Sometimes in life, you just gotta go with it.
{ TJ & Jazmin, new team members }
My team and I learned that the hard way this weekend. We set off on Thursday night to head off into the jungle of Ecuador. The plan was to follow a missionary to the airport, pick up two other missionaries, then take a 5 hour bus ride to our location in the jungle. We’ve been told the set up would be like our normal everyday set up at InkaLink, which is bunk beds, warm blankets, and decent bathrooms.
What we didn’t expect was an hour and a half bus ride to the airport, a 30 minute bus ride from the air poet to catch the bus to the jungle, and then a 2 1/2 hour wait for the bus that would then take us to the jungle that actually was 6 hours away.
By the time our bus actually arrived, it was 9:30 PM. This put us at our location at 3:30 AM, that location being on the side of the street in the pouring rain. Luckily our building was on the other side of the street. By this time we are soaking wet and super excited to just crawl into a bed and get some rest. But what we got was about 2 inch thick padded mats with one blanket in a classroom where we were told class would be held at 9 the next day, meaning we had about 4 hours to sleep until we had to be up for breakfast. Oh and then Casey got attacked by a moth the size of a bat. Always the perfect way to end the day. Not to mention the rain storm lasted all night and I swear it was coming down so hard for a moment I thought we were on Noah’s Ark.
{ the huge monster moth, next to a normal moth }
So the next morning we are up at 8:30, most of us ready to call it quits, but we headed down to breakfast anyway. Then we got the privilege of hanging out in a fellow Americans dorm room to rest some more while the kids here had class. This made for some good team bonding time and Jungle Jim has a pretty sweet hammock I got to chill in! (Thanks Jim, incase you ever read this!)
Then after lunch the fun really began! Some of the kids took us on about an hour or so hike to the MOST BEAUTIFUL WATERFALLS IVE EVER SEEN! And to top it off, we got to swim in them! The hike, the views, the waterfalls, and even the mud, it was all so worth the miserable night before. It actually topped my list for best day on the race so far.
{ waterfall we got to swim in }
{ Jim’s awesome hammock }
And to end it all we had dinner in a gazebo with a grass roof around a fire and after we ate, we learned a local dance. Then had a little dance party of our own with the people here at the ministry.
The sowers may have been droplets of water we had to fill up a bucket with. The bugs and mosquitos may have been countless. The “beds” may not have actually been beds. But, the people were insanely sweet, the sights were breathtaking, and the laughs were endless.
A weekend we easily could have turned around and walked away from with a nasty attitude, turned into a lot of memories I will never forget. It’s fun when you trust God to see how He can turn what seems to be a less than ideal situation into a glorious adventure.
{ beautiful ladies of team F.L.A.M.E }
