Cultural Moments of the Week

TO TRUST:
Early Wednesday morning Jeremy and I started to discussing different scripture verses relating to trusting or purity. One was Titus 1: 15 "To the pure, all things are pure, but to those that are corruptted and do not believe, nothing is pure..."and that with Christ saying "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves" in Matthew 10:16. and the we are called to be in the world but not of the world. So my questions where circling around what do these verses look like played out in our day to day life or basically if these verses are applied in my life, how do the they manifest themselves in my daily living. I have a hard time maintaining a balance of both and usually swing to one side or the other. Being dishonest here in Iquitos is common and is kind of looked upon as being clever or smart. And it makes it difficult to trust people and at times I find myself looking for the hidden reason behind someone desiring friendship etc and that is a struggle for me. However, Elita, our house helper says I'm way too trusting and she is a super solid believer. So, thus the discussion I was having with Jeremy. So at the end of the discussion, I basically conclude that I want to see the best in people and not to expect the worst, its just not who I am or how God made me and that I'd deal with finding a balance on being more shrewd but in an innocent way. =)

Well about 4 hours later the garage door guy comes to maintenance our garage door motor. He is the same guy that we bought it from and that installed it when we first moved up here. We have the Fusion team here, so Jeremy was in the living room doing training with them, I was in the bedroom nursing Adalyn and Elita was here and helping us keep an eye on the garage door guy. He is doing a great job, he fixed a few problems we were having on it, greased the chain, cleaned everything etc... no red flags at all. Well he asked Elita if he could get some water, she brought him some and then he said that he thought he heard something going wrong with the washing machine, which is around the side of the house away from the car port area. So she went to check it out and when she walked back to the garage area, he was gone with the motor & clicker and the door was open. So there was my first test in keeping a balance of not seeing evil in people and I think I over shot, since he took advantage of us and stole our garage door motor (which FYI wasn't ever really on my list of things people would steel from us- LOL!). But since it had been over a year since we had seen the guy, neither Jeremy nor I remember his name and were just refering to him as "hermano" (brother) and the cell phone # we have for him is disconnected and we can't figure out who was it that recommended him to us. For the maintenance job he did, We hired him because he had just shown up at the house the day before and reminded us that we needed to have the maintenance done on it. So we don't have any true contact information on him that is current...sigh. I guess its back to opening the door manually and remembering to be pure and shrewd. We've decided that we are now going to scan everyone's DNI card (ID card) when they come to do work on the house, because that way we'll be able to track them down if we're robed again.

THE CURE:
So Adalyan has thrush of the mouth. We're treating her with medicine the doctor recommended and its clearing up. But everytime a Peruvian lady notices it in her mouth, I get almost ver batam the same advice:

"Do I have a clothe diaper? If I do, then all I need to do is give Adalyn a bath, so that she is nice & clean, put on the clothe diaper, let her pee in it. Then immediately take off the diaper, find the moist spot and rub the urine soaked diaper around in her mouth for several swabs and then nurse her. And there is no need to have to go to the doctor, that is the way thrush is cured here in the jungle".

I haven't acclimated enough to the life here yet, I think, to try it. And since the medicine is working, I think I'll stick to that. Although, I have had 2 gringos try to reassure me of the sterileness of urine but really its the mental leap that has to occur that would give me a hard time trying to do it. LOL!

Praise, Praise, Praise to the Most High

After a year of praying- our friend Alejandro has accepted Christ. He lives one of the Iquito villages that Bryan Baptist Association works in. He has been counting the cost for awhile now and very close to accepting Christ several times before but not willing to truly give up certain aspects of his sin nature. After asking Dr. Bandy to go on a hunt with him in the jungle and it turning out to be a successful one killing a taper, 2 majas and a large armadillo. Alejandro knew that it had to have been the Lord's blessing and faithfulness because it was a direct answer to prayer before. Him and his wife Rosa (who accepted Christ in October) were also baptized. So please pray for them as they start out in their walks with the Lord in Atalaya.

We're Back

So after our little baby detour in Lima- we've been back in Iquitos for a little over 3 weeks now. We've been super doper busy since we landed. Getting the house livable again after being away, unpacking things we had stored for safe keeping and what not. We also came home to a jungle for a back yard. The grass had grown like no one's business and we also some how started to grow a type of poison ivy that grows here as well as several colonies of fire ants. So we just decided to make it our Christmas gift to each other- and started all over. We dug up the entire back yard (with the help of another missionary & 2 Peruvians), planted new flower bushes, 2 new trees, 10 banana trees, started a vegetable garden and put new sod down. Now you'd think that would have cost a small furtune but luckily we live in the jungle and it cost us less than $200 and that includes labor and fertilizer and dirt! Craziness. Anyways- we did all that the week before Christmas. We also had so much fun catching up with friends and other missionaries up here and showing off Adalyn. We met a new couple down the street from us that have a son Karis' age. We had them over for dinner and are hoping to get to know them better, we were able to share a little with them during dinner but mostly just got to know them.

We have also had 2 teams come in and go out on the river. Oklahoma Baptist Univeristy has a team of 14 down here until Jan 17 during discipleship with the Iquito People. Casey Kidd is back (our Hands On Semester Missionary from last year) and he brought two more guys from Union University (John & Josh) to work with the Yagua for 21 days in the village of Esperanza (Hope).

The girls are adjusting to the jungle and the heat well. Those first few days were really rough- they both had horrorable heat rash and both were miserable. But every day gets better.

Christmas was so much fun this year. If our internet is running a little faster soon or we go to the airport (faster internet there) then I'll try to upload some pictures.

All in all we're glad to be back and looking forward to all the God is going to do here in 2011.