BACK TO THE JUNGLE

TRIP TO CHAPARI INVOLVES CLIMBING FROM 9000 FEET TO 11,000 THEN DESCENDING TO 500 FEET WITHIN 3 HOURS RAINED THE WHOLE WAY,

              A week ago we returned to the jungle, our pickup had finally made it out of the shop,so we left with the assistants  Elder Tanner and Elder Guillen to Chapari.  We spent three days there, mostly in the rain. We held two Sacrament meetings and it was another  trip to remember.


Lorna with a Patuju, the Bolivian national flower. It has the colors of the flag red green and yellow

 

 This bug welcomed us to our room,  about 3 inches long there are plenty of bugs!

Lorna and the assistants after a lesson with the lady and her kids standing next to Lorna, the lady next to Tanner is a member.  They both are teachers

 

Elder Tanner playing with the kids
 

Elder Guillen and Tanner sitting in Jesus and Irma's  living room Kitchen combo, dirt floor no walls.  Irma and Jesus are members. They are  big coca producers as well as other crops

drinking well

One of Irma's many chickens,  all pets with names, but when dinner time comes around, she doesn't mind whacking their heads against  a post and start plucking!

 bananas ready for picking

you can see the bananas forming

Lorna checking for new crop

Irma's quite a character, very opinionated and a very good farmer,  Took charge of my SLR and thought she was Ansel Adams, most of them didn't turn out

 

Lorna and Irma in the River

 



Photo courtesy of Irma (with our camera!)

We spoke about the vigilante justice here, a common practice is to strip the thief naked and tie him to this tree, the tree is full of poisonous ants that eat your eyes out and kill you within a half an hour,  Tanner thought it was worth the photo, but I made him put his clothes back on

 



KILLER ANTS

black tree for hardwood

Coca field,  leaves were recently picked,  just a few to taste

Noni plant

Irma Elders and Jesus

Coca production

Cinnamon tree



Elder Guilllen Sergio their two daughters and Alvina,  in the room they built on to their house for a chapel, An amazing  family also Susie the Parrot  We had sacrament here at 8 after traveling an hour from our hotel, Then traveled two and a half hours to our next sacrament meeting.
 

Tanner and Susie. She can whistle and comes to Sacrament but can't sing
"I need thee Every Hour" worth a damn

Simon the pharmacist who owns land, his helper, Juan, (visionary man) Lorna Jack and Alvina, the lady who built the chapel. Alvina is a very giving person or her time and her resources. When we were leaving the Elders were in the back with the Coca production and Simon and Alvina were getting in the back seat.  They are friends through the church.  Simon got in first and Alvina struggled a little. Simon told her that she had a harder time because she was so much larger the him.  Then he asked her how much she weighed.  She said over 80 Kilos,  then she said with a smile, but I'll bet I'm nearly 90 Kilos.  Bolivian women especially Cholitas are proud of their weight because it means they can afford to eat



Juan's house

Elder Guillen cutting through the vines to more hidden fields

 

Lorna's jungle hiking shoes

 

We all had fresh pineapple after surveying the fields,  Its great here not a lot of acid in it

 

 

Missionaries doing their job to support the Bolivian economy
 getting their "product" to market

Jack and Estella. Estella s 88 year old member who was baptized by one of Jacks companions in 1975.  She has no children or family and has had a hard life.  She speaks in a low voice and hard to understand. she sales used clothes on the sidewalk  to  survive.  She said she had big Dr bills because last week a huge Cholita fell on her and smashed her legs.  She said "It was like a house falling on me.  We started laughing then I worried what Alvina thought since she was there, but she got a kick out of it too.  Then she starting crying  about how she had saved for years for an electronic keyboard, and some preacher guy stole it. She was hard to understand and real hard for Lorna.  She got up and went into her one room apartment and brought out a sack and dumped out a box  it was a keyboard box,  I said at least they left the box, she said no its garbage, I opened the box to see a used casio keyboard.  She said that it was crap they had stole her new one and left the casio.  By this time Lorna had made up all kinds of stories in her mind of what was taking place.  We don't know if the thief really exchanged keyboards or she bought crap to begin with.

We loaded up the Pickup in the Villa Tunari area with members and traveled a couple more to Cinco Esquinas



 We picked up a few more people after this, Left to right, Jesus, Rosie, Carla, Elder Tanner and Elder Guillen. We saw the man in the yellow coat, Teddy, the night before.  He said Elder Hoopes how are you doing,  I couldn't figure out how he knew me, until it dawned on me he was the mechanic that fixed my taillights on the pickup the first week I was in Bolivia,  He had moved to the jungle to work on the heavy equipment building the new highway

Road was two feet deep with mud,  We watched in the side view mirror to make sure the Elders shirts weren't white anymore.

Our second sacrament meeting was here Cinco Esquinas,  thought we had made it to Brazil! Climbed the ladder upstairs for sacrament.

During Sacrament, chickens kept coming in the family would just chuck them out the 2nd story window.

 

Ceiling beams were about 4.5 feet high,  Elders gave great talks,  Lorna gave a great testimony and I spoke about Slade's  wreck, Not many sacrament meetings are as humble as this one but it was a great experience for us. Notice Irma on the front row has her hands full of chickens.

 

 

 

After Sacrament the host family served everyone dinner. We loaded everyone up for the ride home. Right before we let Irma and Jesus out we could hear this squeaking in the back seat. Irma had brought 4 chickens with her in the back seat of our pickup! I don't know how we didn't notice them sooner, but the scary thing is, we didn't think anything of it. Probably about time to get back to the US!

It took about 4 hours to return to Cochabamba. We had to travel on a bad pass with semi after semi.  We counted 6 in a row without lights,  you pass when you can and pray you will make it around.  Saw one guy killed on a motorcycle and two or three semis  jack knifed  Just glad the pickup has a big engine to get around.  We are planning to go back  two more times before we go home.