Three months in the Jungle

Twelve weeks ago today I arrived at the Puraquequera mission school in the Amazon rainforest. It’s hard for me to believe that so much time has passed already and yet at the same time it seems like I’ve always been here. I love all the kids and missionary staff, the jungle setting of the school with a great view of the river is always beautiful, and I really enjoy all my different jobs.  My days here have fallen into a regular schedule that starts by getting ready and simply walking to work at the dining hall by 8:30 am. In the dining hall 3 or 4 of us cook a variety of foods (mostly American and Brazilian but we also make Mexican, Italian, Korean, Chinese, etc) all morning until we serve lunch for students and staff at noon, usually to around 50 people. After lunch is cleaned up, I have an afternoon free for cleaning teeth some days or my scheduled classes: helping with drama, teaching piano lessons or art, and Portuguese lessons for me. Sometimes I can even squeeze in extra hour or two to rest from the heat in my rede (hammock), sleeping or reading books from the school library… I’ve finished almost 23 books so far. Around 5 pm I head back to the dining hall where I’m in charge of preparing or setting out and serving supper to the students by myself, but only four nights a week. One of the things I like about fixing meals at night is the view from the dining hall of some amazing sunsets reflected on the Amazon River. Clean-up from supper is usually finished a little before seven, which gives me a few minutes to walk over to the school where I’m study hall monitor from 7-8:15 on Monday night for middle school students and 7-8:50 on Wednesday night at the high school. Then I find my way home through the dark and do a few things around the house until the campus generator is shut down and the lights go out at 9:30 pm. In the dark I can still read by candlelight or flashlight and also work on my computer until its battery dies. And as long as there are no scorpions in the shower or spiders in my bed, I usually have a quiet evening and soon turn in for the night. The next day starts the schedule over again with some variation, but not much… So sometimes- as much as I love my cooking job, classes, and especially the students- the kitchen does get very hot, washing dishes seems to never end, and the bugs are a constant problem. And at times God has to remind me exactly why I’m living in the jungle and how it all relates to knowing Christ and making Him known. So in honor of my 3 month anniversary in Brazil, let me share what God has been teaching me. Soon after I arrived at the school, I noticed some of the staff wearing school tee shirts with a picture and printed words on the back saying:
                 

“We teach…”
(the silhouette of a tribal person carrying a long set of bow and arrows)
“… so that they can be taught”

 

While the school teachers here are not actually teaching people in the jungle tribes, they are teaching the children of missionaries working in tribes such as the Yanomami, Mayoruna, Kulina, and Marubo, and other indigenous people groups. Other parents are working at the mission office in Manaus, and serving as missionaries in Sao Paulo in southern Brazil, or even other countries such as Mozambique, Africa. Jesus says in Matthew 28:19-20 to “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even until the end of the world.” As the staff here provides missionary children with a safe and stable place to live, learn, and grow in the Lord during the school year, their parents are enabled to concentrate on teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every tribe and tongue and nation where many of us will never be able to go. So God has been teaching me that right now my part in the Great Commission has to do with the tee shirt saying, just slightly modified – I cook, so the students can eat and be taught, so they AND the tribes can know Christ as Savior. And that is what makes living in the jungle of Brazil, cooking for the kids, and teaching their classes not only a joy, but the heat, bugs, and mountains of dirty dishes worth it all as well.

Guest Speaker and Exterminator

My Thursday got off to an early start as a “guest speaker” at the High School girls’ morning Bible study which started at 6:15 am. Before anyone in the USA gets any ideas, I’m only available to do guest speaking in other countries (ok, maybe I’ll make a FEW exceptions) and even then only if necessary… I would much rather be cooking, helping with dental stuff, or anything else… Anyway, the girls were a great audience, being as attentive as possible that early in the morning, although after my lesson they would probably agree that I should stick to cooking over speaking. Since I had to prepare for the Bible study this week, I thought I would share some of it here… “Walking with God today and trusting the future to Him” from Colossians chapter 1 with a focus on verses 9-12: “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving thanks unto God the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:” The lesson also included several devotional readings from Oswald Chambers’ book My Utmost for His Highest, which God has used in my life to continually challenge and encourage me to trust Him completely. Here’s one that I shared called “The Graciousness of Uncertainty: …To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He pack our life with surprises all the time. When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him. Jesus said, “Except ye…become as little children.” Spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the ban of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.” While I was busy guest speaking at the Bible study, little did I know that I would soon have the opportunity to practice what I was “preaching.” When I got back to my house after the Bible study, I had plenty of time to eat breakfast before heading off to the dining hall for a morning of cooking. But as I was sitting at my table eating, I noticed that the kitchen floor had been invaded by tiny ants and they were spreading into the living room as well. So I got up from breakfast and went looking something to use to get rid of the ants. Of course I didn’t have any ant spray or poison in the house (If you’ve read all my blogs, you’ll be relieved to know that I now have bug spray for cockroaches that kills scorpions too, just in case one of them gets into my shower again… but it doesn’t work for ants). I found some glass cleaner though, with a strong ammonia smell, so I decided to give that a try. Well, it worked! I’m not sure if the chemicals killed the ants or if they just drowned in all the liquid I sprayed on them, but they died and my floor was clean and shiny. Crisis number one solved before 8 am… The rest of my day was busy with dining hall work all morning, drama class and piano lessons in the afternoon, then serving dining hall supper by myself, as usual. I got back to my house around 7 and soon found another invasion of larger ants crawling in and around my kitchen sink. The glass cleaner worked like magic again and I sprayed a lot around my door to hopefully keep all ants away. By the time the generator shut off and all lights went out, I was exhausted and ready for bed. So I turned on my flashlight, pulled back my sheets, and to my horror saw a HUGE spider beside my pillow (fyi: it was not a tarantula, I have one living on the outside of my house so I know what those look like). I thought a scorpion in the shower was bad enough, but here was a potentially poisonous spider in my bed, and I was in the dark, by myself with no Brazilian housemate around to help me kill it… interestingly enough during this third insect crisis of the day, God brought to mind the Bible lesson I taught that morning. Talk about not knowing what a day may bring forth… and trusting God in uncertain circumstances with joyfulness :) Well, God saw me through that final crisis safely, as the spider was knocked off my bed and onto the floor using one of my trusty Old Navy flip-flops again… then the cockroach/scorpion spray was liberally used on the offending spider as it tried to escape and I watched with joy (and maybe some glee or revenge?) as it crumpled into a dead little ball. The trusting God with my future part came when I had to fall asleep in the same bed where a large and maybe poisonous spider had been lurking only moments before and might have “friends” in the area… Again God was faithful and I woke up the next morning alive and well with this story to write about :) So from guest speaking, to killing ants, to cooking and teaching, to killing more ants and spiders, my future may be uncertain, or even the next day or hour, but I’m grateful for my lesson of the day… the one thing that is certain- Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Top Ten Jungle Camping Trip Memories

A few weeks ago, the principal of the mission school asked me if I wanted to join the coming high school camping trip as a chaperone, and although I had no idea what I was about to do, I said yes anyway. The third weekend in March, about 30 of us spent 3 days and 2 nights in the raw jungle, at a new location for everyone. The chosen campsite turned out to be a nice sandy area about a 5 minute hike uphill from a beautiful lake where our boat was tied. It was an amazing adventure for me with lots of great memories - these are just the top ten. My only disappointment was that I never saw the gigantic alligators, hungry anacondas, or fierce jaguars that the other two “experienced chaperones” warned me would be living in or around the lake where we camped…
10. The one-hour boat ride down river from the school to our jungle camp and back again in the bright sunshine… also stopping along the way to push large floating islands of grass out of the pathway of the boat
9. Swimming for hours in the lake off the back of the school boat, with random currents of warm and cool water flowing by… even with heavy sunscreen most of us got sunburned, and mine has turned into a nice tan that I hope lasts for a while:)
8. Eating campfire food - my favorite part of any camping trip, this time with Brazilian foods like their BBQ meat called churrasco, beans, rice, and farofa, and also esfirras, which are buns with ham and cheese baked inside
7. Praise songs on guitars, bongos, and a ukulele with singing and sharing around the campfire at night – I was asked to give my testimony the first night and other high school students gave some great Bible insights too.
6. Finding the perfect location to set up our girls’ campsite by making paths through the jungle floor covered with balls of light green mossy-like fungus
5. Sleeping in a hammock for the first time- we tied three to a tree on top of each other like triple bunk beds with mine in the middle, and after the 3 of us got in and settled it was actually very comfortable
4. Being a favorite with the mosquitos and other biting bugs - despite using a mosquito net around my hammock, I found over 100 bites on my feet and legs below my knees alone… ok, maybe this doesn’t qualify as one of my best memories
The real #4. Coming back along the dark jungle path from a late night swim with the girls after a group of guys told us to watch out for a big snake they had just seen on the same path, which was a poisonous, people-chasing snake of course… well, there was movement in the bushes and suddenly all the girls started running. I was at the very end of the line and one of my trusty Old Navy flip-flops got stuck in a hole at the same time, so I made the life-saving decision to leave it behind rather than be alone with an attacking, poisonous snake, and I had the run through the jungle barefoot (like all the other kids) until I eventually found my flip-flip again the next morning… with no sign of any snake. Whether or not there really was a huge, people-chasing snake, the scare was a great shot of adrenaline, and all the girls stayed up talking and laughing until 3 or 4 in the morning. LOL.
3. Setting up a basic first aid station on the back of our boat to treat the foot wounds and scrapes/scratches that just “happen” in the jungle (maybe from being barefoot all the time?) and having the boat dubbed the Brazil Mercy Ship for me to serve on, providing free medical care for those campers in need
2. As the only female chaperone, the girls and I got to hang out together after midnight when the girls and guys separated to their own camps… we had so much fun into the early morning hours cooking pancakes/mancakes, Korean noodles, fried eggs, lemon grass -coconut-chicken soup and other random snacks around our own perfectly made girls campfire
1. Getting to know the High School students on a deeper level as just friends sharing the same great camping experiences