Anecdotally Speaking

I am going to Peru again. I am taking a group of people from the cornfields of Iowa into the jungles of the Amazon. This will be the fifth group I have taken into one of the most remote and exotic places on earth. We are buying tickets and getting passports. Soon we will be getting vaccines and planning what to bring. From start to finish, this venture is exhilarating, rewarding and fun.

My first trip into the jungles of South America was not leading a team of excited Cornhusker and Hawkeye volunteers however. It was just my High School son and I, joining a group going into the Orinoco River Delta of Venezuela. We were looking for adventure. I was looking for a way to capture my son's attention at a time in his life when it is difficult to attract a young man's attention.

The experiences of that week profoundly affected my life, as it did my son's. He recently wrote an essay about his experiences in the jungle of Venezuela and I found his recollections and insights remarkable and poignant. He has challenged me to recount and record everything I can remember of that weeklong trip. When in your life has a single week mattered so much that you would want to record every detail that you can remember of it? My son and I shared such a week. How remarkable.

I watched my son dispense life-saving medicine to hundreds of people with compassion and sensitivity and love, to women and children with whom he could not communicate. The goldenness of his humanity shone bright and beautiful. My son is a beautiful man.

We brought back our pictures. We told our stories. We touched hearts and awakened the abundant benevolence and kindness of our neighbors. People wanted to go. I took one team, then another, then more. Now this one coming up. Dozens of people going to the jungles, many going over and over again. Bringing their love, and their medicine and their hope.

At the end of our week in Venezuela, Matt and I had a chance to fish for Piranha. We had some for dinner. It was fun. How often in life, are you going to get to do that? While we were eating the fish for supper Matt pointed out to me that the place where we were fishing for the Piranha was the same place where he had been swimming in the river earlier in the week. They told him he would be all right as long as he was not bleeding from anywhere. Hmm, how about that? An Iowa boy swimming with the piranha.

Thank you Matt. Look what you got started.