Jungle Flyin’ 4 Jesus…watch out for that anaconda!

Saturday I was asked by one of our friends here who is a pilot and evangelist to accompany him in to the jungle.  We were taking some passengers and equipment back home to their village, a 2o min. flight due east of Shell.   A seat had opened up and I accepted the invitation.  After checking in and doing the necessary paperwork, we pushed the little Cessna 172 out of the hanger and were off.  My friend knows my great interest in flying so he let me sit in the “right seat” next to him.  Being cleared to taxi by the tower, he told me that I was going to taxi the plane to the end of the runway and take off!  Well, this was going to be fun, I thought, hoping that the computer flight simulator I had “messed around with” years ago was close enough to reality to get us off the ground!    After a bit of weaving back and forth over the runway center-line,  I was getting the hang of taxiing.  We stopped briefly at the end of the runway then were cleared for take off.  “Throttle all the way forward” were my only instructions and we were airborn in no time.  We flew east with me at the controls and amazed at my friend’s willingness to “bob and weave” while I was getting my feet wet guiding the small craft.  Funny thing about jungle flying here in the western Amazon, it’s really hilly out there.  As we approached the community and made our descent and approach direced only by his GPS, the runway was hidden behind a ridge perpendicular to our travel and yet unseen.  Scooting through a notch in the ridge and banking left I got my first glimpse at the community and its landing strip.  The last few minutes of the flight  happend quickly as we leveled out, lined up with the runway, flared and gently touched down.

My friend not only is an experienced jungle pilot but has a real heart for sharing Jesus with those he helps.  The jungle community met us as we were getting out of the plane and we unload the equipment.  Under his seat was a little box which he pulled out and began to wind up.  “Have you ever seen one of these?” he asked as he began to crank its handle. It looked like one of those emergency weather radios that runs on hand wind-up generator power.   After a few good cranks it began to “preach” in a foreign language.   I asked if it was Quichua, the language of this community.  It was not and he began to scroll through several different jungle tongues with the tough of a button until he arrived at the Quichua version.  He let the “preacher in a box” do its thing for a while as we were making our way from the plane to the houses.

We accompanied the community back to one of the houses where he and I were offered a seat under the roof of their “kitchen-living room” area.  This part of the house had no walls but, pavilion-like, its high pitched, thatched roof served as the kitchen and living room area.  Before I could object, a bowl the size of a cereal bowl was handed to me.  It was full to the brim with a white opaque liquid that I immediately identified as “chicha”.  This is a common drink of many indigenous peoples of the Amazon and Andes made from the starchy root of the yuca plant.  Traditionally, the women of the household chew its flesh mixing it thourougly with their saliva and then spit it into large clay pots where it ferments for days to weeks.  I have read that in recent times the chicha “brewmasters” use other methods of fermentation that don’t involve the chewing and spitting step.  However, I know not the culinary preparation habits of the houshold in which we “supped” and I didn’t ask fearing causing offense. I accepted this generous offer of thanks to us for serving their community  remembering my missionary training.  It emphasized, “I’ll go where He leads me and I’ll eat (or drink) what they feed me”.  Now I know what you all are thinking…”how did it taste”?  Well, it was sour and bland at the same time (yuca has almost no taste at all — only starch) with a background alcohol-ish flavor (and some oaky and fruity notes — just kidding).

The latest development for this house was the father had just been given an anaconda snake, a “small one” they told me, from a cousin who had trapped it in another part of the jungle.  Apparently it would fetch about $200 on the local “snake market” and they were keeping it around until a buyer was found.  Now, ’round these parts, drinking water is kept in the equivalent of a 55-gallon drum made of blue plastic.  Looking across the yard was one such drum with a ton of lumber stacked on top to keep the lid closed.  They seemed anxious to show off the anaconda so off came the wood and over went the barrel sloshing out, you guessed it,  a “smallish” 8 foot anaconda!  The little boy of the house, who was about Sammy’s size and age, really liked the new pet and felt perfectly free to pull and pick up the poor snake by it’s tail.  Others in the neighborhood would pick it up too and let it coil about one arm or the other!

After some time enjoying the snake show, my friend asked if he could talk about Jesus with the kids.  We gathered those milling about — an anaconda in the presence of gringos really draws a crowd!  The kids all sat down and he began to preach on John 3:14 where Jesus, as he is leading into that most famous verse John 3:16,  references the history of Moses who lifted up a, you guessed it, serpent on a stick and, those who looked upon it, were healed from their deadly snake bites (a consequence of Israel’s sinning and grumbling to the Lord in the wilderness).  What a great object lesson the Lord had put together that day.  My friend emphasized that Jesus was saying that we must look to Him, who would be lifted up on the cross for our sins, to be healed from those sins, and have eternal life with Him.  Further, the word got out while we were chatting that I was a doctor.  We added that the medical specialty in the U.S. uses the “caduceus” symbol (a snake coiled about a staff) as the symbol of the  medical  profession.  (We just went with it folks — I know that this symbol has origins in other, secular places….)  Anyway, we shared with the children that day that they, as everyone,  should look to Jesus for true spiritual health and trust in Him to pay for their sins so they didn’t have to (all the while keeping one eye on the whereabouts of that anaconda!)  We said our good-buys and headed back to Shell by the same means.  What an afternoon.  I never will get tired of flying over the beautiful Amazon!