Cowboys, Crocodilians, and Quicksand

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a western with the wide open space out here and people who stop by on horses. The other day a “cowboy” rode up looking for his lost horse. Unfortunately he was a day late. There was a horse wandering around our yard the day before but had moved on.

Other times it feels like something out of Indiana Jones when I take a hike around our landlord’s property and suddenly find the ground beneath me trying to make me a midday snack. I’ve run into “quick mud” before or sand that sinks relatively fast but this was the real deal quicksand. Everywhere I stepped the ground turned to liquid and so I could not backtrack, I had to find a new path. The faster I moved, the quicker the what felt like solid ground liquefied into a soupy mess. How to survive quicksand: Don’t run, you’ll only make the quicksand “quicker”. I feel like there is a moral in there somewhere.
And then there are Crocodile Dundee moments like Tuesday night when all the dogs were barking more intensely than usual. I went out to investigate only to find a hissing pair of glowing eyes in the bushes surrounded by the dogs. At first I thought it was a small wild cat but it turned out to be a Spectacled Caiman, a smaller relative to Crocodiles and Alligators. Those of you who know me know that of course I could not leave it alone. Soon I was traipsing up to the house to display my 5 foot Caiman to Jenna.

Quicksand, Caimans, Snakes in my seedling fruit trees, and tarantulas on the porch, it has been an adventure as usual. The new year promises to bring lots more exiting things, in addition, of course, having a little one around. Last weekend we had our team out to our house for a meeting to plan for this coming year. There are a lot of projects and ministries we hope to accomplish this year. Hopefully we can get the chicken project running smoothly and put in the nutrition garden for the children’s center early this year. We have several trips to the Beni (Amazonian part of Bolivia) where we will live on a boat going up and down various rivers to various communities to provide medical aid. Often times doctors, dentists, or church teams come down from North America to help out. Our big team dream is to find a plot of land for a camp that would eventually be converted into a bi-vocational (Bible and other vocational options) training center for indigenous peoples of Bolivia, provided funds become available. I cannot wait to see some of out plans become reality as well as experience the realities we did not plan on.

The SAM Bolivia Team at Conference