Every Friday we go out in service in the campo...
On this particular Friday, it was our family, one sister named Hannah, and two brothers named Gustavo and Ezequiel. My parents had to get on a small public guagua to get there, while me and Hannah rode with the brothers on their motorcycles.
It took us about 20 minutes to get to the territory. The territory was on the main road, and it was about two miles long, with many steep "hills". And by "hills", I mean mountains. And of course, those "hills" had the most houses...
Each set of partners got one "hill", and we had to finish as many houses as we could on it. My partner, Hannah, and I had probably the biggest "hill" out of everyone. It just kept going and going and going and going etc...
But of course, you gotta preach the word right?
So we go up, and up, and up some more, finding houses here and there, some pigs and donkeys and some other small animals I could not identify. It was overly muddy from the rain the night before, and to say we were walking on a "path" is a big overstatement. So even though it was dry, hot, and crazily sunny, we were sliding and twisting and almost slipping and falling on the damp mud.
A guy with a bunch of plantains on his shoulder and a machete, showed up out of nowhere and was cutting some more off the trees, and he decided to help us out and cut us another little "path" to walk on. Even though he randomly showed up out of the underbrush, and had a machete the size of Raquel, I decided to take my chances and speak to him. Either way, it would seem pretty rude not to, considering he took time to help us out.
I left him a tract, and asked if there were any other houses around, cause at the moment there weren't any. Then he pointed up. Straight up.
Me and Hannah looked up, to see the steep, muddy land that was an entire neighborhood of people. Only I was wondering how they got up there in the first place.
Yup, up the mountain of mud.
After talking about it, we decided, 'Hey, why not? It doesn't look like it will rain. We'll go up, come back down, no problem!' It took a pretty long while to make it up, slipping and grabbing onto trees and vines to pull ourselves up, all while highly regretting not wearing sneakers. It's at these moment where I truly detest wearing a dress. Pants would definitely help the climbing process but... nooooo I had to go and be a girl!
I'm getting off the subject, anyway....
Once we made it up, there were about seven or eight houses. On about the third house, I started feeling little bits of hot water on my face. Then I realized, it's starting to rain.
It only started drizzling but we still decided to go through the houses quickly. We were not taking any chances.
We were on the last house, and I was speaking with a very nice young woman, when the skies opened up and let loose. So the lady let us pull up a chair, and wait out the rain. Her house was right on the edge of sorta like a 10 foot drop to the floor, where there is another 6 foot drop to the "path". So you can see our "getting back down", dilemma.
While we waited, I managed to read her a few more scriptures of the Bible, and landed myself a return visit.
After the rain subsided, we thanked the lady, and headed out.
And by "headed out" I mean standing in front of her house and trying to figure out how in the world are we going to get back down.
We start climbing down the seemingly "less steep" side of the hill, backwards, while grabbing on to the muddy floor beneath us. We slowly maneuvered our way down,
about less than half way.
At one point Hannah decided to jump the rest of the way and try to land on her feet, without slipping and getting hurt. Luckily, she made it and didn't fall. Thank God, cause I was definitely not carrying her the rest of the way down.
I didn't jump, but my sandals sorta worked like socks on the hardwood floor. So I just slid down on my feet. After making it down the first drop, my feet were covered to the ankle in mud. It felt nasty, but we had to get down somehow.
About half way down the second little drop, we see Ezequiel and Gustavo walking up to come find us, cause apparently we had been gone a pretty long time. The boys just stood there giggling and watching and being completely and utterly useless while we made our way down.
"You need help?!" said Gustavo laughing. By the time we made it to the bottom, we were all laughing together, while we told the boys to stop making fun of us.
Ezequiel went to go find a stream or river to wash our feet. Luckily a very nice family let us use their outside faucet to wash them.
The rest of the way, the boys helped us walk down to the bottom.
Although me and Hannah were the most muddy, everybody else was soaked to the bone.
But we went on.
We met up with my family and the rest of us went up another "hill" altogether, where there were about ten more houses to do. Me and my dad were the highest up. I did about two houses when my shoes decided to spontaneously combust, and rip apart in three different places. They were completely useless now, and had walk back down barefoot.
At around the same time, my dad was starting to walk back down when a little boy runs up behind him, and my dad falls straight onto his butt. His pants were beige. The ground is not.
So that was the end of the service day for us, until we got stopped by a man, who was supposedly also "preaching" and telling us that "Jesus is coming" and "we need to be forgiven".... for 20 minutes. yadda yadda yadda.
Once he finished talking, we were leaving and I had to get on the motorcycle completely barefoot for a 20 minute drive. It wasn't too bad, although the floor was hot and I was getting weird looks from the people of the town. I got home, showered, seriously washed my feet, and took a long nap.
That was probably my favorite experience out in service, although it was a little was nuts. I wish I had more pictures of it. I definitely won't forget this day.