I grew up in a family who lived and breathed adventure. I mean, who packs up their life and travels to a foreign country without knowing the language and goes to live with a Brazilian family who also doesn't speak English? And then go to the middle of the deep Amazon jungle and try to make contact with hostile native Indians? You have to have ADVENTURE as your middle name to do that, maybe even as your first name! Growing up like that me and my brothers were always into crazy things and doing things that most people never would attempt. More of those stories later though. This story is about one of our crazy, fun adventures we did for fun, not for life. My dad decided that it would be a good bonding thing to do a family fun adventure every year. Each year the adventure varied and was different but the goal was to create a memory and bond as a family. I'd say it definitely worked. This particular year we decided that we'd like to kayak down this river called Rio das Garca...
Our ranch in Brazil was given to us by God when I was 17. I was on a river boat trip with a group of young people from Canada who were showing the Jesus movie and evangelizing to the river communities. I had gotten invited to join them and help with translation. We spent a little over a week travelling down the river in a large boat and stopping at each small river community. We would go out among the village and invite people to come join us for the movie viewing and then evangelize afterwards. One day we had split up in teams to go hike along the trails by the river and invite the families. The girl I was paired up with and I got very thirsty so I suggested we ask for a drink at the next house we arrived at. The kind lady happily brought us a small glass of water. However it didn't exactly look like water, but more like yellow pee or something. But since we had asked and she had brought it to us with such joy, I felt obligated to drink it. I prayed before I took that first sip an...
As if our lives in the Amazon didn't have enough adventure already, my dad decided that we should start a family tradition of having a family adventure every year. The very first one that was the start to this traditon was the Green River trip. My dad had been to the Green river on other occasions and he thought is was so beautiful he wanted to bring us all there for a camping trip. So we planned it all, packed hammocks, mosquito nets, tarps, food and water and a few clothes, fishing poles and my great dane Mandy, and headed out one day to spend a long weekend there. To get there you had to go down the Madeira river, then about 2 more rivers till you made it to the spot. My dad's outboard motor was having some issues and it kept stopping. We were travelling downriver to get to the river we wanted to go to and we stopped several times on sandbanks to be able for him to fix the motor. Finally we made it to the Green river and my dad found a suitable spot on the side of the river ...
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