us.

Hola Desde Iquitos!

We have two full weeks left here in Iquito, so half our time is up. Let me see if I can quickly recap some of the happenings here. Pictures and a more extensive update will have to wait til the second weekend of February.

• The temperature for the first couple of weeks literally registered ´hi´on our thermometer in our upstairs bedroom. We are merely degrees from the equator so the sun is just plain HOT. There is no other way to explain it. Thankfully, after the sun goes down, it gets substantially cooler.
• The first full week of work went well for Brian. They got a lot accomplished and had the best ´first day´of work ever. However, due to a number of variables, things have slowed down considerably. We´d appreciate your prayers because they still need to finish a bathroom, a kitchen, and a cafeteria before we leave Feb 6.
• We took a day trip up the Nanay River to a zoo where we could actually hold and touch the animals. The sloths were adorable. The giant anaconda was, well, a giant anaconda. How do you think it was? We also went out to where the Amazon and the Nanay mix. Beautiful.
• There was one VBS, but with the students who are here for their summer work doing all the work in the VBS, Lisa wasn´t needed, so she stayed home the last two days to help cook and finish the team´s laundry. The VBS did draw 70 plus children and was a huge success, though.
• Lisa was opening her suitcase and saw what looked like a big piece of fuzz sitting on top. Before flicking it up or rubbing her hand across it, she got down to look at it and saw that it was, in fact, a big, florescent spider. A friend confirmed that it was highly poisonous and killed it before it moved. Praise the Lord for His protection even in small things like that.
• We´re both doing fine healthwise. The heat gets to Lisa a lot more frequently than to Brian. You have to drink so much, even if you´re not thirsty, that it´s incredibly easy to get dehydrated. You can pray for us as well in this area these last two weeks.
• The rainy season (winter) seems to have hit. The temperature has dropped slightly and it rains at night and sometimes in the mornings. I don´t mean piddly pretty rain, though. I mean, giant, torrential, jungle rainstorms that raise the water level a meter in just a couple of hours. Pray the rain during the day holds off until the building project is complete. Rain turns everything to mud and with how heavy the rains are, it makes building incredibly difficult.

Over all, things are going very well. We haven´t been hit with illness and we´ve been staying safe. God is so good to us.

We´ve heard reports from back at camp, too, that things are going super well and they have more children than they´d thought coming to summer camp. Praise the Lord!

Thanks for your prayers. We can tell they are effective.

2009 In Pictures

JANUARY - one final trip to SD to visit family and friends. Our friends' baby Braden is now 16 months old!

FEBRUARY - packed and headed to Florida after many goodbyes to dear family and friends

MARCH - landed in Peru and took off 3 days later for Iquitos

APRIL PART1 - Lisa began school preparations and started school mid-April

APRIL PART2 - Brian began our house! Here we are in our kitchen.

MAY - Brian worked non-stop on our house and we moved in the 31st.

JUNE - participated in an IBYM social, had our first visitors stay in our house, and worked more on the house

JULY - more visitors and the big IBYM event: Conoce Al IBYM

AUGUST - retreat with our co-workers to Cajamarca as well as a visit from Lisa's dad!

SEPTEMBER - We bought a motorcycle!

OCTOBER - Spring sprang in all its Peruvian glory! We enjoyed new furniture and settling into the routine of the last half of the school year.

NOVEMBER - more visitors, graduation for our new missionaries, and our first Thanksgiving in our new home.

DECEMBER - the Fair, end of school, our first Christmas in our new home, and a surprise for Lisa: a new piano.

There’s a brief look at our year in photos. Here’s to an equally adventurous, amazing ride in 2010! Happy New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Feliz Navidad! From our humble home in Peru to yours, wherever that may be.