Serpents at work.

And the good times just keep rollin’…Woke up to one Goliath of a thunderstorm Sunday night. But I do think that if my ears had been as plugged as my sinuses, I probably would’ve slept right through it. I’ve been amazed at how cold the jungle can get…not really too cold compared to winter back home, but who would think a sweater and a jacket would ever feel good in the jungle? Doesn’t that just seem preposterous? So the rain made for an interesting trip to town since we ride in the back of the truck. They did have a canopy this time, but it started to rip off in the wind about five miles out of town. So Matt and I held it down the rest of the way in. I finally got a mass email out to everyone, but all it took was one more day to have enough material to write another one. Shall I start with the good news or bad news? Maybe I’ll just sandwich the bad news…squash it like one of these insects. So…good news. Half the roof is up on the bakery. Unfortunately we were a day late. All the rain caved in the big clay baking furnace. I can’t believe that no one thought to put a tarp over it…but I guess that’s how it goes. So it’ll probably be a few weeks before we bake bread…at least in mass. And the storm took away our power. No el sol leaves solar panels without much goin’ for them. (ar pans…what can you do with that? Seriously.) But those are the least of our worries right now. Three staff members left today…not just for town. Apparently two of the male staff allowed some female students to sleep in their quarters. Yeah. Nothing happened apparently, but still. Unacceptable. So they hit the road. And then the staff member who was telling the offending staff they needed to leave decided to quit as well. So she cleared out. We’re still trying to figure that one out. I’m actually kinda glad I don’t know much Spanish yet, ‘cause it was nice to be able to stay out of the politics. So now we’re holding down the fort. Jeff and Fawna are still gone to Santa Cruz. I’m wondering who’s going to teach classes tomorrow for the missing teachers. Maybe the kids will just work. Who knows, maybe it’s all for the best. So yeah…how about that good news? No one died today! I’m still alive! CLEARLY. And I’m praising God for it. Matthew and I were down in the creek, digging out a half-submerged stump by the dike. It was a major pain ‘cause we couldn’t see the roots we were choppin’ on. So I was using my hands a lot to pull out roots and mud, dog style (about as dirty as one too). Kinda using my fingers to “see” what I was doing. I had just stopped momentarily to say something to Matt when I saw a flash of orange. “Snake!” I grabbed the pick-ax, but the serpent quickly disappeared into a snarl of roots. Just then a couple of the teachers walked up. Said they just wanted to see what we were doing. I told them we were trying to fix a leak in the dike and had to get the stump out. Then I asked them about the snake. Their eyes got real big as they informed me it was a coral snake…deadly poisonous. Yep. So it seems I just had about 6 inches of God’s hand between me and kingdom come. Of course I couldn’t let the snake stay in there, chillin’ like a villain, so I dug it out with the pick-ax (very carefully!) and chopped off its head with a machete. It was only about two feet long fortunately, and didn’t offer much resistance. When I told some of the locals how close my hands had been to the critter, they looked horrified. Rainsby said it was a miracle I wasn’t bitten. Enrique whistled through his teeth and said “tu muerto” and drew his finger expressively across his throat. Yeah…I’d be dead if it had bitten me. I kinda get the vibe that God’s got some use for me yet. After my hands got done shaking (with fear, not with the locals in congratulations!) I managed to figure out how to skin the bad boy for a souvenir. So now I really feel like a hard-core missionary. Yep. You can just call me Bwana. :P