Last Tuesday, February 2^nd, we flew with MAF to Apetina. It was a great joy to see the village and the airstrip coming into view. After 11 months we were able to meet the people again!

Well, meeting with them… we had to keep our distance and wear our facemasks. We were summoned by the government to go into home quarantine for 7 days. We all keep to these prescriptions. The Wayana don’t visit us and we don’t go into the village to visit. Next Tuesday we’ll be free again to go and visit.

We were very curious to see ‘who’ took over our house in these past months. The bat poo was not as bad as we expected, but to clean everything thoroughly will take us at least a week. So, we can use our home quarantine for that.

Unfortunately, the bats made our towel cabinet their home, so we first have to wash all our towels before we can use them again. ‘Coincidentally’ we received new towels from someone in the Netherlands. We could put those to use right away.

Next to being curious who took over our house, we also wanted to know if our solar system was still functioning. Did the two bulbs keep burning those 11 months? We were happy and so thankful that one of the bulbs was still burning and the solar system is working properly. Our freezer is running smoothly again.

Sad to say but our water filter system wasn’t functioning properly, it was leaking all over the place. One of the big buckets had a tear beyond repair. There were two more buckets of exactly the same size in our dry room, so Marco made a ‘new’ water filter system. So happy that Marco is a ‘jack of all trades’!

Our neighbors took really good care of our garden. They enjoyed eating the big leaves themselves also, and took care of the weed from time to time. We already enjoyed two meals with home grown tayerblad.

In the river we saw some new ‘friends’ just in front of the house.

We’re here only a few days, but it feels like we have never been away. We feel we belong here as the Lord has called us.