fighting back the jungle

Jim Elliot, in his Journals, wrote about how nine-tenths of his daily life in the jungles of Ecuador seemed to be taken up with simply fighting back the jungle.

He spent a great deal of his time just working so that the jungle didn't literally take back the small clearing in which he lived. It was hot, sweaty, and time-consuming work that had little to do with the evangelism or teaching he had come to Ecuador to do.

I feel much the same way. And often.

Just fighting back the jungle.

I know Tony feels this way sometimes, too. Especially at times like these. The car is broken down, we are housebound by illness, the kids are now sick, too.

Treading water, focusing on the basics like health - just maintaining.

It's boring. And frustrating. I want to do, do, do. Didn't we come here to do?

This weekend we didn't do. Tony couldn't go to Bariloche to help continue building that church as planned. He had to give his place to someone else. The exchange? A shot in the butt-ocks, lots of meds, and a weekend in, hacking and blowing his nose, and being just generally high maintenance.

Adrian, a friend and doctor from church - when he heard of our recurrent woes - stopped in unexpectedly bearing a needle.
Thanks, Adrian! Payment? In heaven. We sent them off with many thanks and a loaf of bread.

Bend over, honey. Muahahahaha

Tomorrow we look forward to getting out and calling Miami to see where our radiator is. What if it doesn't arrive? I mean, who orders radiators from 4,000 miles away across the seas? And if you do, does it actually get to you? {Our cracked radiator can not be welded - the part that broke is a thick plastic piece on the head. We were advised by many not to let them "make" us a new one here... it's not worth the risk they mess something up, and it's also literally not worth it, more expensive ($1000). So here we are doing things we've never done before: ordering car parts from overseas. New normal. And New Normal is... weird.}

I love the bars on our windows. I don't love the dust.

I wasn't lying about the dirt here. I hate dirt just as much as I hate cleaning. This is two weeks worth of desert dust on the inside of my kitchen window (imagine what covers every flat surface, every day). It's still there. I have more pressing things to do at the moment. A perfectly clean house is the sign of a perfectly wasted (missionary) life.