Alto De La Sierra - a little town of 2 -3 thousand in the Chaco Salteno - an area of land very difficult to live in and even harder to get in and out of during the rainy season. It is located near the boarders of Salta & Formosa, Argentina & not to far from the border of Paraguay. It is a huge area that has been given the name "The Impenetrable."
The area is made up almost entirely of clay - little soil that is good for growing crops and almost no rocks. Everything that does grow there is unfriendly and covered in thorns - cactus of different shapes and sizes, small trees, and lots of scrubby bushes - all covered with thorns.
When it does rain, it turns all of the clay to an incredibly slippery, deep, nasty mud. It is nearly impossible to travel. At first you can only make it through with a 4-wheel drive, then only on dirt bike and finally only by horseback. Even on foot it is incredibly treacherous.
Well, a couple of weeks back I had to help a pastor return to his family out there. I had promised it to him months earlier. Our STL SUV had finally been repaired and I felt confident that everything would go great. Then...the car broke down again...right before the trip. I would have to rent a car to get him home and do a few days of ministry there.
Even though the weather reports looked like it was going to rain (just starting into the rainy season) my pastor friend assured me that it would be fine and I should only rent a 2-wheel drive. (4-wheel drive vehicles are extremely expensive to rent!) But, the Holy Spirit was eating at me - I needed to rent a 4 by 4!
I looked and called and checked with several places. I could only find 1 that was available when I needed it - 1! (Coincidence? I think not.) There were a number of difficulties in trying to get it rented, paid for, picked up, etc. I spend half of the Sunday evening service outside on the phone trying to work it all out. But, I knew it had to be done. it is ALWAYS better to obey, than to wish you had! : )
I only got a couple of hours of sleep because my pastor friend wanted me to do some ministry while I was out there and I had lots of prep to finish. I had started preparing much earlier, but there were snags in the production and everything had to finalized in the last second. I got about 2 hours of sleep and then hit the road at 6 am.
The first 4 hours of the drive were cake - all on paved roads. We stopped at the last big town to fill up, get some food and drinks (you don't want to be stuck in the mud, stranded and dehydrating) and to load up some supplies for the church and then we hit the road again. It was already raining. My friend assured me that it would be dry farther out.
When we hit the end of the pavement, I was so happy to have the 4-wheel drive. It was already muddy and slippery and even with the 4 high running our Ford Ranger Super Duty was sliding around. A while later the road dried and out and we made good time. My pastor friend did an "I told you so" on me & I started to wonder why the Holy Spirit had impressed upon me so hard to rent a much more expensive vehicle. But...it did not take long to figure out why.
We came to the largest town in the middle of the Chaco and it looked like it was partially flooded. At the edge of the town is a high dyke designed to protect the town from flooding of the nearby creek. Good thing it was there. As we crested it, we could look out for a quite a ways and saw that the road looked more like a lake than a road. It had rained, and hard. The last 40+ kilometers to Alto de la Sierra were very nerve-raking. There were times when we had to find an alternate route around expansive areas of deep water covering the path. Other areas, we had no choice but to go 4-low and slog our way through. We pounded through deep ruts, often dragging bottom, at times starting to get ourselves sideways - not a good thing. In many areas, the "ditches" are a deep muddy siding and your only hope to follow the path, (sermon illustration there!) hope you can make it, and pray you don't end up in the even deeper mud and water on the shoulder of the road.
One time we hit a deep trench - hardest part about water is you can't see how deep the holes might be & it is always a crap-shoot on which way to go or even if you should go - and we hit so hard that it killed the motor. I prayed there was no damage and thanks be to God, it started right back up and after some effort we managed to get ourselves out. Whew! What is normally an 8 hour drive turned into a 12 hour drive, but we made it!
I was a little concerned about getting even more rain and not being able to make it back out. Not sure what the rental company would say - I did not want to have to pay for additional days as the price was so steep per day. Thankfully the sun and wind did their job and we were able to make it back out on schedule. : )
I will tell you more about the time there tomorrow, or later on today. We'll see. But after such a long travel day the pastor said, "Let's not do any ministry today. Let's just rest up." (It was in Spanish of course) Music to my ears. I got a good sleep that night and it was a good thing too as ministry turned out to be a lot more work than I had envisioned. lol. Doesn't it often turn out that way?
Fill you in on the fun in the next journal entry.
Take care, God bless, and ALWAYS remember to OBEY!!!
You'll be sorry if you don't. : )
Paz, bendiciones y favor del Senor -
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