bichos, car wrecks, & miracles.

Bichos have struck again.

Three weeks ago, I was in the hospital because some kind of amoeba had taken up residence in my intestines.  I left more or less without doctor's approval (I just can't afford financially to be sick!) but was given a plethora of medication to take, pretty much guaranteeing that no amoeba, parasite, or random disease would survive inside of me.

But here we are, three weeks later, and I'm sick again... or still.

I've had amoebas more times than I can count.  These things just happen when you spend your days in some of the filthiest places in the city...  But two different times, God chose to miraculously heal me.  Once was at the annual business meeting at Risen Savior Assembly following a 3 week trip to Bolivia.  (Guess how we promote the business meeting now!)  And the other time was in 2009 after a 6 month battle with amoebic cysts.  I have lab work to prove it, oh ye of little faith.  :)

It's been an interesting month.

In between my bicho outbreaks, I almost died in a car wreck 4100 meters up in the Andes two weeks ago.

I was traveling back from a 3 day trip to La Paz with my friend Ken, two of his volunteers, and one of the boys from his project in Santa Cruz when our breaks went out on the way down the mountain...  We swerved to avoid running into the back of a semi and hit a car head-on, which sent us careening down the side of the mountain.  It was literally the most terrifying and surreal moment of my life.  I'd write it out play-by-play, but Ken already did that... and better than I could  You can read the details of the wreck here: Ken's blog about our accident.

This photo doesn't do it justice, but you can kind of see the mountain we went down...

That rock I'm sitting on was part of a pile of rocks we ran into that rolled down the mountain with us.  We landed on the only flat-ish part of the mountainside, and you can see the drop off right in front of us.

Towing the truck up the following day.

A lot of really cool and miraculous things happened to keep us alive...  And a lot of people miraculously knew to pray for us at the exact time we were falling down the mountain.  Read Ken's blog.  It's an incredible story of God's protection.  We should all be dead.

I was really upset and unsettled for a day or two after the wreck.  Even now, two weeks later, remembering the second we went over the side of the mountain sends a cold shiver down my spine.  But at the end of everything, I've come to a much deeper level of understanding that there is no safer place to be than in the hands of the Father.  This life is so fragile!  And no matter what I do - from the food I eat to the plans I make - I really have no control over what happens to me.  But God does!  And knowing that my life and future rest in His hands gives me a profound sense of peace.