Thanks for Prayer - Wagners

Thank you for praying for my jungle trip. It was 18 hours one way on unpaved mountain roads and one of the most dangerous road trips I have every made. The jungle path we have to traverse was two feet deep in mud in many places. I only got stuck one time, after sliding down a slope backwards. We take a big winch when we do trips like this and that’s how I got out of the muddy mess.

There were several reasons for this trip. Thanks to the kids at Hixson PCA in Chattanooga, we had a water system to install in the Noah’s Ark orphanage in the jungle. Water pumped out of a jungle creek will be pumped into an 1100-liter water tank, and then purified. You can see some pictures of this on our updated Photo Bucket page, listed at the end of this letter.

We also needed to help with predator problems, like the jaguar that ate the watchdog, boa constrictors and poisonous snakes that were just too close to where toddlers and other kids will be.

The jaguar is gone. We don’t know where, but I tracked for two days the area around the orphanage but found no sign at all. They are territorial so the big cat may be back at some time in the future.

There was also the Snake Elimination Program to get rid of the larger boa constrictors and venomous snakes. Smaller boas are fine as they keep the rat population down. The main meal for the kids for several days before we got there was boa stew.
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The only really serious incident was when one of the teenagers came back into the camp with an almost but not quite dead really big boa around his neck. He was holding the snake’s head in his hand, pretending it was talking to people. That foolishness was what saved him. An older teenager finally noticed the almost but not quite dead boa constrictor was actually a seven foot six inch long female Bushmaster snake.

For those of you who didn’t know, the Bushmaster snake is a pit viper and one of the largest and most poisonous snakes in all of South America. It’s capable of multiple strikes and even a baby snake can easily kill an adult human.

Missionaries don’t waste anything, so after it was completely dead, it was skinned, put in a pot and cooked, then made into Bushmaster stew. That process and my personal bowl of soup can be seen on our PhotoBucket page listed below.

The fangs were used by some of the teenagers playing snake and scratching each other. You have to wonder how so many teenagers ever grow up to be adults.

Please continue to pray about Fabiola’s heart surgery. We are still waiting to see if a South Carolina hospital will do it without charging. There are new pictures of her on Photobucket.

Thank you for you continued prayers and financial support.

Lord Bless,

Rich Wagner< /o:p>
The Hinterlands Project
Cusco Peru

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd146/WagnersinPeru/