The Jackson’s Take a Trip

A couple of weeks ago, when the girls had just finished a successful term at school, we decided to take a trip to spend some time together. We decided that we would go to an area called the Chapare (cha pa ray). The Chapare is a fascinating area of mountains and rain forest within a few miles of each other. We decide that will leave at 7:30 Saturday morning. It is 9:45 Saturday morning and we begin packing our 1978 Toyota Jeep with all the important stuff. The girls had made a flat area in the back by putting the luggage between the two uncomfortable vinyl seats that face one another. They had unzipped and laid out several sleeping bags. Then they made a warm cozy valley by placing most of the pillows from the house around the interior walls of their little traveling domain. We packed chips, apples, oranges, some bread, peanut butter and of course grape jam. Cindy and I took books and note pads that we planned to use during our time when the girls would be frolicking happily in the pool. There were two possibilities of places to stay in the Chapare and we were assured by a travel agent that there would be no problem getting a room. “It’s the off season”, he said. The weather there was to be very nice. Hot and sunny. This sounded good since we were now pretty far into our winter season in Bolivia. Of course we were all a little thirsty by the time we got our things packed and the car filled with gas. It is 10:15 now. So I stopped at our friends little store across the street from our house as we headed out. I noted to the girls as I got back into the jeep to, “Look, this Cokes even got ice in it”! They all giggled like girls do. Heck, a grown man will sometimes giggle at the same site but only, when and if, with other men. It’s 10:22 .
Another thing that we, the Jackson family and other missions minded individuals, are famous for is stopping to deliver clothes to pregnant mothers or to take a meal to a family in need or to just stop by someone’s house, while on our way out of the town. While Cindy is taking some clothes into a place for unwed mothers, I decide to calm the little beast in the back down by offering some cold Coke Cola. It’s 10:24 and I tell the girls to pass their little spill proof cups with the plastic lids up to ole papa bear. I turned around and said this with a sorta sideways twist to my mouth and my lower jaw dropped down as I say “bear”, like “BAAAARRR”. They giggle again and pass the cups up. It’s here that ole papa bear tries to figure out how to put the lid on the first non-spilling cup while I am holding the ice cold coke cola. I see a perfect spot on my steering wheel that is made just for balancing large two liter bottles of beverage. I’m sure it is diagrammed in the manual somewhere. Well, as I am passing back the first cup to little lizzy, my 3 year old, the slight movement in this non-spilling cup made cold coke shoot through the mouth piece like Old Faithful. You know, the one in Yellowstone Park. My immediate reaction to turn and save the children from the shower of coke was not the right thing to do. See, I had placed the two liter coke in the proper holding position on the steering wheel, I mean that was obvious, but what I had not taken into account was the involuntary action that legs do on a 250 LB fella when coke is spewing all over his precious little darlings in the back of a loaded jeep. The bottle of coke came down, falling first, toward my lower extremities. I, with the reflexes of a water buffalo, dropped the spewing non- spill cup on my daughters nice soft bed in order to catch the bottle going toward my lap. Catching the bottle, I apply more pressure than is necessary to hold most soft plastics and create a sort of water hose effect as the coke fizzes to a proportion equal to that of and no less than Mount Saint Helen’s bothersome little explosion, all by 10:25.
Just as I am wiping the Jeep down with the last clean rag in the car, Cindy opens the gate behind me. I think I could’ve pulled it off, the clean up I mean, if given more time, but all she sees is a grown fella trying to wipe coke off of vinyl seats and wind shields and floor. The girls look like they had been in a fight the local Coke Cola distributing company and lost. It had to be a pitiful site. When my wife left us we were all clean and looked good enough to go to a Southern Baptist Convention. But by the time she got back and stared at the wreckage the girls looked like a bunch of street kids picked up by some character from the movie Deliverance, only we didn’t have any banjos. A good woman can always come up with a bunch of good question right on the spot. My wife is a master at this skill. She asked, “What in the world are you doing”? “Cleaning up”, I said, “Aint it obvious”? “What is all this”?, she asked. “Coke Cola”, I said. Well, as I was trying to finish cleaning up some we went on a few minutes about how it all got started and how messy things are now and a whole bunch of other stuff that is kinda fuzzy now as I think back on it. We got cleaned up enough to drive on. I am working on a manual that will show the correct position for various beverages to sit on the steering wheel of a 1978 Toyota Jeep. Have you ever had sticky Coke Cola between the cloth of your pants and the skin on your thighs?
Well since we were going through this part of town, on our way out of town, that has extremely good pastries I tell, well ask, Cindy if she would mind if I stopped to get some of these delights for our journey. “Sure”, she says. I go inside this place and figure that I was going to make up for the mess I had made. I bought three different kinds of things. I bought 12 things with a wiener in them, 8 little round things with chicken and other things in them, and 6 sweet things that are shaped like a heart, only lopsided. I came back to our little jeep loaded. Ya know, when a big boned person, such as myself, comes out of a bakery , people tend to count the number of bags he ( or she) is toting. This day, I could have cared less because I was the papa bear and I was bringing food for my little cubs. It made me feel better saying to myself, “This is for my little girls”. It’s 10:45.
We are finally out of the cities main traffic. We are actually 5 ½ miles from our front door, as the crow flies. I think it was Maggie who asked, “Poppy, can I have some more Coke”? Cindy answers with a “No”. I am being more understanding and decide that now would, in fact, be a good time before we get further out. I say, “Hey why don’t I fill up all the cups now so that the girls can help eat the pastries that I bought and have something to wash it down with”. Cindy says, ”Please, let’s please keep going”. It is amazing how the Lord has given the woman the ability to sense impending danger. I ignore that gift. The girls pass the cups up and I get the remainder of coke from the floor where I sat the bottle between my seat and my door. Did you know that there is a chain reaction that takes place inside beverage bottles when they are laid down in a moving car? I know this now. When I poured the very first cup and put the screw top back on it this became more evident. There I was, covered in coke again. Cindy was holding the bottle this time so at least I did not have to wrestle with it. I had the good sense to get the cup out the window. Funny thing, as I sat there completely wet again and feeling stupid, I had this incredible urge to take the remainder of that once ice cold coke and distribute it all over the interior of my jeep covering man, woman and child. I didn’t. We did all have a good laugh. Well kind of a half laugh. It is 11:00 . We are four hours from the Chapare.

Pigs with Necklaces?

 Once while traveling in Bolivia, I stopped at a restaurant of sorts that hung out over the edge of a long dry mountain road.  The small wooden shack promised nothing but offered soup, a segundo and a place to sit and find some relief from the rough road that was getting the best of my back. The sopa de mani or peanut soup would be watered down and hot, but tasty.  The segundo, or second thing, was a small piece of chicken and I mean small or some sort of pork.  Bolivians can feed an army off of one chicken where as I can eat a half chicken all by myself.  Avoiding the disappointment I choose the pork.  It also was to come with rice and pappas fritas, French fries.  Everything in Bolivia comes with rice and fries…everything!The heavy set Quechua Indian woman had not long taken the order and I was sitting down, feet stretched out in front of me on the dirt, leaning my spine against the wooden chair and letting my head fall back.  She shuffled back out and produced a barely chilled two liter coke.  I thank her and she turns without saying a word.  I poured a touch into the dirty glass, swished it around and threw it out to clean the glass and then refilled it again.  As the caramel foam settles, a familiar sound starts to grow and a procession of young pigs comes around the corner of the shack.  They appeared to be thirty to forty pounds and grunted and squealed as they rooted around my boots and the ground around me.  Picking up little bits of this or that they made their way over to some mud near a fence line and I saw larger pigs that I had not even noticed until just now.  They budged a little to greet the little ones but then just flopped back down into their comfy cool mud beds.  Two things hit me.  One was that one of these little porkers had given up his life to feed travelers and the other was that they were all wearing necklaces!  That’s right necklaces.No, I’m not taking about a fine pearl necklace like I bought for my wife when I visited China and I’m not talking about a silver locket with a delicate chain, both of these would be wasted on a pig…well most pigs.  I noticed that the pigs, small and large had on a necklace made of three sticks.  The smaller pigs had a necklace built from thinner sticks and the larger pigs had one of heavier sticks.  The necklace was three sided and tied together with string or thin vine.  One stick lay across the top of the pigs’ neck just behind the ears parallel with the ground while the other two formed a point just under the chin after each end was tied to the right and left side of his head.  I wondered had they all gotten free from some rope that must have been tied to the necklaces.  I brought it to the owners’ attention.  It was after a brief explanation that I learned a lesson that I would not soon forget.I said, “Hey I think the pigs have gotten lose.”  The woman did not even acknowledge that I had spoken and another fellow sitting near me barely looked up from his nap.  I spoke again and pointed to the little herd of grunters, scared that they would wander into the gravel road.  She said, “Esta bien,” it’s all right.  O.K. I said and just watched them as they do what pigs do best…not much.  When the hostess finally came back out producing the soup I asked her why the pigs were wearing the lovely wooden necklaces…trying to win her over.  “To keep them from going where they should not go,” she answered as I was looking out toward the pack.  She left and I watched.  I watched until I caught on.  Most of the little tail wigglers were content to bother the bigger boys and lay in some nearby mud but one in particular had other things on its’ mind.  He tried over and over to get into the small weedy garden that was separated from the busy road by small wooden slats, salvaged from packing crates.  I watched and laughed until my soup was cold.  The nervous piglets’ tail twitched as he tried to get his snout through the fence, but the goodies he wanted were just out of reach, so he tried to go further.  Each time the three ring necklace stopped him from entering, but he kept trying time and again.  When one spot was impossible to enter he would search another.  Trying there until obviously frustrated he would try another.  Finally I watched as the little pig flopped down in frustration with his nose in between the slats, just out of reach of the goodies.  He did not realize that the three sticks tied together around his neck were not just stopping him from getting what he wanted…they were saving his life. My food finally came out and to my surprise there was a large piece of grilled pork on the plate along with the rice and fries.  As I dug into the meal, I kept looking out at the ones that got away.Finishing the lunch I sat back once more and drank the hot coke and picked my teeth.  I thought about the pigs and how the necklace had saved them.  I noticed that the smaller ones had necklaces made from thinner sticks but they were much longer than the more mature hogs were wearing.  As I watched, a few more of the younger ones had tried the same routine of getting their heads where they should not but were turned away because the necklace protected them.  Then it struck me.“Lord why hadn’t you given me some sticks around my neck to protect me?”  I thought out loud.  “Man, think of all the things that I could have kept clear of if I would’ve only had the necklace.  All the things that I said that I never would do, but ended up doing, all the places I went that I should never had gone to, all the conversations I had that never should have left my mouth, all of these things could’ve been avoided if only you had given me a necklace.”  And he answered….“I did give you a necklace.  I gave you The Father.  I gave you the Son.  And I gave you the Holy Spirit.”  I swallowed hard.  I knew it was right and that I had opted not to use the very thing giving to me…to us…to use to protect us from all the goodies just out of our reach.  I looked back painfully at the areas in my life where I had failed and cringed.  The shame that the evil one throws on me could have been avoided if I had used the necklace.  The memories that can even haunt me while I try to have my quiet times, with Him or pray to Him, could have been avoided, if I would have worn my necklace.  Do you get the picture?  The Bible says in Ephesians 6:11&12…”Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”Swallowing down the last bit of hot soda, I left the tip on the table and climbed into the car, cranking it up I stared at the crowd of dirty pigs, big ones and little ones and thanked the Lord.  As I was backing away I looked up to see the little one trying again to put his head where it should not be and thanked the Lord for my own necklace.  It’s amazing what you can learn from a bunch of pigs!