In the jungle, everything is extreme: heat, animals, rain…the third halted work early yesterday. I have never seen rain pummel the earth with such force in my entire life. The rain fell in torrential sheets, sending rivers of muddy water ripping through the roads, turning them into foaming floods. We tried to keep working for a while, but it soon became evident that our efforts were futile: we couldn’t mix or lay cement and we couldn’t lay bricks. I was wearing the hat I’d purchased in Julau. It certainly proved its worth today. It has kept the sun off all week and sheltered me from the rain like an umbrella.

As the rain intensified everyone began ducking under the roof of the church--except me. I just had to run out under the rain and feel it stinging my skin.

Finally we capitulated to the elements and laid down our tools for the day. My Iban friend, Latip, urged me to hurry back to the longhouse. The road was flooding as water tore channels in the clay and roared through them. It was a humbling, awe-inspiring experience, walking in the tempest and feeling God’s presence as if He were walking beside me. When we reached the longhouse we were all drenched. In Borneo, you have to take advantage of every opportunity to get clean, so a bunch of us grabbed our shampoo and washed our hair in the rain.

That night my feet were on fire with pain from blisters, and with cuts from gravel that had gotten into my shoes. A word to the wise: if you get rocks in your shoes, stop and take them out! I had also scraped my leg up running to get more mortar for Pastor Denney, an Iban pastor friend of mine. I slipped in the mud and fell. The doctors applied medicine and bandages to my feet and band-aids for my legs. I look like I’ve been through a war!

The best part of Friday evening was talking to some of the Iban pastors that came from all over Sarawak (Sarawak is one of the states on the island of Borneo, in the country of Malaysia) to help with the church.