It is now Sunday evening--Mother's day. Judy got a great Mother's Day gift, and I get to share it. The end of the story is that Sam is safe and unharmed, except for scrapes and bruises. Yesterday Sam went with missionary Scott Dooley and volunteer medical student Ben Kumor to explore a cave that Scott has been talking about doing for several years. Scott loves caves, and has done quite a bit of spelunking (the term for exploring caves). Sam and Scott have explored several caves in the area here, but this particular one has fascinated them. The problem is that the entrance to this one is a 150' vertical shaft, and they just didn't have the equipment to 
safely get into and out of it! On his last furlough, Scott acquired the equipment he needed, a longer climbing rope, and ascenders, devices that make it possible to climb up a rope. Ever since the Dooleys got back, they have been planning the day. They have been training in trees so that Sam could learn to rappel and ascend with the rope. So yesterday they drove to Konduk, then hiked the 2-plus hours to the cave, along with John Opa, a local friend. They rappelled into the cave without incident, looked around, annoyed thousands of bats, and began to climb back up the rope. But they experienced trouble with the ascending equipment, and ended up with Ben and Scott out, and Sam hanging on the rope part-way 
up, unable to either go up or down. Scott, Ben and John tried to pull Sam up, but the rope lay over several angles of rock which added so much friction that they could not move him more than a few inches. We got cell phone service in the Highlands almost a year ago, which turned out to be a tremendous blessing in this situation. Scott was able to phone us. I brought Jeff Myers and a group of young men from our college of nursing, and drove to Konduk. The young men ran to the cave, and along with some people from Konduk were able to pull Sam up. Although I tried to get there, I did not make it to the cave by the time they got him out, so I waited for him along thetrail. We got home about 10 pm, exhausted but
thankful to God for His help, and for the wonderful, selfless people who got involved. Today we went ahead with a previously made plan, and drove into Mt. Hagen for church and a mother's day lunch at a restaurant. We know that many of you pray for us frequently, and we thank you all for those prayers. Happy Mother's Day to you all, mothers or not!Andy, Judy, and Sam
It was a very adventurous experience. From Konduk to the cave took the 4 College of Nursing students and myself about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The boys were kind enough to not kill me going up the
mountain because I'm sure without me they would have made it in a shorter time. We got to the cave entrance where all we could see of Samo (Uncle Jeff's name for Sam) was the rope that he was tied to. By the time we arrived to help pull him out Samo had been hanging around for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. It took six of us to pull him out while 2 more people worked the locking system so that as we pulled we didn't loose what we had gained. I would guess that it took us about 15 minutes to get Samo out. Although it was the first time, and hopefully the only time, our quickly gathered Search and Rescue Team worked like a well oiled machine!Jeff
The top picture is what Samo saw while he was hanging around. The light at the top was where he needed to be to get out.
The next picture: all the white dots are bats eyes. The original picture is much better at seeing them, sorry.
Third picture down is members of the Kudjip Search & Rescue Team.
Fourth picture is Samo reassuring his Mama by Digicel (Thank the Lord for Digicel!) that he was out and OK! (Thank the Lord for that too!)
Final picture is me with my Digicel and headlamp after we had extracted Samo from the cave. (As always GO Browns!)
The above article was written by Andy Bennett
Photos by Sam Bennett & the other Rock Climbers
No comments:
Post a Comment