Another photoblog for y’all because I just don’t have any words for the amount of joy I’ve experienced here this month! Every morning I’ve woken up in the clouds.
hiked through the mountains, helped with construction on the land and ended the day as a human jungle gym for some seriously sweet girls. I didn’t take very many pictures this month or write very much in my journal, and obviously I’m not blogging a lot — but this month was the busiest month full of awesome memories. I guess I was too busy to actually stop and take pictures, which is a first.
A really crazy thing happened this past week. Our mountain caught fire twice. The first time we were mildly worried, because it was far enough away that we were able to stop it before it came close to our living quarters. We put out the fire like the locals do — with branches soaked in water. You just go to the edge of the fire and beat the hell out of it until it dies. Needless to say, you get covered in soot, inhale and immense amount of smoke and ruin your clothes with smoke. It’s a nasty job, but quite exhilarating! The second fire was pretty scary. We were napping in the afternoon and a fire jumped a fire break, which is a protective layer of ground around the premises, and started outside our window. We were nearly smoked out. It was God’s mercy that we woke up in time to respond and get out of the room before it filled completely with smoke and choked us. I ran out of the room without shoes and ran through a tunnel of fire and a wall of smoke that hurt my lungs for the next day or two. After we realized we were all ok, we grabbed our branches and started fighting the fire for the next 2 hours. Our team really bonded over that catastrophe. Here are some pictures of the fire and the aftermath around our home.
The fire burned all the banana trees on the property, destroyed the fence and burned up all the grass. We were so lucky that our houses didn’t go up in flames. The fire stopped literally a foot from our house. Praise God! Everyone’s belongings survived as well. Oh, well, I have a pretty hole on the leg of my pants now. I was trying to scale a wall to beat the fire that was quickly trying to burn our school down. I wasn’t as graceful as I thought I was going to be and got caught on some barbed wire. I think I’ll leave the hole though…it’s a pretty cool story. “Say, where’d you get that there hole in your drawers?� “Oh, this? Well when I was in Swaziland, our property caught fire and it threatened to burn a school that 60 orphans attend, so naturally I jumped the fence to save God’s children.� BOO-YAH I’m a hero!
