Time Travel

Moving to Parupa to begin a missionary outreach could be compared to taking a time-travel trip back to a more primitive era. Stepping off the small Cessna plane (my time-travel machine!) with our two sons ages four and six and being four months pregnant with our twins, I joined my husband in this remote, primitive village.

Two and a half hours before I had been in town, a place with stores, restaurants, churches, schools, hospitals—and even roads that connected them! The homes were clean and comfortable. People reached into their refrigerators for cold glasses of water. They turned on fans or air-conditioning to cool their homes when the tropical heat became unbearable. They turned on a facet and were blessed with water—and all this without realizing how blessed they were!

I'd been there. Done that. But all that changed when I stepped down from my "time-travel machine." There were no roads. Instead there was a rough dirt airstrip, a river, and jungle huts lined up in the village. There was a definite rustic beauty to the scene before me. The skyline was not interrupted by electrical or telephone poles as none of that existed. Running water? Oh, that was the river. The river was where you bathed, where you washed your laundry and where you cooled off.

I was suddenly far removed from the twentieth century life to which I was accustomed. There were no clean homes. The "three-second rule" definitely did not apply here where food fell to a dirt floor. There was no reaching into the refrigerator for a cold glass of water. For that matter, there was no reaching for the facet for a lukewarm glass of water! Water was brought up bucket by bucket from the river. Water was precious. Turning on the fan meant you fanned yourself with a hand held fan made of palm leaves. Air-conditioning was a dream.

This was our new life. This was the beginning of an adventure the Lord had invited us to take with Him. He never promised it would be easy, but He did promise in Hebrews 13:5 that He would NEVER leave us, nor forsake us. That was enough for us then, and it is enough for us now. What a promise! What a hope! What a God we serve!

Things That Crawl in the Night

Living in a glorified jungle hut with a palm roof and dirt floors you can expect to find things crawling in the night that would be unexpected in a comfortable suburban home. Cockroaches are one such thing that crawls in the night.

For that reason, amongst others, I always kept a heavy duty flashlight by my bed. The light would banish them, sending the cockroaches scurrying to hidden crevices in the wall. It was always accessible—except for this one night.

We were lying in bed chatting quietly when Matt suddenly groaned, "There's a cockroach in the bed. Where's the light?"

Reaching for the ever present flashlight, it was my turn to groan. I had forgotten it on the kitchen counter.

"I'll go get it," I said as I pulled my housecoat around me and headed for the kitchen. I flipped on the dim 12-volt bulb that served as a bedroom light on the way out to give a least a semblance of light along the way.

As I entered the kitchen in the semi-darkness, I started to step down on something. As soon as I felt the tentacle-like legs reaching around the bottom of my foot I thought cockroach! The big ones! That yucky, clingy feel! The grossness of them!

My foot barely touched the floor before I was doing a silent dance, my foot shaking in strange gyrations in an attempt to discard the offending critter. It flew off—much to my relief. Grossness was averted.

Reaching for the flashlight I flipped it on to find the cockroach and dispose of it. The light revealed quite a different picture than I had anticipated. There on the floor between me and the hallway to the bedroom was a black scorpion. Suddenly it was not grossness, but agonizing pain that had been averted!

Now came the question as to what to do with this scorpion. Killing it was an option, but I would have to leave it to find something to aid in the process. And I really didn't want to let it escape and continue to wander my home!

Not wishing to awaken the children nor our visitors, Pastor Ron & Elaine, I called in a whisper to my husband to come out. Thankfully he obliged. More thankfully than that, he did the duty of collecting the scorpion for "show and tell" the next day to our visitors. And yes, they were impressed!

Rest assured, the flashlight stayed faithfully by my bedside for years to come!

Sponges & Spirituality

What does our spirituality have to do with sponges? The speaker at the One Way Winter Retreat shed some light on that. In fact, he even demonstrated it. Dipping a desert dry sponge into a jug of clean, pure water, he waited for the sponge to soak it up. You could almost hear the dry sponge breathing a sigh of relief to finally be filled again!—And then he threw the sponge at one of the teens! Clean, pure water splattered over the teen. If others had been close by, they would have been affected as well.

When we let GOD fill our lives HE will spill out from us, overflowing into the lives of others. On the flip side, when we allow our lives to become saturated with ungodly thoughts, ideals, motives and attitudes, don't think for a second we'll be able to contain them. They too will overflow into the lives of others causing heartache and chaos.

I hope your prayer is as mine, that my life would be saturated with GOD, that my life would be an outpouring of HIM to others.

Beneath the Surface

The sun setting in a remote village in Venezuela. Just looking at it makes me turn nostalgic. Memories of 18 years as a missionary in Venezuela come bubbling to the surface.

Tamatama is a beautiful village in the middle of the Amazon jungle along the Orinoco River. There are no roads leading to nor from Tamatama. The river is the lifeline. A grass airport provides the only other means of entering or leaving this beautiful village.

I could show you picture after picture revealing the beauty of Tamatama. The sunrises are as beautiful as the sunsets. The river is gorgeous. The jungle is a mixture of intense greens. But pictures are one-dimensional, never showing the full reality.

You could look at those pictures and imagine lying down at the Orinoco River’s edge listening to the water rushing by, feeling the sun on your face, and enjoying the closeness of the jungle. What an experience!

But then you’d discover the gnats. Visitors to Tamatama soon found any exposed skin covered by itsy-bitsy itchy red dots left by the biting gnats. And those were the lucky ones. Many reacted to the bites leaving slightly infected, not so itsy-bitsy spots, that irritated them even once they escaped to the houses.

Just as you can look at this one-dimensional picture and not see below the surface to the 'hardships' that also come with visiting such a beautiful place, sometimes we look at people’s picture-perfect lives as ‘snapshots’ of their existence without seeing the depths of their struggles. My prayer is that I would look past the snapshot of people's lives and be sensitive to their heart struggles.

Simple Blessings

Sleep on a youth group's Winter Retreat is never quite the same as sleep at home. God understands that. I arrived back at work on Monday stiffer and slower than usual. On my desk sat my "thought and verse for the day" calendar. Discarding the "thoughts" for the weekend days, I smiled as I read Monday's verse:

"I laid me down and slept." Psalms 3:5

Followed by Monday's thought:

"May I never take that simple blessing for granted."

Talk about echoing off my thoughts of the night before---and even a verse to go along with it!

Kerosene & Cleaning Day!

Cleaning is cleaning, right? Or is it? Living in the middle of the jungle in a mud and pole house with a palm roof and cement floors brought new methods of cleaning than I'd previously been accustomed to. For example, do you know how to seal a cement floor when chemical sealers are unavailable? I do now!

Kerosene and wax. You take those two ingredients, put them in a gallon-sized tin can over the gas burner on your stove and heat them until the wax melts. Then you're down on your hands and knees with a rag smearing your homemade cement sealer over the floor. And it really works!

Kerosene and wax melting on the gas burner? Really, it is safe. I did it many, many times. Of course, there was that one time...

The kitchen was buzzing with activity. A team was visiting to help with a project in the village. Several ladies were working on desserts. I had one twin on my hip and the other one crawling around my feet as I waited for the candles to melt into the kerosene. I wanted to get the floors done before lunch.

I glanced into the can to see how the candles were coming, then glanced at my watch. We were still on schedule. Juggling the twin on my hip I was clearing counters when the kerosene burst into flames. That was a first for me. Quickly I turned off the flame and topped the can in a successful attempt at smothering the fire.

Never having had that happen before I checked with more seasoned missionaries than myself. They said though it was not the norm, it could happen. That was enough for me. Back at the kitchen, I made sure no kerosene or wax was on the outside of the can, turned the flame back on and headed for a quick pit stop while the candles continued to melt.

Remember, this was a jungle house with jungle construction. The bathroom adjacent to the kitchen was one of the few rooms with a ceiling, but still there was a gap between the wall and the ceiling. It was through that gap that I suddenly saw flames licking upwards.

"Turn off the gas, then top that can!" I yelled out from the bathroom. Those in the kitchen complied.

Thankfully the wax was melted by then and I sealed the floors.

Around lunch time my husband arrived home and I told him the story. His response sent a shudder down my spine: "That wasn't kerosene, that was aviation fuel!"

Looking back at the can and knowing what I then knew, I could see the faint, mostly worn off markings that should have indicated that aviation fuel had been put into a kerosene can.

For the rest of the day I kept thanking God for protecting me from myself!

An Adventure of God's Making

There's nothing better than heading off on an adventure of God's making!

I'll admit the busload of teens was all I predicted it to be---not calm and definitely not quiet!

I'll admit during the opening session as the leader had the teens screaming and cheering that I reached for my bag and popped Advil to short-circuit the ominous throbbing beginning in my head.

I'll admit that after participating in the many games of volleyball, after walking up the steep hill to the girls' dorm more times than I really cared to, that I discovered muscles where I'd forgotten I had muscles!

But I can't finish this blog without admitting that though I came away from the Winter Retreat physically ready for a hot tub and a quiet night, that I also came away spiritually encouraged and blessed. I can tell you I was blessed by the messages brought by the speaker---and that would be true. More awesome than that was having the opportunity to get to know the teens on a personal level and to be blessed by the testimony shining through their lives.

John 13:35 reads: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." To see teens getting along, sharing with each other, helping each other, and demonstrating a love that is not of this world, but a love that reveals that they are HIS disciples is an awesome thing to see.

God invited me on what appeared to be an uncertain venture and turned it into a definite adventure!