Attack of the Tapir

Josh helps with an inspection on JAARS' 206 in Porto Velho.  

Getting attacked and bitten by a strange animal would be traumatic enough, but imagine if you lived in a remote village in the vast Amazon jungle and the animal was feared to have rabies.  This awful nightmare became a reality for one missionary family this past week.  This story, while still being written, has God's hand of provision and protection all over it. 

Tapirs can grow up to 8 ft. long and almost 500 lbs.

If you've ever seen a tapir you may have thought God was running out of ideas when he got to this one... "Ok, let's combine a pig and an elephant but put him in the family of horses, zebras and donkeys."  The unfortunate tapir in our story was domesticated, living with a local family who probably had plans to make him the guest of honor at a future BQQ.  One of the reasons rabies is suspected is this tapir never showed aggressive behavior, and yet seemingly out of the blue he attacked this young missionary couple, as well as two other locals.  The injuries were not at first considered severe, but all thought it wise for them to seek treatment for rabies.  Easier said than done when you live in the middle of the jungle.

When I first heard about the freak attack I was at another of our bases helping out with an inspection on an airplane.  The pilot told us about the attack and how they were trying to figure out how to fly the couple out of the village to get medical attention. The only plane near enough to fly them out was a New Tribes Plane, but New Tribes currently has no pilot to fly the plane.  Asas de Socorro (our mission) and JAARS, another partner aviation mission, had been sending pilots to that area to fly the New Tribes plane when necessary.  Rodrigo, one of our pilots agreed to catch a commercial flight to where the New Tribes plane was and fly out the couple, their 3 kids and two other local men who had also been attacked. 

The airplane they used miraculously had just enough fuel in the tanks for the flight (procuring fuel is a difficult process in that area) and the plane had just enough hours available before a required inspection was due.  Another of God's provisions was the rabies vaccine; when first contacted, the town where they were being flown to indicated they were out of the vaccine.  At the last minute however, the vaccine was found and they were all able to receive the treatment just within the 72 hour window necessary to fight the onset of rabies. 

Wounds from the attack.

It was clear throughout the bizarre and scary ordeal that God was working.  He could have choosen any number of ways to prevent this, but instead he choose to use resources from different organizations to come together and bring glory to His name.  Throughout all of this I am reminded at how necessary aviation is to the missionary community here in the Amazon.  To receive the necessary medical treatment without an airplane would have required hiking through the jungle for a couple days and an 8 hour boat ride, something that would have been very difficult in their condition. 

Our life out in the jungle has been less perilous and as you can see in the photo below, even delicious.  Mia celebrates the arrival of a long-awaited classmate by making brownies, a process that for these girls starts 3 days previous.  First, they plucked a ripe cacao fruit from the tree and then during science all four students sucked the pulp off each individual seed, spitting them into a communal cup that was passed around the room.  The girls spread out the seeds in the sun to dry and for ants to eat the remaining bits of pulp.  The girls gathered it back up, roasted them, ground them up and got 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, just enough for a pan of brownies.  This gastronomical feat would not win the award for Best Brownie but maybe Honorable Mention for Effort, which is pretty typical for our life.

An unexpected trip.

After a couple weeks of painting our hangar and 60th anniversary party prepping (see previous post), it was nice to be called away to help on a good ol' airframe repair.  The day before our anniversary party, I was asked if I could leave in 2 days to travel to another base to help with repairs on one of our airplanes that had suffered some damage to its landing gear.  With Brin's blessing I gladly accepted.  Not knowing if it was going to be a 2 day or 2 week project, I boarded the bus with my collegue Victor for the 10 hour bus ride north.  

Fortunatly we found the damage to be minimal and the part that we feared might need to be replaced turned out to be airworthy.  We were able to make the repair in 3 days and get home before being missed too much.  It was encouraging to spend time with some of the pilots and their wives, getting a look at their lives and ministry.  

Here are some pictures of the work, followed by some pictures of what the girls have been up to recently. 

While I was away life went on mostly as normal, here are a few recent pictures from our everyday life...

After school Mia and her friends will often play with clay scavenged from the river, here she and her friend are making volcanoes.

Another recent activity has been watching iguanas bury their eggs in the sand.

Brin's 7th and 8th grade reading class wrote prayers on paper airplanes and flew them into the river. Inspired by the book they are reading, "I am Malala".

Trying our hand at cottage cheese after the fresh milk we got had curdled.

The girls on a dress up day.

Turning 60

We served breakfast to about 300 people from the community, partnering churches, and ministries, followed by a program.

60 years is pretty old in NGO-years.  I'm not sure if it is quite like dog-years, but it's got to be up there. It seems like there are trendy NGOs that pop up all the time, they are much more vogue with their "buy our product and we'll give one away to the needy" model, but I'll be impressed when you've been doing it for a few decades, or a half dozen if you can imagine.  A friend of mine who works for a large NGO once told me these young up and comers are called boutique charities, a cute name for a cute movement.

I'm only kidding of course (apologies if you work for one of these new NGOs, I am being facetious and clearly the age of the organization has nothing to do with its effectiveness).  It just so happens that our mission organization, Asas de Socorro (Wings of Rescue) is celebrating 60 years since the first missionaries came to Brazil from Missionary Aviation Fellowship and started a chapter here.  Asas de Socorro has since grown to include a medical and dental ministry which serves in the remote communities of the Amazon.  

As the vision and mission of Asas de Socorro has grown over the years, we still have our identity rooted in Aviation, and specifically using it as a tool to further the reach of the Gospel.  Aviation has become more and more expensive in recent years, forcing many missionary aviation organizations around the world to close their doors or find creative ways to make ends meet.  I truly don't know what our organization will look like in another 60 years.  But I hope and pray that its main focus remains on helping the Gospel be heard by those who have no way of hearing on their own.

Bird on a Wire

I awoke to a foreign sound, which in itself is not necessarily out of the ordinary living in the jungle where morning animal calls can induce the feeling of having been transported to another planet during the night.  Brin, who was clearly more alert than I, sat straight up and said "we should see what that was". After we investigated, it appears a bird landed on some wires, causing them to touch, which produced a shower of sparks and loud crackling that last 10 seconds or more, followed by the lose of electricity throughout campus.  Instead of tripping a breaker, the wires had over-heated, melting the insulation off the wires where they ran through the wooden roof trusses of our generator building.  

The story here is not just the interesting way we were awoken, but a story of God's goodness.  After investigating the wires (being tipped off by the smoke pouring out of the generator roof) I am convinced of one thing, God intervened in preventing a fire.  We knew going into this semester at the school that we were dangerously understaffed.  That if something such as a sickness or emergency happened to one of the staff families it could have disastrous results for the rest of us.  

This blog post was dangerously close to being a plea for help to raise money to replace our generator and metal shop building, as well as the 10's of thousands of dollars of equipment in the building.  If that were the case, I'm sure we would be asking Why did God allow this to happen?  In the same way, I find myself wondering why God didn't allow it to happen.  Is He trying to communicate that He knows our situation and He will provide for us?  That He's even in control of the birds that land on wires?  

I was able to stay home from my work at the hangar in the morning and help get new wires run.  

The burned wires after removing them from the attic illustrates how serious this short circuit was.

So what happens when there is no electricity during the scorching hot dry season in the Amazon?  No fans in the classroom make an almost unbearable heat that much more unbearable, so most of the classes ended up meeting outside, or even in the river!  Gabriella's science class (seen below) were doing some experiment which required them (conveniently) to jump into the water.  

We usually try and wait until inspiration hits to post a thoughtful, reflective blog post (actually that's usually what Brin does).  Recently we have been too buried to have much time to reflect.  So, I'm not going to take a lot of time to reflect here, but rather give you a few snap shots of our lives.  They certainly don't communicate some of the more difficult things we've gone through this semester, including the leaving of two staff families under difficult circumstances.  But hopefully they will communicate the often craziness and uniqueness of our life.  

So how often do you wake up and see a floating island blocking your way to work?  As the water continues to rise, large chunks of floating grass are ripped out of the ground and form floating islands.  The other day I awoke to find one of these islands parked at the base of our boat ramp.  Fortunately I was able to put my boat in next to the ramp, and after a couple days the wind shifted and the island was gone.  

Evidently Ava inherited her father's memory retention abilities, as a reminder she taped a note to her shirt which reads "Remind Ava to get her swimsuit out of the hotbox".  The "hotbox" is small, wooden box heated with an incandescent bulb and we use to combat the humidity, which never really allows anything to completely dry.  Evidently she still forgot.  In this picture she is cutting cupuaçu, a fruit related to cocoa, of which we had a bumper crop this year (Cupuaçu jelly anyone?  How about bread?  We've had our fill). 

A few months ago a new tool chest arrived which I had ordered from the States.  It has been such a blessing to have ample space for all of my tools to be well organized at the hangar where I work each day.  Again we have been shown God's goodness through a foreign angel's dime.

Gabriella poses for her first post-braces picture.The only thing that tempered our irritation after waiting 4 hours to see the dentist was that now we are done and jungle braces are very affordable. While she wasn't too please with my picture-taking, she does enjoy her metal free mouth. 

Mia enjoying a carefree moment on the swing in our front yard.  The water has since risen past the tree so the girls are excited to be able to jump out of the tree into the water.  Brin did see the largest snake she has ever seen here in Brazil slither into that same water, but we're pretty sure it's long gone by now.  

Last week we celebrated Brin's 40th birthday with a loaf of cinnamon raison bread (her choice).  

Brin's favorite form of exercise here is volleyball, when she has time to play she usually can be found wearing this grin.

As most of you know we are on generator power here at the school, providing electricity only from 6:30 am to 9:30 pm.  Last year the government installed electrical lines to our property but because of some bureaucratic holdups we haven't been able to use that electricity.  The other day the wheels of progress began slowly turning, a crew of workers showed up to install a transformer.  Pictured is a group of us helping transport a 1 ton post that will hold the transformer.  No word on when we'll have 24 hour power, but it's looking promising!

Ava turns 13 in a few weeks.  She has recently become consumed with reading.  It started out with the "Left Behind" series for kids, which lead her to tears, she has since moved on to "Percy Jackson" (I'm not sure if that's a step up or a step down). 

Thanks so much for all of you that have shown an interest in our lives and ministry here in Brazil.  We continue to covet your prayers.

As a post script, after Brin read this post she made it clear that there were too many pictures with blissful smiles and carefree serenity.  This certainly does not reflect the difficult and hard times we have experienced this past semester.  Hopefully we will be able to write more about that in the future.  

batteries recharged

Post by~  Brin

 Trying out a new juicer attachment that really helps to make lemonade when life gives you lemons (or in this case, your girls, who picked them).

It is a sacrifice to put out a blog tonight.  The night gnats are in fluorescent light induced frenzy above my head.  So I will type, and swat and occasionally pull one out of my eye as I tell you how very delighted I am to be back in the jungle and adjusting to a new pace of life. 

That was not sarcasm for those of you who know me well.

We have been back to the Amazon for a week or so after 6 months in the US and it feels grand! And I think I am doing ok, although I would have bet my precious jar of crunchy peanut butter it was Thursday when later I found out it was Friday.

We've arrived just at the beginning of the rainy season. Our girls were curious to know if they would still be able to play "at the rocks " as they do when the water level is down and Josh wondering how long it will be until he can pull our boat out in front of our house. The river's level is our new calendar.  And our new clock is the generator that gives us electricity, purring alive at 6:30 AM and sputtering down and 9:30 PM each day. To give us fans and light later into the evening, we have fitted our home with a 12 volt battery system and it works great so long as the battery can hold a charge, which after two years of faithful service no longer does.  A fan at night makes for restful sleep and also wards off cranky wives. So here is what we gotta get done:

#1 - Evict the squatters that had entered our home. Namely: mold. The mattresses, towels, drawers, screens, ceilings, the shower curtain was where the real fungal party was occurring. We dragged our queen sized mattress out into the sun hoping that some UV rays would help us out.  I told Josh I was not sure I could sleep on that mattress. Josh says I have a prissy nose after 6 months in the US.

#2 - Clean out decaying jungle matter from our boat and prep the engine so that we can...

Before and after several hours of cleaning.

#3 - Go to town and buy supplies. Things like food, medicine, toiletries, that new 12-volt battery that I mentioned previously, and obviously bleach. 

Brin loading groceries from our car to our boat.

#4 - Get caught up on the lives of our friends and teammates with dinners, volleyball games, sweeping the school, and discussions over dessert.

#5 - Tell Gabriella to get out of bed three times in 15 minutes, which is pretty much what we were doing in the United States as well. Somethings don't change at all.

#6 - Paint the house a nice bright, Latiny color.

#7 - resolve some unfortunate legal matters. Our Brazilian tax ID number was stolen, kind of like identity theft that happens in America. Our family was charged R$6000. Thankfully we have a friend who is a lawyer and is helping us figure out how to maneuver the Brazilian judicial system, which will involve us paying the fine and then beginning a process that may (or may not) lead to us getting our money back.

#8 - Bring down our belongings from the rafters where they were stored.  More eviction occurring.

While we were in the US, each day before school we would check the days weather forecast online and then inform the girls on how to dress for the day. We don't bother doing that here it's either hot or rainy. But, for the second time in our eight years of ministry in Brazil we arrived in our home with all of our 10 suitcases and exhaled a thankful breath before we heard the first pings of rain on our metal roof. Seems kind of insignificant? Not to me because it's the same God of Israel who parted the Red Sea and gave them dry land and He did the same for me.

In spite of all the tasks and demands that greeted us here, we did come back to Brazil with our batteries recharged, which is more than can be said for the battery in our 12v house system.