This month is Man-istry month. All the men on my squad get to spend a month serving together. We are serving a small church/school/daycare in Apolo, Bolivia. Upon arrival, our host told us we would be traveling to a small jungle village called Huarutuma to spend a long weekend where we would be preaching and serving the community. He told us that 4 of us would ride in the back of a truck and 6 would ride in an 8 passenger van. We were told to be ready at 9 am and that it would take less than 4 hours to get to the village. We were promptly ready to leave at 9am and proceeded to wait. 10am came and went. 11am and 12pm passes by. We ate lunch. Finally at 2pm an old green truck pulls up. 5 of us, myself included, climb into the back of the truck and head out. It is a spacious truck, very robust, built for rough roads and hauling lots of wieght, it had definitly seen better days. We ramble through Apolo and stop to pick up a spare tire and do a quick oil change. Then, curiously, people started wondering down the empty streets towards the truck. They had bags full all different types of goods: meats, rice, cloths, potatoes, Coke, etc. I didn’t think anything about it until they all started piling into the back of the truck. After about 30 minutes of putting lots of stuff into the back of the truck, 12 other people got in with us. There was standing room only. We took off and as we drove along the dirt road out of town we proceed to pick up a few more people, the total was now 20 people and their stuff in the back of our old green truck. The drive out of town was nice, I had a little girl falling asleep on the back of my calf but other than that I was excited for our drive. The sun was hot but the fresh breeze kept us cool. The dirt road slowly climb into the mountains and the views became spectacular. (I will upload some pictures to accompany this blog when I get to LaPaz in two weeks, the internet in Apolo is very slow). As the road climbed so did the difficulty of the road. The truck started to plow through deep mud puddles, climb over rocks, drive through rivers and streams, drive across sketchy bridges, and drive incredibly close to sharp drop-offs. Every so often, the truck would suddenly jolt to one side and for 5-10 seconds, everyone braced themselves anticipating that the truck would roll, but we never did. We soon got the hang of it and every time the truck would jolt to one side, we would lean in the opposite direction, using our weight to keep the truck from rolling. Once or twice we had to get out and help push the truck free of the mud and every so often all the passengers got out of the truck because the road was so treacherous that no one would risk being in the truck as it traversed that section of the road. Twice we had to get out of the truck and fix a bridge before we could cross it. This went on for about 4 hours, 2 of which that little girl slept clung to my leg, and then we started to descend into the jungle. It was one of the quickest terrain changes I have ever experienced. On one side of the mountain there were lush green pastures, trees, and lots of streams; and on the other side of the mountain was jungle. As we declined in elevation the jungle got thicker and thicker, the air got hotter and hotter, and instead of worrying about rolling, we had to worry about getting slapped in the face by low hanging vines and branches. Finally, after 5 hours of standing in the back of this truck we pulled into Huarutuma just as the sun was setting behind the mountains. As we got out of the truck, many of the villagers came to meet us and so did the 100 million flesh eating gnats. I am not 100% sure but I think that these particular gnats loved white meat because all 10 of us men proceeded to feed the entire population of gnats. It absolutely sucked. I have Jungle Juice, which is a powerful bug repellent that is 98% DEET. Even with that stuff on, the gnats still found ways to bite me. Over the next three days I quickly fell in love with these people. During the first church service we attended, they have an amazing way of greeting their guests. They play a song on the guitar and all of the guests line up in the front of the church. Then, one at a time, each member of the church comes up to us and greets us with any combination of hugs, hand shakes, kisses, and each gladly gave us a loving smile. I have never felt so welcomed or loved so quickly in all of my life. I was fortunate to be able to accompany a man from my team, named Cole, on some medical visits around the village over the next few days. That experience opened my eyes to the struggles both medically and emotionally that some of these people had to deal with. You can read more about that experience here. In addition to helping where we could medically, we spent our time there teaching english, putting on some day-long kid’s programs, we taught at multiple churches, and we did our best to fix some broken machinery. It was a great experience to get to know these wonderful people and serve them as best we could.
