After church yesterday I was sitting on the piano box talking to Pearl, and we decided that we wanted to do something a little different for Sabbath afternoon. After finding out that we could not take one of the boys through the checkpoint, we decided to split into two groups…one going to the water fall, made up of all the girls and Travis as our driver, and the other group made up of the boys and Roy, going for a long hike.

Now, I must admit that I thought that because of all the signs pointing to this waterfall that all we would do was go to a nice spot overlooking a waterfall and look at it for a while, then go back home, enjoying the nice ride in the crowded motor bike trailer. But, it wasn’t quite like that.

We drove a long ways down a beautiful side road, until we got to a gate in the road. Then, the nicely paved road just ended and there was a field full of ruts in front of us. There was no sign of a waterfall anywhere. But, there were a bunch of men working on constructing some sort of a building, so we drove over to them and asked them where the waterfall went. They pointed to a thin little trail over by the river. So, we all spilled out of the trailer, and headed down a little trail into the jungle. We walked for quite a ways and then came to a river. I tried to locate the direction that the trail took from there, but could not find it. Travis then pointed across the river and we all saw a trail, headed up the opposite bank!  But, the river between us and that trail was rather deep, so we began looking for an alternate route. We found one, but it was not exactly an easy one. We would have to jump a deep section of river and land on an overhanging tree perched on the side of a vertical bank of mud. So, Travis went first, and successfully made it. Then, I went and stood in the river to help all I could while we passed the girls up to Travis, who then handed them to Pearl at the top of the bank. We all made it, and felt extremely successful! Then, we headed on down the trail. The strange thing was that it did not get any easier after that. We hiked, and waded rivers, and walked over tree roots, and boulders, looking for the elusive waterfall. We finally came to a place where the river dropped maybe 4 inches, and we came to the conclusion that this was it. So, we sat down and tried to enjoy it, but we were all rather disappointed.

Travis finally decided to wade the next deep river crossing and check out what was ahead on the trail. He came back with a glowing report of a water fall that was at least a foot high! By this time I was beginning to see a lot of similarities to our hike and the Christians life. We had met with many seemingly impossible barriers to our success in seeing the waterfall, and only by working together and helping each other had we made it that far. Now, we were hearing tidings of a better land. Some in our little group were pressing hard to go back, but I was determined that because of the difficulty we had gone through, I was not going to go back without seeing what I came to see! So, we headed further into the jungle.

I found out that Meme is really scared of water, and so I spent most of my time helping her over the deep spots in the rivers, while Travis carried Hannah. But, after several more crossings, we came to a beautiful trail, carved through the jungle, with wild sounds coming from its inhabitants on either side of us. There was a large creek on our left, and on our right an even bigger river. On either side of us were little stair-step waterfalls, which kept getting bigger as we walked. It grew much more beautiful as we went, making me very sure that this was well worth the trouble we had faced so far!

The land that we were walking on got narrower and narrower, until we came to a point where the two rivers joined, and ahead of us were many cascades of low waterfalls, followed by deep pools of water, in a gorgeous aqua color. With the deep green of the jungle overhanging it all, and the blue sky overhead, we felt as if we were experiencing a piece of heaven.

But like heaven, you will have to be happy with only a poor description of what we saw, since I went and forgot to take the camera!