A "Welcome" Back to Iquitos

I arrived back in the Jungle on Sunday night at about 9:30pm and made it back "home" around 10pm. I was very ready to go to bed and sleep for awhile after traveling for 18 hours and missing a night of sleep. However that wasn't going to be so easy after all unfortunately.

We came back to find things kind of in a mess... to put it lightly. Our room was absolutely covered in dirt, every single surface. The pastor's wife Malena told me before I reached our room that it "looked like Spiderman came in and attacked your room". She wasn't exaggerating. There were spiderwebs EVERYWHERE from floor to ceiling. It was impossible to walk without running into one. And with spiderwebs of course come lots of spiders. While we were gone the District Superintendent came into our room and cut down all of our mosquito nets because he said robbers were reaching in and trying to steal them from the windows. He then took all of our mattresses, stripped them, and put them against the windows in an attempt to block them better. So my mattress that I had previously covered on purpose to keep clean was now dirty and a little damp.

All of our sheets and clothes that we left smelled awful, kind of a mix between sweaty and sour. As I cleaned out my wardrobe the next day I found cockroaches and lots of rat poop. Gross.

Brittany and I were starving so we went to try to make food in our kitchen. Everything in there was ALSO covered in dirt, and we had no soap to clean things with. We managed to scrounge up some food but I don't think it was the most sanitary.

For some reason the toilets in our bathrooms wouldn't flush, and the toilet seats are now covered in a yellow stain that doesn't come off.

As I was chatting with Malena she informed me that there is currently an outbreak of Dengue Fever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever) in Iquitos. Actually she used the word "epidemic". Not good at all. So we now have to be more careful than ever about keeping the mosquitos from biting us.

We spent all day yesterday hardcore cleaning and fixing things and everything is pretty much back to normal. I have to remind myself, this is the jungle life. But after experiencing all of the conveniences of living in the States for a month it was a little bit of a shock to come back to! I am reminding myself that God is good all of the time, and He is in control and taking care of us. I am excited to be back and to start planting our next 2 churches!