We made it through the night. We were wet, cold, and miserable but we made it.
It amazes me how you can throw eight people in a tiny room up a mountain together for a couple of days, and even if some of them don’t even speak the same language, they emerge as family. There’s something about suffering together that makes us bond. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the early church was so close knit– because they suffered together. I’ve always said I think the best thing for the American church would be for us to be persecuted– I don’t mean bullied or made fun of– I mean tortured and killed for our faith.
Anyways, we got out of our hammocks and traveled up the hill one last time for a breakfast of rice, beans, and fried pork, with our little mountain family. By the time we finished breakfast the entire mountain and surrounding area was cloud free– it was the clearest we’d seen it. This is when we truly understood why this place was called heaven. You could see for miles in every direction. Mountains, waterfalls, and jungle all laid bare before us–it was seeing the world below through eyes of divinity. It was almost as if God was rewarding us for the work we’d done by letting us see a part of His creation few eyes had seen before.
After taking many pictures (which could not capture the beauty), our horses arrived and we were ready to start our bittersweet ride down the mountain.
Going down was much faster than the ride up and only took us a little more than an hour.
We arrived at the little town in the mountain we’d departed from just a couple of days prior. After we returned our horses, we began to pack all of our gear back on top of the truck (which was a lot easier this go around).
The car ride down the mountain and back to Rio Blanco was also a lot shorter than it was before and only took an hour. We dropped Pastor Sergio at his church and told him goodbye. We got as comfortable as we could and started our four-hour road trip back to where we are staying.
The four hours went by slow, but they were filled with hilariously strange conversations– which I’m grateful for. We made it back home without a hitch, and our mountain journey came to an end.