October 26, it’s been 26 days
since we left our house to start our lives as full time missionaries. We woke
this morning and Amy asked me “what is the plan for today” my reply was I am
scared to make a plan due to the fact that I had made plans for 26 days so far
and not one seems to have come through. After probably the most epic of
frustrating days being yesterday I could hardly even think about getting out of
bed knowing that if I did things might continue from yesterday. Amy suggested
maybe we should just take today off and spend it catching up on some
communications with home. GREAT IDEA NO PLANS FOR TODAY.
I write this knowing that God
has blessed us greatly through this time but I would be lying if I wrote this
talking about how great we were doing when in actuality I’m not. Amy and Carmen
seem to be taking all this a bit better that me. Maybe it’s the weight of being
responsible for my family. It feels like every thing I do gets us no where or
even further backwards. I’ll write a bit about yesterday just to give an
example. Yes yesterday was an extremely frustrating day and I know that someday
(maybe some year] we will look back on this and laugh.
I needed to put more time on
my phone so we could continue to use it as a modem for internet this is how we
are able to communicate with home. I gave the lady my money wrote my phone
number down she did her thing and I didn’t receive a text, which is how you
know you received the minutes. I questioned her and she shows me the number
that she put the money towards and it happened to be one number off. This has
happened to me before so I knew there is nothing you can do just pay the money
again and hope she gets it right. Now off to the house to make a list of things
we need to get. When we get there I discover there is something wrong with the
lock on the door of the front gate and it won’t unlock. No problem I will pry
some fence boards apart and Carmen can squeeze through and open from the
inside. As I am doing this and Carmen is squeezing through I notice we have
gathered quite a crowd of neighbors across the street watching us. I start
getting real nervous knowing what they are probably thinking and knowing I have
no way of explaining to them that we live there and are not thieves. Luckily
our neighbor Miguel showed up at that time and helped me and sat the other
neighbors’ minds at ease. Next step go to the bank and get money so I can
purchase mattresses and mosquito netting and now a new lock for the gate so we
can stay in our house and quit living in a hotel. Oh the ATM machine is broke
and this is the only one in Nauta. I ask how long until its fixed “we don’t
know, it hasn’t worked for a week”. A slight panic starts to set in because I’m
not out of money yet but I don’t have enough money to buy mattresses and the
stuff we need to start living in the house. I find out though that the banks in
Iquitos are open and I should be able to get money there. This is like driving
to Seattle to get money! I decide to leave Amy and Carmen at the house have the
neighbor Miguel install the new lock and take Eric a Peruvian I have hired to
help me in Iquitos. We catch a cab to Iquitos get there 1 ½ hrs later and head
to the bank insert my card enter my pin and the machine reads bank will not
accept this card. Then off to another bank; same thing. By this time my cell
phone battery has died and I need to talk to Tom so he can maybe figure out
what is going on. I ask Eric if I can borrow his phone and he says yes but I
have no minutes on it. Off to phone recharge store put minutes on his phone
call Tom found out there is an issue with the card and its not going to be able
to be fixed until Monday. I now need to race back to Nauta because I am worried
it is going to get dark and In my rush to get to Iquitos I failed to show Amy
how to wire in the one and only light we have in the house. On my way back to
Nauta I decide there is no way we can stay at the house tonight and that we
need to go back to the hotel. I get back to the house in Nauta and explain to
Amy that I had been gone for four hours spent 50 sole in cab fares (this is
what I mean by going back wards at times] and I am still empty handed. I than
tell her I think we should go back to the hotel for the night. She is such a
trooper! She says “why we can all squeeze into the one man mosquito net tent
for one night”. This is when I lay down the law and say NO WE CAN’T! So as we
head off to get to the hotel we had been staying in I try and lock the new lock
Miguel installed to discover the keys they had sold us with the lock were wrong
and wont lock it. We secured the gate as best we could and left for the hotel.
Guess what? Yeah that’s right there is a festival going on in Nauta and they
are sold out of rooms. We spend the next while checking every hotel in Nauta
(which surprisingly has a lot of hotels] for a room discovering they are all
sold out. Luckily we found one. Got checked in and went to get something to
eat. Got back to the hotel and I don’t even remember going to bed. These kind
of days make it hard for me to even get out of bed the next day for fear I am
going to have a repeat. Amy, next to the Lord you know me best. What a great
idea. Maybe we should take two off.
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