Beyond what meets the eye

Day 4: Friday, July 2, 2010

I awoke this morning slightly confused and disoriented. I was in a hammock with a mosquito net draped over me, there was a thatch roof above me, and through another screen was the most beautiful sunrise cascading over a lush landscape. I’m in the Amazon Jungle waking up to a view of the river. What?!? And I actually went back to sleep for a bit until everyone else started stirring. Sleeping in such conditions, basically outside, will make you do crazy things without even knowing it…like getting up at 5:30 because the sun is shining.

Not long after the gringos had risen, I noticed a group of guys cutting the grass with their machetes of course. Haha! They’ve started working before I’ve even gotten out of bed.

The farm is relatively isolated, with 2 or 3 families living there in order to maintain the farm. We are quite fortunate to have tile showers and a porcelain toilet. Right now it doesn’t seem like anything could be better.

We had a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sweet café amidst swarming mosquitoes. All knowing Daniel and John tell us that the bugs are the worst at dawn and dusk. Now we know.

The team left for the first well-digging site around 8. We traveled up river for about an hour until we arrived in Cannon (Canon?), a village of around 700 hundred people. Everyone on the team was so willing to serve. Even the women and girls were eager to help carry heavy equipment or moving mud with their hands. So it didn’t take long for us to get all our supplies and equipment up the hill (or where the river would’ve been if it was high tide). Julio talked with the village authority about the placement of the well.

God uses the least like of people to accomplish his purposes. If you don’t believe that, maybe we haven’t met yet because I’m about as average as it gets as far as special talents or strengths go. Needless to say, it took me some time before I figured out the well digging process. I was really confused when they started digging holes in the ground with shovels and siphoning water from the river. Why were we there to dig wells if they already have water that they can use? Thankfully once again Daniel and John were wells of information. The drill that YWAM uses is a hydraulic drill which uses both the pressure of the water and the turning motion of the bit to drill more efficiently. So they were digging drains for the water siphoned from the river, so that they could reuse it. In order to keep the pipes aligned correctly and keep pressure off the drill, a wooden structure had to be build that a pulley could hang from.

A few hours after all of this had taken place, we finally began drilling. Around eleven some of the group had activities planned for the children, so they went to the school to minister. They left while I was taking my turn spinning the drill, so I just stayed and tried to help with the well. For me there is something so incredibly amazing about the thought of providing clean drinking water to an entire village, including the children whose stomachs are already poached because of parasites they’ve attained just by drinking impure water. By participating in something that everyone else in the entire village is doing, one might end up with parasites or any other number of diseases. What a picture of what sin can do in our lives. Just as we may choose to do things that everyone else is doing (secular or spiritual people), but the word tells us that in the end it leads to death (Proverbs 14:10).

We continued drilling through lunch, taking turns as we broke away from the work to eat the lunch that Yola and Yolanda had prepared for us on the makeshift boat stove. In the afternoon, the drilling became more difficult because of the depth and the fact that we continued to dig in clay. Also the heat and humidity was quite intense. One basically starts sweating the moment they walk into the sunlight or walk 5 feet, or lay in a hammock…essentially you’re always sweating. Welcome to the jungle.

The people who had dug a well before told us that usually you hit a layer of sand just before finding water. There was no sand. We only brought 20 pipes to attach to the drill, each pipe being about 1.5 meters or 5 feet. Around 2 or 3 we screwed on the last pipe, hoping and praying for water but we found none. We had drilled since 9 am 100 feet down in thick clay and still did not find water. So, Juilo and Clever (YWAM in charge of well digging) asked the authority where he wanted else he might want the well to be.

We carried all our equipment and repeated the entire set up process just up the hill more into the village. The team’s optimism still strong, we began drilling the second well. In general there was a guy manning the generator which powered the drill, John Short holding the top of the drill steady, someone keeping the accurate amount of tension in the rope pulley, and two or three people turning the drill. A few people from the village came to help but the majority just sat around and watched everyone work. Dan and Cathy, a brother and sister from New York, played with the kids at nearly every available opportunity. Wherever Dan went, a crowd of boys was sure to follow, and he speaks even less Spanish than I do, so it was encouraging to see him engage so quickly and not let language be a barrier.

20 feet down and we hit rock. Which they assured was not necessarily a bad sign, it happens often before finding water. Eventually we had to pack up with promises of returning the next day.

Meanwhile back at the farm, everyone scurried to the “showers” (whether that meant the river or the actual shower, to each his own). I opted for an official shower in the tile bathroom. Worst idea ever. I think like a thousand mosquitoes decided my naked butt would be a tasty dinner, which enticed the bat to fly into the bathroom…then I had to walk back the length of a football field through the scary night jungle. The shower was totally not worth it…even if people liked me more because I didn’t smell so bad.

Once again, night fell and all the humans raced for cover against the swarms of mosquitoes. It’s been quite a depressing day. We have come, traveled great distances, to see the Lord do great things and it was disheartening when we couldn’t see what his plan was. But I did hear someone say, “That is just the physical.” Who knows what the Lord accomplished in the hearts of the people who witnessed our love as we came to serve.