At breakfast this morning, Elijah asks me, “Madeline, was that man a witch doctor?”

“Yes,” I answer, chugging some milk from the bottom of my cereal bowl.

Elijah’s eyes go big. “You mean, a real witch doctor? You mean a real one?”

“Yes. He was a shaman.” I tell him.

“And I went into his house?!” Elijah shrieks. “I went into his house?”

“No,” I say. “That was just the place where he does his spells and curses and stuff.”

Elijah shakes his head. “That is too scary.”

“Oh, it is,” I assure him. I’ve heard enough shaman-stories to authenticate that one.

“Is he a bad person?” Elijah suddenly demands from across the table. “He must be a very bad person.”

“Uh, see Elijah,” Abigail says, “He does some pretty bad stuff. But God says we’re to love him anyway. We have to love everybody.”

“I can’t believe you let me go in his house.” Elijah repeats, ignoring everything we just told him.

“You snuck in yourself when we weren’t watching,” I mutter. And of course he sticks his tongue out.

Would I be able to believe it, if I were Elijah?

How do I believe it myself, even?

When I’m standing in front of this man with corks in his ears, and parrot feathers strung around him, and red and black bead necklaces for protection against the spirits?

His black eyes watching our every move, with him listening to us speak with his people?

Oh, I believe it.

With both feet on the ground of Muyuna, in the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by the Kichwa of the jungle, it’s hard not to believe it.

But I also believe in a stronger power– I believe in the Strongest Power– and He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He is with me.

And I am not afraid.

So All May Know.

Madeline Studebaker

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,

nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

-Romans 8:37-39

“Tiene usted un… esfero?” I squeak. Please, I pray. Don’t let my breath be as bad as I know it is. Everyone in this room– all 150 of them– seem to be five inches from my face.

Not to say that some of them actually aren’t. I continue in my head. We’re packed in here like sardines. And there are more than I can even guesstimate waiting outside.

“No tengo.” barks a business woman in heels like a whole foot tall.

“Huh?” I’m lost in the effort of counting heads.

“No tengo!” She repeats, hoop earrings swinging around. Oh, I wanted a pen! I remember. Still I’m trembling. I am much more accustomed to the Kichwas.

“I am not trying that again,” I declare in my mother’s direction. “And why didn’t we bring our own pen?” I add, aggravated.

“Like I could even reach a pen if I had one,” Mom answers.

She’s right. We are too close to our stranger neighbors to shift our weight without knocking someone over.

I can see it now: “American girl gives the domino affect to hundreds at the Pinchincha bank in Tena” on the headlines. I shake the thought out of my head.

Still, this is the worst, the most unhygienic, the most terrifying experience of my life. Save a few other incidents.

But this is a bank! I scream inwardly. It’s supposed to be nice!

“This is uncomfortable.” I announce.

“Sh,” Mom warns. An booming voice comes through the crowd. Dad would have answered it by yelling “Brah ca ca ca!”, but he was saving time by shopping at Tia while Mom and I finished the transfer. This horrible, life-altering transfer. And screaming brah, ca, ca! was not going to fix this.

“I think he’s saying we all have to get an extra slip from that table over there,” Mom told me, referring to the guard in the front. “Madeline, sweetheart, would you mind–”

“No way!” I interrupt. “Do you want me to get kidnapped?”

“The table is ten feet away.”

“And there are like two people per square foot in here,” I remind her.

“Okay then, I’ll go get it. But you stay here and keep our spot.”

“Sure.” I say. People crowd around me, and I start to doubt if Mom will be able to locate me.

Feet shuffle. I gasp with disbelief. Someone cuts in line. In front of me.

This is normal. It’s happened about 70 times today. But not to me.

I glare at the sneak-ster. How dare you… my blood boils. Take my spot… This is getting dangerous. I worked hard to get here! You can’t image how hard–

“I’m back!” Mom says, squeezing her way back through to me.

Another announcement. Everyone huffs and starts towards the doors to leave.

“The system’s down.” says a guard to our left.

We hear: “oh wait– it’s back up!” and we are crushed and trampled as everyone makes their way to the back of the bank. All the way to the front. Where they weren’t yet.

Claustrophobia had its ugly jaws locked until…

After close to 5 or 6 hours (I have a watch, I’m not joking about the time) we finally stepped up to the teller.

“ah-me… stuh-deh-bah-ker.” she says slowly.

“Amy,” Mom corrects her. “Amy Studebaker.”

Finally.

-Madeline Studebaker

After Kid’s English Class is over, Janina approaches me and drops her voice to a whisper. Of course she only speaks Spanish, but she says, “Madeline, I need to tell you something important– the old owner of this house died yesterday.”

“I know,” I answer. “Sad, isn’t it? I heard already.” I hadn’t known him, but I still felt bad.

“Sure it’s sad, but I needed to tell you what happens now– I mean, you have to be safe, right?– and I didn’t think you knew– but you have to just–”

Catching only bits and pieces of her rapid speech, I slowed her down. “He died. That’s sad. What else?”

She takes a quick breath and again launches into her explanation. “He died. And he owned this house— that’s the point, see? Now since he died, and you live in his old house, you could also get sick. Very, very sick.”

I shake my head. “We’re fine, seriously, we’re not gonna get sick.”

“No, no, no!” she exclaims. “That’s how it works! When someone dies, the people who live in their house get sick. I don’t know– with malaria or dengue or something.”

Realizing this as a superstition, I answer, “But we’re fine, really, it’s okay!”

She firmly presses her lips together, then opens them with the serious message: “Madeline. You could die. Elijah could die, or anybody in your family could. Please, just listen to me, okay?”

I nod. Tears are starting to prick my eyes, seeing her dedication to this. But I know Janina, and there’s no explaining anything to her until she’s finished.

“Okay, okay, listen.” she repeats. “You have to go to the priest– I’ll help you find him. We’ll take him some water, oh, one or two gallons, and we’ll get him to bless it.”

“Bless? The water?”

“Yes, now listen: I can help you, but we use the water and get it all over the house– the walls and stuff– and that will keep you from getting sick.”

“Janina?” I say.

“Yes? You understand, right?”

“Look, I know you’re worried, okay?”

“I am worried!” She shrieks.

I offer her a weak smile. She furrows her eyebrows are nearly launches back into how I could die.

“It doesn’t say anywhere in Bible to do that water-stuff, so we’re safe.” I explain.

“Where in there does it say we don’t have to?” grabbing the Book out of my hands.

“Nowhere. It doesn’t say it at all, see?” I flip through the pages. “You know something? God’s taking care of me and my family. He protects us. Am I saying that right?” I ask.

“Yeah, He protects you.” She says, slightly correcting my pronunciation.

“So everything’s good.” I conclude.

“Madeline… does He protect you guys because you take care of us children?”

“He takes care of us because… well, we believe in Him, and love Him.” I tell her.

“Right, I knew all that.”

“And He loves us, Janina, all of us,” I remind her.

“Okay,” she nods.

“So don’t worry.” I add.

“I won’t.”

Janina. Worried about us. Trying to warn us and protect us. Trying to help us.

This little jungle girl doesn’t know the truth. I can only pray that when she sees that we’re not sick, that the owner’s death has not affected our health, that she will come that much closer to be willing to believe. As we share the Truth- So All May Know.

-Madeline Studebaker

Taking a team of Americans through the jungle into… uh, deeper jungle. Call me Miss Important. Helping my daddy and another missionary take this group into a faraway rainforest village. Of course, I hadn’t actually been there yet, like, in person, but I’d been told all about it, and besides– how different from all the other villages could this one be?

“It’s two hours on the bus, half an hour on the canoe,” I recited when asked about how long it would take to get there. I ended with a big smile and barely refrained from a curtsy. I was just that excited.

After answering the one hundredth question about Ecuador (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration), we stopped in the middle of nowhere.

We were ordered to pull our mud boots on and hop in the canoe. The mud boots, backpacks, and mosquitos weren’t the part that bothered me. It was the canoe. Because it wasn’t there.

And we waited for it. For-e-ver. I was starting to get worried there weren’t any around.

But finally, finally, half of the team got in one and headed down the river. I wasn’t in the first group. And the thought that the canoe actually might not come back wasn’t terribly reassuring.

Once we all got in the canoe (it did return for us), there was the normal, totally expected freak-out from just about everybody.

“We are actually riding in this thing?!”

“Where are the life jackets?!”

“Wait– I can’t swim!”

It was awhile down river when we heard: “AAAAHHHHH! HEY, YOU GUYS!!”

And then we saw them. The other half of the team. Stranded on the side of the river, screaming at us.

“Why are you… here?” Dad asked. “This isn’t our village!”

“We know, but this is where he dropped us off.” they said. “So we told him to go get you.”

We rode on, fervently praying that they wouldn’t become an anaconda snack.

Once we got to the village, we unloaded and started working.

“Rocks.” we were told by the pastor’s wife. “Lots and lots of rocks and sand. We mix it with the cement.”

I translated. “She wants us to go get some rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Yeah. Oh, and sand.”

“From… where?”

She took us back to the river and an old canoe. After Mom hugged me good bye like she’d never see me again, Dad warned me not to drown. (Thanks, Dad.) We jumped in the rickety canoe and rode off with four Kichwas.

“Just to the other side of the river, right?” they asked me.

“Uh… that’s what she told me.” It wasn’t a very wide river, but it was deep. We got out there, and turned into another tributary. That… wasn’t expected. But I was determined to keep my cool. And I was certainly not going to announce my biggest fear: that we were getting kidnapped.

“We’re not getting kidnapped,” I told myself. I got a couple awkward stares. Oh. I must have said it out loud. Whoopsie. Then we stopped at a sand bar and were ordered off our vessel.

“Start filling the canoe.” they commanded, handing us shovels and buckets.

We filled up the eight or nine buckets, and started back to the boat. Where our guides were dumping the buckets into the bottom of the canoe.

“Oh.” somebody said. “They meant… actually fill the canoe.”

When the canoe was filled to their approval, we all hopped back in. Well, minus four of us. The canoe started sinking with all the weight and no, we could not take all the sand back out, according to the Ecuadorians. We promised to return for our friends once we got the rocks and sand back to the village.

I didn’t want to do any more physical labor after digging up sand bars. And I would not after carrying a 20-pound buckets full of wet sand and rocks about a mile. Twice. I sank down on a wooden bench in a tiny house with no walls except for the bedroom. The room was filled with about 10 children, screaming and jumping off of stacks of the teams supplies. Ah-ha! I thought. I’ll watch the team’s stuff. I’ll baby-sit. I’ll supervise. And I won’t fall asleep…

I woke up to Elijah tapping my forehead and yelling that Momma wanted me to watch him. (I later found out the he and his new buddies had been all the way to the river and back.)

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I moaned. “I can’t believe this!” There was drool on the bench. I wiped it off my face. “This never happened,” I told Elijah and the other kids. “Are you hearing me?” I snapped. I looked up as a few of the team members walked in. I just knew I had a sign hanging around my neck that said, Caution: Irresponsible Missionary Kid.

How much worse could it get?

“I’m hungry,” I heard myself complain.

Oh, it could get worse.

Me, Miss Missionary.