ali's african adventures

For those of you who are handy with calendars, it's probably obvious that this post is coming far earlier than the two week mark. I'm sitting in the internet cafe in Iquitos, looking out at the whirl of mototaxis passing by and wishing like anything that I could trade it in for the quiet rush of the Rio Tigre.

To be honest, I thought I was going to make it. When we arrived in Nauta on Monday I felt better than I had in weeks, and while sitting in a hammock reading my Bible I stumbled across these verses from Isaiah 35:

Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come ... He will come to save you.”

I felt so sure that I could claim that promise for my poor, feeble hands and for the rest of my body. But waking up the next morning was nothing short of terrible, and each day got progressively worse. By Thursday night it was pretty obvious that getting in a boat for seven plus hours wasn't going to be a good idea, to say nothing of the eight days to follow far from any kind of medical facility. If it had been the last week of outreach, we might have pushed it, but this is only the beginning, and we want more than anything to see it through to the end.

So here I am, more than a little disappointed, but filled with peace about the decision. I saw a doctor at a private clinic yesterday, and feel confident in the battery of tests he's prescribed. He's asking enough questions that if no answer shows up, there probably isn't one to be found. I'll keep you posted as I know results, but it'll be at least a few days.

In the meantime, I have some pictures for you to enjoy. Once we head out on the rest of the outreach, I'm fairly sure that there will be neither time nor internet connections for me to give you more than very sporadic glimpses into what we're doing, so I figured I'd take advantage of the time here in the city. Much of what we'll be doing for the rest of the outreach will echo these past few days, too; lots of dirt fields and dancing kids and parks crowded with people wanting to see what the crazy gringos are up to.

The kids were, of course, beautiful. I could post a hundred photos of them, but here are just a couple. The little guy in the red shirt is Renzo, and he lived just down the street from the camp where we stayed. He spent most of every day hanging out with us, building elaborate play houses from stones and sticks and drawing in the dirt with machetes that he would pinch from who knows where.





Sometimes we did programs in the little church at the camp, nearly empty when we would start and crammed full with no room to breathe by the time we finished.



And, more often, we would head out to a little community in the surrounding area and make our way to the ubiquitous football field. Every village has one, and we made good use of them. While I wasn't able to do much in the way of drama or dancing, I had the privilege at one of the programs to present the Gospel. You can see in the photo that I'm standing in front of a big group of kids, but what you can't see is that all around the field, safe in the shade of their houses (which was wise on a day where the sun was the hottest I have ever felt it), were just as many adults, listening and watching everything that we were doing.





One of the old ladies who braved the sun the day to inch a little closer to the field for a good view:





Can you spot the HoJ? (Hint: he's the one in the front, pretending to be Superman.)



The unanimous favourite when it comes to games? Que hora es, Señor Lovo? It involves mainly running and shrieking, and they love it. Here they are doing both of those things in style.



And, of course, someone has to guard the wheelbarrow! (This photo is being posted specifically for Riley's mum, because I know she reads here and loves to see what her son is up to. Don't worry mama; he does a lot more than just sleep in wheelbarrows, as you can see in one of the previous photos!)



On Friday morning we caught motos down to the river with the rest of the team and waved them off as a rainbow spilled its glory into the river, a promise for the week the come, whether spent in tents in the jungle or doctor's offices in the city.

Just a quick note to let you know the plan for the next two weeks, lest the long silence causes anyone to wonder which new tropical disease I've fallen victim to...

We leave early Monday morning on a two-hour bus ride to the only other city accessible by road from here in Iquitos: a river community called Nauta. We'll spend four days there, and on Friday (the HoJ's birthday!) we'll all load into the Logos, the largest of the boats belonging to the river ministry on the base. From Nauta it's about six hours by boat to the Rio Tigre, where our destination will be the community of Nueva York. (Yes, that does mean 'New York.' No, I'm not sure why I came to an entirely different hemisphere just to go to a city I could have reached in an hour on a local train from home.) We'll spend a little over a week there, doing whatever the local church has planned for us and drilling a well for the people of the community.

Health-wise, I'm not sure how much of the trip is going to include me. I've been feeling pretty rough the last few days especially, and a second trip to the hospital provided me with a set of labs slightly worse than when I actually had Dengue and a doctor who was firmly convinced that there was no way it could be the culprit. I came home and did the test on myself, since the first-aid kit now lives permanently in my room, and while it wasn't as obvious as the first time, there were some telltale little red dots in the crook of my arm.

All that to say, I'm not sure what's going on, and I'm not sure what to think. I'm going to head to Nauta with the team on Monday, and if my poor, ragged body can't hack it, I'll come home on Friday when the rest of them hit the river proper. Please do pray for us to have wisdom as to what I should do. Such a big piece of me wants to completely ignore the way I feel and jump into that boat without looking back. This river outreach was a huge part of the reason that we came to Peru for our DTS, and the thought of missing it is like a fist in the gut.

However, I have been blessed with a husband (of joy) who is a far more conscientious guardian of my health than I'll ever be, so I think I'll just let him tell me what to do. Time will tell how much I'll be able to participate, and at the end of the day, there are eight more weeks of outreach after the river, each in a different city, so I'll need all the health I can get my sore little hands on.

See you all in two weeks, hopefully. If you hear from me sooner please be prepared with words of love and encouragement, because I'm going to be feeling pretty disappointed.

Here's a collage of all the people on Equipo Rojo, pretty much the best team ever. Although all thirty of us will be on the river together, once we're back in Iquitos we'll split off into three teams. Please be praying for us!



Top (L-R): Ingie (Canada), Matt (USA), Annie (USA), Korky (Peru)
Middle: Pam (USA, one of our leaders), Roger (Peru), Me & HoJ (not quite sure where we live), Sandi (USA, our other leader)
Bottom: Debora (Brasil), Amber (USA), Megan (USA)

I had a long talk with one of our leaders, Sylvia, the other day, 'a core dump' in every sense of the phrase. It’s just finally caught up with my how sick I’ve been and how frustrated I feel at feeling so useless. I broke my cardinal rule ("Never Cry in Public"), and I broke it in style.

And into my tears she spoke the truth I’ve been scrambling for.

You are enough, even when you can’t do anything. Whether you do everything or nothing, you are enough.

I have come to the end of myself, to the end of anything remotely like solid ground. It’s all quicksand under me, sicking at my ankles, and my only hope is to keep from sinking. Somehow.

But it is enough.
I am enough because He is enough.
Just like I am not broken, I am also not useless.

I just feel like I finally have clarity; I finally understand. I’ve been so frustrated by being sick and by my numb inability to grasp why.

But it’s so simple.

Since I came to Peru, God has been doing a massive work in the area of my identity. The biggest stronghold for me was how I’ve always defined myself by my past failures and the scars they left me with. Satan danced for years on top of those walls, but God shattered them at a word. I do not call myself broken anymore; I claim my identity in my Father’s house, and the devil can’t stand to see me so happy.

So he tried the same trick in a different guise, and I’ve been falling for it hard over the course of the past endless month.

I got sick, and suddenly broken was replaced with useless. Not only am I far from the ship and sitting in class, but now I lack the strength even to get out of bed and do that some days. He’s been attacking another core part of my identity, one that I’ve never been willing to admit to: I am what I achieve. It’s not the scars from the past chains haunting me now, but the echo of former success driving me forward relentlessly.

I’ve always been good at life, at least in the areas the world likes to measure. 1600 on my SATs (back when that actually meant something), full scholarship to college, stellar evaluations at work. I’m a skilled nurse, I learn languages easily, I read quickly and write almost as fast, and somehow I have allowed all this, too, to define me.

This one is trickier. It’s easy to see why you shouldn’t let ugly scars determine your identity, but what’s so wrong with skills and talents and abilities doing the same thing?

Because, as I have finally learned, (after 3 interminable years of being sick off and on) all that can be taken away with a single mosquito bite, a single stick with a needle. Pain is no respecter of abilities, and it certainly doesn’t stop to ask whether or not it’s going to interfere with your plans for the week or month or year. Exhaustion brooks no refusals, no feeble attempts to keep going anyway.

And so I’m forced to peel all that away, to set fire to a lifetime of hiding behind the things I can do and step into the light, covered in only what has survived the flames. And I’m not going to lie to you - it’s been terrifying. I lie in my bed when everyone else is at class and I sob into my pillow because I’m so afraid that I won’t be anything at all if you take all that away from me.

But, oh, thank God that He is my cover, that He is the one who has walked through this fire with me. Stripped of everything else, I still have Him, only have Him, and because He is enough, I am enough.

I am not useless because He is using me, flat on my back or hard at work.
I am enough.

Enough.

I have a funny story to tell you, and I think it just underscores for me yet again why I'm not ready to come back to the first world for good quite yet.

I had gone into town to use the internet (and maybe get some ice cream, but you don't need to tell the HoJ that, please) and on my way home, the mototaxi I was riding in suddenly pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. This, mind you, was after two previous stops, one for gas and one for I can't remember what, so I just thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't in a hurry and hopped out to see what was up. The dear, taciturn driver took a look at the back wheel where a rice sack had somehow gotten wrapped around it underneath the chain and, without a word, proceeded to tip the taxi up on its side so he could start working on taking care of the problem. The problem, as far as I was concerned, lay more in the fact that he didn't warn me that he was going to tip a taxi on its side directly in the place where I was standing, and so I jumped back to avoid being squished. The secondary problem quickly became evident, as I promptly fell about three feet backwards down an inexplicable drop in the sidewalk, scraping a good part of the skin off the side of one of my feet in the process and badly jarring my already sore bones.



The process of bag removal took a good twenty minutes, aided by a knife borrowed from a nearby home, while I watched and muttered encouraging comments, praying that the threatening clouds wouldn't open up and that I wouldn't bleed on the sidewalk. I could have walked home, but I felt a strange sense of solidarity with the poor driver, despite his having nearly caused my ruin. Once the bag was cut away and the taxi was tipped back squarely on its three wheels, I climbed back in, and we set off towards home. Only then did the driver open his mouth again, to inform me gravely that, in fact, a bag had wrapped itself around the wheel, and that was why we had to stop.

Thank you, sir. I hadn't noticed.

And that's why I love the third world, and why I'm growing more and more to love this particular corner of it. I love the pace of it, where twenty minutes to hack apart a rice bag isn't too long to wait.

I love the random butterflies that land on the wall outside my room, their wings fluttering in the cool breeze that always blows across this particular passageway.



I love the restaurant at the end of our street, where it connects with the main road, where, for less than $4.50 for the both of us we can treat ourselves to this feast.



I love that Phil and I went out for cebiche the other day and, halfway through a pile of raw fish, decided it was delicious enough that we could call it our anniversary lunch. (I also love that my mother is probably shaking her head at the screen right now, remembering the endless battles required to get my childhood self to eat fish that was properly cooked; if she had a grave, she'd be positively spinning in it to hear that I'm willingly gulping down heaping plates of the raw stuff!)






I love that when the dinner bell rings, sometimes this is what I walk past on the way downstairs. The clouds here are endlessly changing, with a different sunset every night to be enjoyed from that same passageway that the butterflies frequent, the one with the perfect, cool breezes.



The one thing I don't love? Dengue. This announcement is painted on a wall near our street, encouraging us all to remove dengue from our houses, and for the first half of the school, I would pass blithely by in my mototaxi, feeling vaguely sorry for the people who were unfortunate enough to come down with it. It's a long sign, and goes on to encourage us that, if we're united, we'll be victorious. I should have gotten on the team sooner.



Now, however, it smacks me in the face every sings time, not simply because I'm still dealing with the after effects, but because its taken down one of our leaders, too. He got sick with it during our mini-outreach, and due in part to that and in part to family illness, he and his wife left early this morning to go home to Columbia. They won't be coming on the big outreach with us, and we're going to feel the loss of them cruelly. Please pray for Wylson and Dea as they travel and spend much-needed time at home with their loved ones.

But hey, let's look on the bright side: even thought it hurts, at least my entire body doesn't look like this anymore, right?



And as much as we're happy here, discovering all the things we'll miss about it, our thoughts are turned forward to the fall. Plans are quickly coming together for our return to the ship and our introduction to the fine country of Sierra Leone, and there's a big part of both of us that doesn't want to wait.

Let the adventures continue!

Sorry for the long silence. After spending almost two weeks in bed, I was only too happy to put my newfound energy to the test, which left very little time for lounging around on the internet. Add to that the fact that last weekend was our second mini outreach (this time to a local church here in Iquitos) and the lack of blogging becomes fairly understandable.

The weekend outreach was a little taste of what our long outreach is likely to be like, once we come back from the river. (Incidentally, we leave for that trip in just two weeks, somehow!) We slept in the church, and led services for the youth, Bible studies, and Sunday meetings. We did dramas and danced and played in a football tournament (at least the boys did) and my ultimate favourite part was Sunday morning when we got to do a program for the kids. In classic South American fashion, we ended up having to fill an extra half hour of time, so yours truly got to take over the mike and re-dance all the dances. The kids seemed to understand what was going on, so my Spanish couldn’t have been totally unintelligible, and the only big mistake I made was allowing a dear autistic boy pray for the snack. He grinningly thanked God for the poo poo, and I was forced to do a quick swoop for the mike and re-pray before the kiddies realized what had happened. It’s all a learning experience though, right? I’m sure I’ve unwittingly said worse than that in my attempts to communicate.

The girls relaxing during some down time:



Phil getting in touch with his inner devil during a drama at the church:



...and with his inner hip-hop star during a choreography presentation at the football tournament:



Megan, Miri and Keren performing a hilarious clown skit for the kids:



Of course I found a baby. What did you expect? This is little Liel.



(Thanks to Janine for the photo!)

The weekend was wonderful, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you what’s been happening since then. By the time the mini outreach had finished, I was feeling a familiar ache in my hands. Over the course of this past week, my feet and knees have been feeling progressively worse, and as I write this, it’s to the point that I can barely walk up and downstairs. In short, I’m feeling just about as bad as I was before I was healed.

I’ve been struggling with how to share this, because I’ve been struggling to even understand it myself. I’ve been more than a little discouraged, feeling like God gave me a taste of His power and then snatched it away from me as soon as I started to get comfortable with it. I keep asking myself if it even counts as a miracle, since the pain came back after only a week, and I can’t help doubting the whole experience.

And this is exactly what the enemy would have me do. So I won’t.

I know what I felt, and I know that I spent an entire week completely free from pain and tiredness. I know that I woke up each morning refreshed and ready for the day, and I know full well how much I danced with the kids. For those of you who’ve been to Campamento El Faro in Ecuador, you’ll know what it means when I say that Para Los Niños was just the beginning!

It doesn’t matter that I have pain right now, because I didn’t have any last week. If clouds cover the sun, it doesn’t mean the sun has been thrown from the sky. It just means I have to wait to feel its warmth again.

And sometimes, it’s warm no matter how thickly the clouds gather. Today marks the second anniversary of the day I married my best friend. We’ve spent the past year living wild adventures all around the world, and there’s no indication that the adventuring will stop any time soon. We’ve officially made the decision to head back to the ship in the fall for at least another two years, and I can see my life with this man stretching out in front of me like a promise.

So shucks to a little pain; it’s not so important when he’s there to tell me it’s going to be okay.

Since April showers apparently bring May flowers, here are a few pretty flowered wallpapers for your desktop's adornment.







(Click any of the photos to go to the larger version, and may your May be filled with flowers.)