Day 83 – Nangaritza!

Look how dark it is at 4am

A knock on the door at 3:45am jolted us awake. I never realized there was actually a 3:45am. I thought just pm. That was weird. We brushed our teeth and ran out the door. When we got to the bus stop we were surprised to see Aaron and Andrea, the couple we met in Vilcabamba when we went there for the weekend. They were going on the same trip-small world getting even smaller. They had come 3 hours on the bus the night before from Loja.  Vanessa and her husband Desiel were also there. We met them a few weeks before when I gave the talk in Yantzaza.

 There was a man at the bus stop selling tamales-he gets there at 3:30am. He deserves every cent he makes. And his wife, who probably wakes up at 1:00am to make them, deserves it even more. Making tamales is a labor of love. We piled on the bus at 4:30 and headed up the mountain.

We ran into a pretty sizeable landslide. The driver took his
time to decide if/how to handle it. Did I mention it was raining?

The sun coming up over the mountains in Guayzimi.

We picked up two young brothers who are serving temporarily in the group in Guayzimi (we were there for a talk last weekend). It was another 1 ½ hours to reach Nangaritza, and we pulled in to town, Las Orquidias, at 8:00. We started with coffee at the little restaurant and went to preach outside the village. I was the last to use the bathroom and by the time I got out, the group had left; except, of course, my faithful wife. That normally wouldn’t be a problem but a guy on a huge bulldozer had begun pushing a mound, so, we waited a few minutes and he made a path for us…I guess.

Thankfully I had borrowed boots from Ryan but the other pair
didn’t fit Leah so she just had shoes. Oh well, it’s only mud right?

Vanessa and Desiel bravely volunteered to cross the river in this contraption. Ok, well they were the skiniest couple and I was pulling the rope. There is one family that lives in the house you can barely see. But we wanted to make sure EVERYONE got an invitation to the memorial.

Around 9 the boat arrived and we all piled in. I noticed several holes with water leaking in and wondered if it would be a problem. Not to be outdone by the fact that they couldn’t get the boat started so they went and got a “specialist” who quickly got it started, but he wasn’t coming with us….hmmm.

Anyways, we started down the river and the scenery quickly unfolded into pretty spectacular. Walls of moss covered rocks and trees going up the mountains on either side. Small to very large waterfalls all over. At times it was almost surreal.

Unfortunately, this "prickly" caterpillar was on a tree that Leah
grabbed onto to pull herself up the hill going to the first community.
She says it hurt pretty bad but fortunately it wasn't poisonous.

We visited two communities. In the first one, I worked with Aaron and there are lots of Swar speaking people. Although they have their religion they are receptive and many times have questions. Leah worked with Andrea and spoke with this woman, Yanet. Her first question was, of course: Did Mary have other children? Then whether God forgives someone who commits suicide (there had been a young person in the community that had shot himself in the face/head 3 months ago). But the topper was whether God tests/punishes us by allowing/causing bad things to happen. She was asking because 2 years ago her 8 year old son was violated by a 16 year old in the community-so much for paradise. They were able to share quite a few scriptures that Yanet seemed very comforted by and they left some literature, hopefully the next time the witnesses pass through she'll have some more good questions.

I guess this is where you play when you live on the river

Oh, by the way, the holes were no match for our multi-tasking
driver who could steer and dump buckets of water at the same time

Believe it or not, this is a military base (where we got permission
to stop and have lunch) - there's 8 soldiers that rotate every
2 months. We preached to them after lunch

If you look closely, you can see the river is 2 different
colors. It's actually where 2 rivers come together.
One is dark from the gold and the other light.

The mountains in the background are in Peru

After lunch, a bunch of the brothers went swimming in the river. The water was pretty cold but it was hot enough that nobody seemed to care. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

On the way back, we stopped by some rocks where there are a ton of fossils. The water was higher than normal so we didn't see as many as usual but it was pretty cool. We got back around 4 and happily got on the bus at 4:30 to go down the mountain. Everyone was tired. And despite the bus driver blaring bad club music (in English) I think everyone slept for the first few hours..... Until........

The axle broke on a dump truck hauling sand-blocking traffic
from passing on either side.

 That's right, nobody was getting through so we had to argue with the bus driver to get a partial refund, get off the bus, look for some transport on the other side of the problem...and hope for the best. There happened to be an empty bus on the other side so we talked to the bus driver and 30 minutes later we were on our way. 2 Hours later we were back in Yantzaza. We grabbed a bite to eat, collected our stuff from the brothers house and he took us home. When we got home at 11 we were tired and filthy and ready for a hot shower....NO WATER.....Icing on the cake to a long day