Welcome to the Jungle

Lots of terrain covered today. I started out in the midst of a verdant, green valley with mountainsides covered with the markings of agriculture: green houses growing tomatoes, fields staged to produce all kinds of things from bananas to melons to weird fruits and vegetables that don´t have English names. My drive today from Baños to Tena took me through winding mountains roads sprinkled with cascading waterfalls. At times the road came precariously close to the edge that separated the bus from hundreds of feet ending in a meandering river. We drove through a rainstorm that threatened to change my plans only to arrive in Tena to a beautiful sunny afternoon.

All that to say, yep, my camera got stolen/lost (either is likely), so I'm resorting to the ¨thousand words¨ approach. Oh, and by ¨my camera¨ I mean my dad's. Sorry Pop. (stack that one on with the rest of the below confessions!)

Tena really is beautiful though. It's in the jungle with a couple rivers flowing through it. There's an island with a zoo of sorts on it that I visited after arriving. The squirrel monkeys ruthlessly pursue any type of fruit you may offer them. I felt like a pirate walking around with a squirrel monkey perched on my shoulder. YAARRR!!

[FYI: at this point I lost my blog due to crappy internet. Pity me.]

Post-zoo I spent some sweet time in the Word on the banks of the Tena River. A comment I received today on here suggested that I spend some purifying time by running water. Sound advice!! There's nothing quite like experiencing God in the midst of His Creation.

A cool randomness (look for this phrase in a blog title coming soon): I sat down by a kid with a runny nose on the bus and gave him some Kleenex. He looked like he was in pain or something, but insisted he wasn't sick. We ended up talking a bit and it turns out that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up! He has a sister in med school in Ambato and furthermore, his family follows Christ and attends an evangelical church! He was so darn cute I had to buy him an ice cream. I love the body of Christ (oh yeah, the other internet café I went to in Baños was Christian-run... I think it's a conspiracy).

Wow I had a great meal tonight... steak and fries for $1.50. Do I really have to come home??

I thought about a lot of cool stuff today too, but it was in the lost blog, so I'll just leave you with this, which is quite timely considering the recent events:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow!! For when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Now imagine that on a sunny rock with a rippling river emerging from the jungle greenery upsteam and calmly flowing by, drowning out the noise of the surrounding city, and you might feel the confident hope that I caught a glimpse of today.