Travel Day: 6
On Ground Day: 4
I’ll give you a break today and not write six billion paragraphs. This is mostly because my revelations for the day were a lot more personal, and because even though we got to watch some sports and talk and play with kids a lot more than we have been, there were a lot less events crammed in today.
Morning was the usual: Fabian singing, devo, breakfast.
After breakfast the morning was a get-to-know people sesssion. We split into three groups of two parejas each. Dana/Bryan/Matt/Angela, Teddy/Nicole/Jerry/Necia, and Lane/Danielle/Sarah/me. The idea was to tell the group, particularly our pareja just our life story, our family, our walk with God; a testimony of sorts. Sarah and Danielle were away from the group when this was decided and Sarah was being a nurse, fixing up a really nasty cut a Huaorani girl had gotten. You could just see the joy in her eyes as she got to do what she does and what she loves. When the first ten minutes of our alotted half an hour had gone by, we thought we’d get to get started, but we were commandeered to go pick lemons.
It wasn’t quite the trek that the banana hunters would take later on (I’m really glad for the sake of dryness that I wasn’t on that excursion) but it was a little wet and muddy. When we got to the lemon tree it was raining, but fortunately the appropriate way to pick them is from inside the hanging branches, so we were totally covered. Unfortunatly, we were not warned that the large chunks of dead leaves and dirt in the branches were ant nests. And these are mean ants. They bite immediately and it hurts. I had three get on my arm and suffered several bites from each before I could get them off. I think they just have really strong pincers because I only squeezed one of the bites, and though it looked like some venom came out, all of them stopped burning fairly quickly. Crushing the doggone ants is the hardest part. You can break the things in half and the head half will still be biting your hand.
We took them back to the kitchen and then finally (about the time we were originally supposed to be finished) started on the testimonies. Its funny how a consistent topic in these kind of conversations throughout all twelve of us has been trust issues, and yet out of the four of us who had been strangers at the beginning of training, we talked and heard about fears, issues, and stumbles amidst faith, family, friends and relationships. Lots about relationships. A certain superlative I got in our senior yearbook was even mentioned. Oh well.
Overall it was a really great experience. I think it let us even have some revelations about ourselves as we verbally, externally processed our own faith journeys for our pareja and friends. And ended in prayer.
We made it back to lunch really late. The kids were already lining up, and it was really good that Dana, Necia and Jerry had gotten back on time to set up. I did help serve for a while, and when all the plates were passed out, I felt like Milton in Office Space (“The ratio of cake to people…”). Dana, fortunately, is awesome (and not a big eater) and shared her gigantic bowl with me, so I got lunch even though we actually ran out of food (EDIT: This was the only meal all 8 days that Roberto did not personally serve. I think he was working on dinner already. That man can stretch some food).
After we were relieved for lunch dishes afterward, I discovered that I literally had an ant in my pants. One of those monster ones from the lemon tree. Tons of fun, let me tell you, especially when he gets to bite you several times before you realize what it is. But it turned out okay, because I went back to the church to get Chet’s bug bite/anti-itch stuff and it began raining just as I was walking in the door, greeted by Teddy and Lane. It downpoured for maybe forty-five minutes, and so while we were stuck there, the three of us just got to nap in our own beds while everyone else was stuck in the kitchen or under the covering in town. And since the ant bites are more of an immediate than an ongoing problem, it turned out that the little guy gave me a little extra sleep. Too bad I crushed him under my thumb. Oh well, little ant. Maybe you taught me not to be so vindictive as well. You’ll never know.
Back just in time to set up/eat/clean up dinner and get in some practice. We were asked to sing for the program, so we had three songs prepared (Lord I Lift Your Name on High, Every Move I Make, and Open The Eyes of My Heart) and I was relieved from dishes to practice while all 12 other gringos and Fabian washed them all in record time. When we finally headed to the program, I’m not sure if we were just a few minutes too late or if we had misunderstood the request. But whatever the case, the entire program was a play in several acts with all of the South American crew involved. It was a Share-the-Gospel message as well as an anti-alcohol message that seemed pretty intense for some of the younger ones. Rey came out at the end and gave a straight up sermon about alcoholism and just slammed the secular part of Huaorani culture. Even Sarah just started giving me the highlights in her translation after a while (EDIT: It was Monday before I really began to realize how important a message that was and why Rey felt so strongly, and why those two topics were woven together the way they were. I only discuss it briefly in the post, but see my writing from Monday, June 16).
Debrief was Jerry and Necia and they had us write down 10 essential characteristics of life. It is a hard exercise to explain, and took us a little while to catch on ourselves, but it really made us think about what we need, and what we hope we’ve gained from our time with the Huaorani. We each said our number one from our list and could talk about it if we wanted. Mine was Faith. Necia’s was Brokenness, but the one from her list that stuck out to me was Surrender. When we split into parejas, Sarah and I each stole a couple of each other’s, and I’m sure that this is something I could do all the time and maybe have two the same (definitely one) and new ones depending on the stage of my life and my walk with God at the time. I may even do that periodically to see what they would be.
What would your top ten essentials be?
