40 days: perspectives and reality

40 Days. Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai without eating bread or drinking water when he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant-The Ten Commandments. Jesus spent 40 days and forty nights, also without eating or drinking in the desert to be tempted by Satan. Ryan Rindels and Taylor Ivester spent 40 days deep in the jungle of Suriname…where they did eat some bread and water. Okay. So we didn’t abstain from food or drink for a month and a half but on more than a few occasions I felt my share of hunger and consequently further came to grasp how blasphemous it would be for me to even remotely put myself in such a category. In many ways, life, and the job I signed up for (in what seems like ages ago) is exactly what I expected it to be. But in an equally surprising number of categories it couldn’t be farther from what I anticipated. Whatever my preconceived notions, I am strengthened in my resolve that this is where God wants me…and oh yeah I’m having a blast.

So now you’re probably asking yourself, “well is he actually going to describe how life is different or the same as expected?” To that I will elucidate with as much or as little as I think (or hope) you would want to read without yawning or lamenting that another blogger doesn’t know when they have exhausted their reader’s patience.

Life and culture where we live in the interior is as close to a pure paradox as anything I can contrive. Here are a few examples: the boats people drive on (we live on a river so that’s everyone’s mode of transportation) are essentially oversized canoes made from giant trees felled and then hewn out with a combination of fire and axe. They are then painted and engraved by hand with tribal carvings….and then powered by a Yamaha 75 HP engine running on gas and oil. Needless to say these canoes have some giddy-up. Music: a typical scene as we glance from our house across the river is kids bathing in the river fishing with cane poles, a group of women cooking rice over a cooking fire in a small hut…to the background of bumping Reggae music from some dude’s stereo. Electricity comes to the village through a giant diesel generator that runs for a few hours each day. Of course the fuel is brought 100 miles upriver in….you guessed it, the motor-powered canoes.

For some reason me and Taylor (and more than likely some of you) thought we would be in remote areas away from civilization, living-off the land and then thriving in such conditions. We were wrong in two out of three of those categories. We are in a remote location: true, but the jungle doesn’t provide much naturally for regular nourishment. There is enough to survive in the bush, but that’s all you’ll be doing… surviving, and that’s a full-time job. When traveling on the river, the jungle is so thick that you cannot even dock your boat, you hit a wall of foliage and palms called Maka that are covered in thorns so dreadfully sharp you knew God created this specimen post-fall.

So Taylor and I, with our romantic notion of living like Bear Grylls for two years quickly vanished. We bought our food in the city and incidentally underestimated our daily consumption. We still went hunting but came back empty handed and were elated to still have peanut butter and jelly in our cabinet. But with much of survival appeal gone to the wayside the Lord taught me that what really mattered and the reason I am a missionary was simply this: the people. Living with them and showing the savior’s love with the hope that they will come to faith in him was the only thing I should care about. If that means dozing to sleep in a hammock one night to the sound of a bumpin’ stereo then I’m fine with that.

I’ve learned to appreciate any amenities I possess and have gladly used them with an understanding that God has given them to me for a reason. So this sounds like no place you’ve never heard of…it’s different for sure but God is working here and the gospel possesses a power of it’s own that crosses any and all culture boundaries. In the Mark 4:26-27, The Parable of the Growing Seed Jesus said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows though he does not know how.”