Ants in my pants

About the most entertaining thing that happened while camping by the beach last weekend was me accidentally sitting on a fire ants nest. I was up in seconds as they were everywhere, biting my bottom, sides, down my legs... eina!! The only thing I could think to do was to shower and wash them away. So now I know the meaning of ants in your pants... First it's really sore, and afterwards really itchy. Awkward.

Tuesday we drove to Teposcolula. Wednesday the team split with a few who went to another town. I stayed behind. It was freezing. Rainy and muddy. But good. Wednesday we went to the new church premises which are currently being prepared/built to help clear it out. We did some gardening - cutting back the overgrown bush with machetes. That was fun. We then drove into the mountains to minister to an old lady and her granddaughter. She fed us some rice (really tasty, seriously), hot milk (freshly milked from the cow) and some sort of tea, tasted kinda like apple tea. Good and local.

Caitlyn gardening with a machete

We prayed for her granddaughter who was deaf and mentally disabled. we're not sure what exactly was wrong, or what caused it, but we think she had hepatitis as a baby or small child and the medicine she was given resulted in her deafness and mental disability. While praying for her healing, one of our team members felt that there was something standing in the way of God bringing her healing. We discovered that she'd been treated by western medicine as well as witchdoctors. She was still being given the medicine by the witchdoctor and that was what was holding her healing back. The granny brought the medicine out and burned it. That was cool. Another highlight was ministering to the granny, bringing truth and liberation to her.

In the evening we lead a church service which was actually a lot of fun. I got a word for the church from the Lord so that was cool, it's the first word I've got for a church. That was cool, although I was nervous to stand up and speak in front of the church.

The last light for the evening

Ripping it up during worship

Thursday was a day of not so much. The plan was to go minister in a local village up in the mountains. The Pastor was not very keen on us going as in the past missionaries have gone into the village and taken the women ad wives, even married women have got divorced and then gone off with the missionaries. Not good. So we went there not knowing if we'd be allowed to minister. After driving over an hour up the mountain, we spent a couple of hours not really doing anything, waiting to get to speak to the chief of the village to ask his permission to be there. To which the answer was no. We were allowed to walk around the village and then we went home.

The highlight of Teposcolular was the food - yummy buritos etc from stands at the plaza, cheap and so tasty. A lowlight was it was freezing, muddy, and the coldest shower ever. Seriously, I couldn't breathe the whole time I was in there. Only the fact that I hadn't showered in 3 days lead me to brave it, and as we now have 2 full days of driving ahead of us as we head to Belize so I wasn't sure when the next shower opportunity would be.