Tidbits from Bolivia

World AIDS Day

2009-12-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome to some photos of the World AIDS Day in Cochabamba. This day there are productions going on all over the world to increase awareness and give education about HIV/AIDS. This year Ninos con Valor was able to participate in the "feria" in the main plaza here in Cochabamba. Victims of HIV/AIDS are often the most marginalized in Bolivia. They are rejected from work places, the children from daycares, schools, and even by doctors. Since HIV is at the heart of the purpose of the Pedacito de Cielo project that I work at full time, it was important that the fact that children can have HIV too be known. But of course, we protected their identity and privacy the best we could. I'll let the pictures say the rest.

The feria started out with an amazing ring around the sun. Not something you see everyday!
It almost felt like halloween at PdC this morning as we got all the kiddos in costums and did their make-up.

Isn't she just too cute!?

Our "patito" or ducky
Baby G is good to go!
Best smile of the day I think
She is one of our more difficult children (does not live with us) but I did NOT give her the devils horns!
Everyone say "awww"
These are some pictures of the crowds that were gathered at different agencies with tents that were giving out information.

Ducky and batman, just chillin
This was when NCV when being introduced. There is Tyson, our executive director along with two of the girls from CdP and the professional dancer from New York.
Amanda, the dancer, taught most of our girls and a some from another home, a few dances to perform on this special day.

And this is Amanda, she did an amazing solo dance. The older girls did a dance also but I failed to get any still pictures, only video which I seem to not be able to upload.

Once NCV was done we got out of there pretty quick as it was HOT HOT HOT and eveyone was hungry. I felt like eveything went very well regardless of the political atmosphere around Coch right now. Presidencial Elections are next Sunday.

2009-11-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about my sight seeing trip to Oruro and Uyuni, two areas in sounthern Bolivia. I went with 14 people from my language school including two of my teachers. This blog is mostly pictures with a little narrative. Picture descriptions will be beneath the photo.

This is a shot of the town of Oruro. We left Cochabamba early on a Wedesday morning and traveled 4 hours in a bus to arrive in Oruro. We had some time before our train left for Uyuni so we saw some of the sights in Oruro.

This mural depicts the story behind the National holiday of Carneval which has its roots in Oruro. It has to do with lizards and frogs and snakes coming upon the city (miners mostly at the time).

A woman, The Virgin, came to the rescue and delivered the city from the plagues.

This is a giant slide outside a church we visited. Yes I went down the concrete slide and I have the bruise on my tailbone to prove it!

Inside the church there is this mural the depicts hell, the world, and heaven.

Close up of a demon

Close up of the world

Below the church is an old mining cave. People there believe that hell is underground and have made statues of what they call "tio" a name for the devil (though literally it means "uncle"). People bring coca leaves, cigarettes, and other things to these idols to appease them.

This is another "tio"

Finally we boarded our train to Uyuni to begin out 3 day tour there.

We rode for 8 hours and arrived in Uyuni at 3AM

This is the group that I traveled around southern Bolivia with. The SUV was provided by our tour agency and is a must for most of the travel is off road (there are no roads!). Our driver was very cool, played english music for us, and often refered to us girls as "mis chicas (his girls)" or as his "beautifuls"

Our first stop was to the train graveyard in Uyuni. I actually red the graffiti after I had this picture taken. Feliz Viage para Todos, rougly translates to our phrase, Happy Trails to everyone.

This one says, This is the life. Underneath someone wrote "no"

This one made me laugh too. It says "an experienced mechanic needed" below and not in the picture it said "ugently"

This is the group of 15 of us. I still can't believe I climbed up on top of that thing!

We stopped at a place where there are a lot of natural rock formations. I could have spent hours there but we didn't have time as this was near the end of the trip and we had sick people we needed to get back into the city. Can you see the face in this picture?

Can you see the eagle?

Can you see the baboon face?

This is a sunset over the moutains

This is a volcano that is on the border of Bolivia and Chile. The chile side is active.

In the middle of the salt flats (pictures coming up next) are a few islands. There are a lot of cactuses there and we spent several hours climbing around and eating and resting on the island.

This is a view from the top of the island looking out over the salt flats.

Hug a tree, though at this altitude there aren't any trees, its way too high. So I hugged a cactus instead, ouch.

Watching the sunset from the island.I'm sitting on the salt flats

This is from earlier that day when we had a tour of how the process the salt to make it edible. This is a mountain waiting to be taken to the small town to be processed. Looks like snow huh?

The salt flats of Uyuni cover over 4,000 sq miles and goes down 5 meters. When your standing there it seems like it never ends. It just keeps going and going in all directions. It also contians 80 percent of the worlds lithium reserves. It is mostly untouched.

We stayed at a motel made compeltly of salt. The floors, chairs, tables were all made out of salt.

The walls too

And even the bed frames and end tables. The doors were made out of cactus wood.

This is a close up of a gyser.

The gysers from farther away.

This area is semi volcanic. The dirt/clay is liquid and is boiling with steam coming up from it constantly. I literally felt like I was on the moon of something, it was so other worldly. It smelled like rotten eggs though.

This is our time of swiming in the hotsprings. That was a nice treat!

A little piece of heaven.

Me and some new friends just chillin while we observed the afore mentioned volcano.

This is the red lake. Its red because of the mineral that it contains. When the wind is blowing stongly as you can tell by my hair in this picture, the lake water is bright red. The white part of not water.

More of the red lake, it was one of the coolest parts of the trip for me.

This is the green lake. Also contains a mineral causing it to turn green.

This is the stinky lake. So called because it contains sulfur. It stinks! But the flamingos like it. 3 different varieties of flamingo live in this area.

This is the sign for the lake, roughly translated, The Stinky Lake

This is how you fill your gas tank when you are out in the middle of nowhere.

Most of our meals were on the road and provided for us by our tour guide agency. Considering the available resources, the food was really good!

Our cook and her stove.

There were signs that made me laugh along the way. This is roughly translated says " only the wind runs here, all other must drive 5Kmh"

this is one just says "No peeing"

Back in Bolivia

2009-11-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

I have been back in Bolivia for 2 weeks now and it feels as though I never left. There is evidence of my absence in that my kids all got older and have learned new things. Not to mention that there are two new kids that joined us while I was away. I have been taking pictures like crazy so here are some of the best.

This is most of our kids, missing 4 though. This is not an easy picture to take thats for sure!

This little princess is our newest addition to our daycare. She is still adjusting, meaning, she cries A LOT. Once she gets through this period I think she will be just fine.

Manolo here is our newest resident and he is quite the bundle of energy. And ever so cute!

Lily is growing by leaps and bounds and crawls around like crazy. She loves to practice standing up, her legs are already very strong.
Baby G is not letting a little something like open heart surgery slow him down! This marks 4 months since his operation. And he is now walking rather then crawling and learning new words.
Here are some pics of my kids just being darn cute. The sibs have all the toys they can possibly play with, but what do they do? They play with the plastic buckets that hold the toys of course!
Our kids are getting much better at the concept of sharing toys. I'm told they even have a system of "trade" where one child will give another child a different toy in exchange for the one he had been playing with. They still have a long way to go though, I still am breaking up fights several times a day.
Marcos here is proudly showing off his newly repaired teeth. His front teeth were completely rotted through. He used to rarely smile but now he can't get enough of smiling for the camera!

Baby Mateo as grown the most in the time I was gone. He is our premature baby and he weighed only 5 pounds or so when I left. I'm not sure his exact weight now but you should see his chubby little body, his double chin, and fat little cheeks! He is also much more alert and makes good eye contact.

In a very short time we will be recieving yet another new born baby, actually possibly two. I will post pictures just as soon as they arrive!

The latest arrival

2009-09-05T05:37:00.000-07:00

Over the next couple of weeks, we at Pedacito de Cielo will be recieving a number of children to live in our orphanage for children affected by HIV/AIDS or have been classified as having special medical needs. Just this last Friday a new little boy arrived. I haven't been told of his "name" yet so I will just tell you what I do know about the little cutie pie.

He is one year and two months old. I was trying to see where he is developmentally and its hard to say. The first couple of days are always hard as the kids are adjusting to being in a new place with unfamiliar people. He can sit by himself but when I put him down on his stomach he didn't seem to know how to crawl. Or he was possible just scared. We'll know for sure in a couple of days. He walks when guided and holds your hands but his legs are not strong.

I am told that he has had digestive problems for most of his life. As you can see, he is plenty chubby! Well, I think "stocky" would be a better description. The other kids are doing very well with trying to be his friend and include him. They like to give him kisses and share their toys. And believe me, sharing is not one of their stronger points! They are all making me very proud!

2 1/2 weeks till furlough!

2009-08-31T08:29:00.000-07:00

I can´t hardly believe how fast time is going! I´ll be visiting the states in no time at all! I am going to miss ¨my¨ kids sooo much as they are all growing and learning new things every single day. However, I do feel I need a break. I know that sounds terrible! We currently have 3 children potty training, 3 children cutting teeth (first teeth and molars), and currently nearly all of them have headcolds of some sort or other. All of this adds up to a lot of crying!

Just last week we added another baby to our home bringing our number of residents to 8. His name is Mateo and was born at 30 weeks (about 7 months into the pregnancy). He was abandonded at the hospital at birth and has struggled with respiratory problems ever since. He came to us weighing about 4 pounds! He is literally smaller then some of the dolls our other kids play with.
In other news... Lucas is finally crawling. We at Pedacito de Cielo have been working on developing his leg muscles for over 6 months. He is also finally starting to try to pull himself to his feet while holding on the furniture. He hasn´t gotten there yet but he´s trying hard!

I don´t have a picture of her, but baby Lily has learned how to roll over and over and over again. She is really kind of comical when she gets herself rolled into a corner that she can´t get out of! She looks at a toy and gets a very determined look on her face...it won´t be long till she starts inching along on her tummy which in turn will lead to crawling. We are all very impressed by how strong and chubby she has gotten in just a few short months!

Over the next several weeks we are expecting several new arrivals. So far I know about 2 more boys with heart conditions, a baby girl with facial deformities that don´t allow her to drink from a bottle, and a little boy that has digestive problems. Very soon PDC will be a full house! And all of them arriving just as I´m leaving, thats makes me sad! But I will have plenty of time to bond with them when I return to Bolivia in late October.

Please be in prayer for all the staff and new volunteers at PDC as we accept all these new little ones. Many of them are undernorished and underdeveloped. Some of them will be requiring surgeries or even multiple surgeries. Please pray also for my time in the states. I need to raise a significant amount of money in order to be able to stay on in Bolivia for another year. My monthly budget is about $1000 and I need about $1400 for my second year visa and health insurance. If you are able and would like to contribute to my support you can mail a check to Operation Harvest P.O. Box 1410 Burbank, CA 91507. Thanks!

Update

2009-08-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is some of those photos a mentioned in my last update. I can't help it if my kids are just too cute!

Marcos likes to play with baby Lily. He is the oldest of all our kids and is an excellent big brother

Miguel likes to lick the bowl!

One of volunteers is taking a nap with Baby G in isolation. Glad I had my camera handy. Sorry about the glare!

Unrelated to the pictures above I wanted to share about some things I saw on a recent walk I took.

I sometimes don't notice the everyday sights and sounds anymore. I'm just so accustomed to life here that nothing really surprises me anymore. However, I found myself laughing out loud the other day as I walked home from having dinner with a friend. In one block of Cochabamba I saw: A young couple making out on the curb of the street, both his hands planted firmly on her behind, a hippie/gypsi w/ long long braids and a small guitar on his back talking with some one grilling some food outside a restaurant, and then a young boy peeing against a tree.

The sights I mentioned above are just normal things I see everyday. There are somethings you never get used to and make me want to cry everytime I see it. For example, in the main market, La Cancha, I saw a man half running through the market with a very heavy load literally strapped to his back. It was nearly as big as he was. He ran hunched over. I'm sure if he was upright he would have tipped over backwards from the weight. He was an old man and I almost started to cry. He was a human donkey. No one should ever have to carry a load like that to make a living.

Another time I saw a frail old man sitting on the ground in the main market. On the tarp in front of him was just a few candy bars to sell. I've never seen someone look so sad and so desparate. I'll never forget the day I saw 3 men sitting IN a dumpster sorting through the trash for anything that could be eaten, sold, or recycled.

The smiles on my kids faces, seeing them get stronger and learn new things brings my heart a lot of joy. But I also live in a big city and there are things I see everyday that just break my heart too. I hope this has given you a little more insight into my life here.

Overnight with Baby G

2009-07-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

This will be a little different then normal. Why? Cause I don´t have any pictures! I can actually write fairly well so I will paint you a word picture of Baby G´s home away from home.

For the second time this year, Baby G has been admitted into Hospital Velga, reported to be the best heart surgery hospital in Cochabamba. The first time he was there it was to run a test on his heart that required he be under anesthesia (sp?). Now he is there for pre-op observation.

I walked in the front door yesterday and went directly to his room, no security was present at the time. The hospital doesn´t look like much from the outside. Just a drab looking building with bars on all the windows. Down a short hallway and there is actually a very beautiful garden area with a winding ramp going up to the second floor. Signs leave you a little confused and it took me a few moments to locate his room which is different then his first visit. Finally on a whim, I walked through an unmarked door and stumbled on his room. This is a double room but he is the only ocupant and there are two twin beds provided for caretakers plus his metal, white crib. He was thrilled to see me and even more excited about the toys I brought for him. At this hospital we are required to bring his bottles and his milk and clothes for him everyday and diapers. Yeah, I know, welcome to Bolivia, its a little different down here! The room is surprisingly warm for this cold season of the year and the best word I can use to describe it is ¨drab¨. Bolivia is vibrant with colors but this room is gray and white and well, its feels like a hospital.

We played with blocks and books for a little bit as nurses zipped in and out. The poor boy has to be on oxygen until the surgery (which at the moment is postponed until Tues or Wed). He is just 1 1/2 years old and doesn´t tolorate the tube very well. So the nurses have to use medical adhesive tape to tape it to his face. He´s not crazy about it but he leaves it be. He needs to have the oxygen to bring up his levels before the surgery. He goes to bed at 7:30 and I got to sit back with a book for a little while. I´ve been struggling with either a sinus or a stress headache for the better part of the week so even when it was time for me to sleep, I couldn´t and needed to take some meds to relieve the pain so I could sleep. Sleep is also dificult because I keep imagining the worst case senarios, trying to prepare myself for whatever may happen next week. The tears come immeditetly. So I keep praying and giving him to God.

He did very well that night and slept just short of 11 hours. The last overnight I did with him he woke up at least 3 times in the night. So I thank God for that. In the AM he was bright eyed and more or less happy. He´s bored and wants to crawl around like he normally does when he´s not attached to oxygen. I wish I had a picture of him sitting on an adult scale as they took his weight. That was pretty comical. At 8AM my replacement came in and I headed home. I will have another overnight with him this coming Monday, hopefully his last night before the surgery. Please keep us all in your prayers during this very emotionally dificult time. thank you.

Park trips

2009-06-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hello! Its been a while since I updated... again. I really wish I had more time to share what goes on in my life here its just that my life is soooo busy that I don't have a lot of time for internet cafes, much less for updating the blog. So that said, welcome to a photo blog of our once a week trip to the park with kids from Pedacito de Cielo.

Here is our kids, doing their best to walk in a single file line.

And this is me and "my" baby girl. She normally sleeps through the whole park outing in her baby carrier sling thing.

We play on a lot of different things including a VERY big slide and swings. The slide is great fun as long as there is someone at the bottem to do the catching!

We also have snack time.

And who wouldn't want to take a group picture in a great big car?

This is usually a once a week event and gets the kids off the property for a bit. Its a lot of work but well worth it to see the smiles on their faces!

Happy 1st Birthday Lucas!

2009-05-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Oh birthdays are so much fun, even if they are a ton of work and the baby will never remember it! This last Saturday we celebreated baby Lucas' first birthday. This will be much easier to tell in pictures. This is Lucas and his father, Lucas is wearing the clothes his father bought him for his birthday.

I'm not that familiar with his story but I believe his mother has already passed away from HIV/AIDS. His father is unable to care for him but visits with him frequently. Along with his father, we had quite a crowd come together for this birthday including his grandmother, cousins, and other relatives. This is Lucas with his grandma.

The Tias made a typical Bolivian dish called Pique Macho. And boy did we ever eat!

And of course there was the cake!

And this is Lucas trying to catch and eat a balloon and I couldn't help but add a picture of Lily smiling.

The beginning of the party was a little rough for Lucas. He was very overwhelmed and doesn't know his biological family. If he couldn't see me he flipped out a little. As time went on he relaxed and seemed to be having a good time. And lastly, he pooped out!

Maybe I should have taken a picture of the pile of dishes the Tias and I were left to wash...

Like giving birth

2009-05-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

"Its like giving birth!" is what came out of my mouth as another missionary friend and I were trying to get my full sized mattress up my 3 flights of stairs to my apartment. We were halfway there and I was on the pushing end, she on the pulling end. She kept saying "PUSH!" and I kept saying "I AM PUSHING!" and it just reminded me of a woman in labor! We all got quite a laugh out of it, including my bolivian neighbor :) This mattress purchase came after two months of waking up with sore back muscles cause my apt came with a very typical Bolivian mattress... foam. And seeing as I'll be staying in Bolivia for some time to come, I thought it would be a good investment. I don't know a single other missionary in Coch that hasn't bought a good mattress! So that was this weekends adventure. I also helped a friend give away one of her 3 dogs at the doggy market.

So my blogging has kinda slowed down, I apologize for that. I don't have internet in my house and I have very little time to sit in internet cafes and generally have a lot of other corresponding to do during that time. My weeks are pretty typical these days as I am working full time at our daycare. The kids are all growing by leaps and bounds and learning new things everyday. I had a missionary friend visit from Sucre last week and it was so good to see her again and catch up on each others lives. I know her from WAY back in the day as we grew up in the same church.

I turned 28 this last week and enjoyed a couple of meals out (and free to me!) and taking a day off of work. I have been very healthy for a couple of weeks now thanks to some new vitamin supplements I have been taking. I attended an AIDS seminar this last weekend and honestly didn't learn anything I didn't know before. But I'm glad there are professionals who are willing to educate people on what HIV AIDS is and how it is and is not passed from person to person.

Baby G's surgery is scheduled for July 3rd. One of the girls from the home has been placed with her Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. We are looking forward to June and July being very busy months as we host 4 different short term teams. I am plannning to take my second furlough Sept 18th through the last week of Oct.

Last night I saw a motorized cart pulling a kids train with 2 big and 1 small horse trotting along behind it with riders on them. This was on one of the main streets in town. Very very random!

I think thats all the updates for me right now. Look for my email update coming out in June for updates on some of our kids and more pictures! Here are a few pictures of me working with my kids.

New Baby Girl

2009-04-18T14:44:00.001-07:00

As promised, here are the photos of our newest baby girl.

She was abandonded as soon as she was born, I believe they said that she was born premature. Her mother never even named her. Well, what does a group of mostly women do with a baby that doesn´t have a name? We vote! And we came up with a beautiful name that of course I can´t post. Sorry :) She has a very high risk of having HIV but we won´t know for sure for another 18 months. She just turned 1 month old this week. And as you can see she is TINY compared to the babies we´ve been taking care of for the last 2 months and so so skinny. She came to us with a headcold and is recovering from that. As is normal for a baby her age, she sleeps most of the day. She has her awake times and likes looking around at lights and faces. She´s even smiled a time or two.

Still no word yet on when Baby G will have his surgery. It has been delayed because a certian machine that the doctors need to run a test on him before they can do the operation is broken. So we are waiting for it to be fixed. He has grown SO much since he first arrived. He´s longer, weighs more, has more energy, and can sit all by himself now. Even his hair has gotten darker! I´ll try to get new photos of him up soon.

More updates coming soon!

Happy Easter and Happy Kids Day!

2009-04-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

It seems in my life that there are long periods where nothing very exciting happens and then a short period of time when EVERYTHING seems to happen. And when things happen, I'm usually there to take pictures of it.

So this weekend was filled with activities related to both Easter and the Latin American tradition of Kid's Day. The Wednesday before Easter my team had a passover meal complete with some readings. I can remember having the passover meal once before in my life but for the life of me I can not remember when or where I celebrated it. If I was with you would you please tell me? Thanks.

Next was Good Friday. I had the day off of work a the daycare so I went to the girls hope to participate in the activites there. Here it is in pictures.

All of the girls were instructed to think about the sin in their lives and after a time of refection, to write down a sin on a piece of fabric that no one else would see.

Then we all gathered outside and each girl took a turn nailing their sin to the cross.

And when the last nail was nailed, this was the result.
We might never know if this activity really reached into their hearts and minds but they know and God knows, and thats all thats really important anyway.

The next day was celebrated Easter/Kid's Day. We had an easter egg hunt in the park and then some prizes. Here are some pictures from the hunt.

I FINALLY got a group picture, all 22 of the girls!

This is my small group for the hunt.

Searching high and low

And the proud owner of a fistfull of our "easter eggs."

Sunday was Easter. I went to an English speaking International Church and enjoyed a drama and lovely Easter sermon. The preacher for that day was actually the Latin American Director for Operation Harvest, what a nice suprise that was. He is also the man that ran all over Cochabamba with me to help me get my visa. Following the service I hosted a single missionary's potluck in my new apt. There were 8 of us in all and it was a lovely afternoon of food and fellowship. Holidays can be the lonliest times when your away from your family. A small group of us have kinda banded together to be there for each other during those times.

Monday was the Kid's Day celebration at the Daycare. We took all of our 8 kids to a nearby park and let them play on big slides, swings, tire swings, a train ride, etc. The babies were a little less then thrilled but the older kids had a lot of fun.

Check back soon for pictures of baby number 9 at the daycare, she just arrived today and oooooooo she is cute!

This and that

2009-03-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

Things have been going well in the ministries of Niños con Valor. An update on the day care is that our three resident babies are all doing well and almost all are healthly. Baby G came home after 1 1/2 weeks in the hospital to clear up an infection. Baby G still has a pretty nasty cold and has in turn given it to me. There is not a whole lot you can do when a baby sneezes right in your face! He has a good attitude though, much better than mine! Also, all of our daycare kids have returned, praise God! Two of them have been temporary residents as their mother feared for their saftely as she separated from her abusive husband. So on an average day we have 6 babies and 2 older kids to care for. A weight check shows that Pablo has gained weight as well as Raul. Baby G, due to his continued sickness and hospital stay, has not gain any weight.

The girls in the girls home are hard at work going to school and doing homework. They have just enough time in the day to still be little girls and play with Barbies and do other activities. I still hope to start English classes with them as well as a Bible Study for the older girls. But right now my help is more needed in the daycare.

On the Spanish side of things, I continue to take classes 2 days a week at my newly reopened and restructured language school. I really like their teaching style and have been with them for many months. I was happy to learn that I could continue learning there at the same rates I had before. I have a LOT of practical application as I communicate with our Bolivian workers on a daily basis. If I had to guess at my spanish level I would say low intermediate. Intermediate is a HUGE part of spanish and has 2 or 3 levels. Some missionaries never get beyond this point as they have enough Spanish to get by on, I don´t want to be like that though. I still struggle with not knowing proper names for things and verbs I don´t have reason to use on a daily basis. Everytime I get frustrated I have to remind myself how far I´ve really come.

My financial support has had its ups and downs not unlike the US stock market! I had a scare in Feb as half of my suppport didn´t come in for the month. And then March it was almost back to normal. I know that God will take care of me so that I can finish my two year term this coming fall. Thank you always for your prayers and support!

The dream becomes reality

2009-02-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Pedacito de Cielo NCV's daycare and orphanage with children with compromized immune systems. This transition into an orphanage hasn't been "smooth" but it has finally been successful. We currently have 3 babies staying in our home around the clock. For the sake of privacy I can not list their real names. However I can tell you a little bit about them, so here we go.

First of all we have Guillermo.

Baby G is currently in the hospital recovering from an infection that he had before he even came to stay with us. Here is an excert from a friends entry about his condition.
"He was abandoned early on by both his mother and father and then shortly after, his grandparents. He has battled chronic pneumonia and malnutrition. Guillermo just turned one year this month, but he is small and underweight for his age (about 16.5lbs/7kgs) due to early neglect as an infant, and also because of a heart condition he has, tetralogy of Fallot. This is a rare congenital defect that causes blood to not be oxygenated properly (find out more here- http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/UVAHealth/peds_cardiac/tf.cfm). There is a connection between alcohol and drug consumption during pregnancy and tetralogy of Fallot, and since Guillermo was originally found lying on the street next his passed out mother, this is a definite possibility.

On Sunday, Guillermo started turning blue, so we brought him to the hospital so he could be put on oxygen. He had just left the hospital after having been in for four months battling pneumonia, so we were very sad to have to put him back in, but his blood oxygen levels were dangerously low, compounded with a severe infection. He is doing better now, but is in poor spirits as he’s very bored and uncomfortable. We have round the clock staff caring for him in the hospital, trying to keep him happy and distracted, but it’s a difficult task.

Guillermo is in desperate need of surgery. We knew this was going to be a reality for him, but we didn’t think it was going to be needed so soon. Because he is so underweight, we wanted to get his weight up, and then plan for the surgery, but after several consults, we’ve been advised that the risks of operating on him sooner outweigh the risks of waiting for him to gain the weight.

While we are looking into several charities that provide services at a lower rate, there are long waiting lists for these, and we do not have that kind of time. We’ve been advised that the costs will be at least $5000 for this surgery. This is an extraordinary cost here in Bolivia, but as we are working with the best cardiology department in the country, and this is a very rare surgery, we knew that the costs were going to be high. The government has already stated that the universal healthcare for children under 5 will not cover the surgery, so we must cover the costs."

Even with all the hardships in his young life he is such a happy baby and I want to see him have this surgery and get better and live a full long life. His smile is worth a thousand words don't you think?

And then we have Pablo.

He is 8 months old but very developmently behind. He can't roll over or sit up by himself. He is one of our babies that is at-risk for having HIV but its to early to tell. A doctor came to visit all our kids when they first arrived and then came to check on them again just yesterday. He didn't recognize Pablo as the same baby! Good, that means he getting chubby :)He is currently struggling with a very bad cold and is not sleeping well. It doesn't seem to have affected his appetite though! He also has a smile that will steal your heart :)

And lastly we have Raul.

In this picture he is holding hands with his "girlfriend" who is one of our girls that comes for daycare. He is almost 2 years old and I often feel like he is a big boy trapped in this little body. He is about the size of a 12-18 month old. At other times I see a glimps of just how much of a "baby" he still is. He is very thin, quiet, and stubborn too. Sleeps like an angel though, thank God for that. He has a tendency to throw himself backwards when he is having a tempertantrum, and not always on a soft floor. He had severe intestinal problems when he was a baby and is malnorished and develpmentally delayed. He doesn't speak at all.

Good News! Our daycare kids are slowly starting to come back! Th mothers recognize that their children were fatter and healthier when they were coming to us. There have been issues with a partnering organization and so they stopped bringing us their kids. And now nearly half of them are back again, Praise God!

I love this baby home more than I can say. I have been taking my turn on a rotation and sleeping at the home. Sleeping is a bit of stretch though as Pablo wakes up 2-3 times per night. And when he looks at you with a huge smile on his face at 4:30 AM... yeah, thats not so cute! If you would like to contribute financially to this home please see www.ninosconvalor.org for more details!

La Moda Loca!!!

2009-02-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

"Crazy Style" really does say it all! Yesterday, Ninos con Valor had their third annual Moda Loca and it was quite possibly the best day I've had in Bolivia yet. What it really is is a fashion show but with the craziest clothes we could find. NCV also hired a DJ with loud speakers. These pictures say more then I ever could! BTW, I took almost 70 pictures, these are just a sampling. First there was the prep time This is my crazy fashion getup. And this is our director, Tyson. And a couple of our girls.

And there was dancing, oh yes, there was dancing! This is one of our Tias This is the girls' psychologist Doin' the train And one of our short term team members

And after the craziness died down and we had the girls walk the fashion runway we were all starving. We had homemade pizza and icecream sundays At the end of the day we were all exhausted but very very happy!

Vote

2009-01-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

Another vote has come and gone and the city is still standing. We don't know for sure the results of the vote and when or even if anything will change. But when I know something so will you!

This and That

2009-01-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

Random is good. Random makes up most of my days. For example, all the girls in the home received christmas card type ornaments from a church in Canada (it was some sort of a fundraiser). All the cards had a message written in English. So the cards where given out and then I heard a House Tia say " and Kim will translate." All of a sudden 22 girls are crowding around me shoving christmas cards in my face demanding "what does this say?" Thankfully, many of them said just said Merry Christmas. But others had a short message that I was doing my best to translate correctly. Subjunctive in Spanish is difficult and doesn't exist in the same way in English. But it has to do with when you wish something for someone. So yeah, that was a challenge as I translated all the Christmas wishes.

The daycare has been going ok though we'e been short 2 babies for the last 2 weeks. That makes me sad cause I know they are not geting the nutrition they need in their homes. But 3 babies are easier to handle then 5! A random thing from there is this. One of my babies, I called her my escapee before, is a very sad quiet child. Rarely does she smile or laugh or really do a whole lot of anything. Except to escape the room of course! She is developmentally behind and is 1 year 3 months and not walking or talking. I randomly put her in a walker and she started walking around, she had the biggest smile on her face, showing all of her crooked teeth! I finally let her escape into the hall another time and she walked along all the walls and gates. And she loves it! She's fake talking, walking (with help), and having a great time of it. I've never seen her so animated. She stands all by herself and we work on walking with just holding on to one of my fingers. I have a lot of hope for this one. I think she'll be able to walk on her own very soon!

There is a vote this Sunday, lot of propoganda for vote YES and vote NO. Nobody really seems too worried about this one but of course, I'll let you know the result when I know it. I will of course be staying indoors on voting day which is what is recommended to all white folks.

More stuff coming soon, I promise!

wet again

2009-01-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

The streets aren´t safe anymore. Your walking down the street, minding your own buisness and SPLAT! your the victim of yet another waterballon attack. It could be worse, and believe me, it gets worse! This is the month for Carnival, a national holiday in many latin american countries. Carnival is actually at the end of February but the waterballoons started flying as early as December this time around. Its now getting worse. I live near several main roads and walking almost anywhere is risking getting a good soaking. I was walking the 15 mins to my language school yesterday when I took a direct hit on my shoulder. I worry mostly about my glasses getting broken (or my nose!). The balloons may be filled with ice and/or other more disgusting liquids. There is no respect in these waterballoon attacks, I draw more attention being white, but everyone is a target, young and old. So for now, I take public transportation when I can and avoid places where there are waterballoon wars on a regular basis. Although, waterballoons have been known to fly through the bus windows too!

El Campo

2009-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday @ 4AM I woke up to join my team as we headed out to the mountians. Our destination, a community at more than 14,000 ft above sea level (7,000 ft higher then Cochabamba). Our purpose... to bring a little belated Christmas cheer to a poverty strickin community in the mountians. Was it worth it? Oh yeah.
First no one was there. What in the world were we going to do with all the toys and food? Then I learned, if you bring it, they will come! And believe me, this doesn´t show even half of the kids!

And it wasn´t just kids, it was mothers and fathers too.

My team, along with six of the girls from the home, handed out toys to the kids and hot Api (a common bolivian drink) and bread to everyone. Also, about 75 families received garbage bags full of rice, flour, oil, and other such food from us as well.

Remember, these are mountian folks. Some walked for miles to come to us, they are dirty and smelly, and live in complete poverty. Giving them cheap toys and bread and drink seems like such a small thing, but to them, I would hope anyway, they saw a little bit of Jesus.

The girls home

2009-01-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

ok, so its been a while since I´ve posted an update. Blame it on being too busy! And then being too exhausted to do much of anything else. I have been spending time in both the daycare (see previous blog) and at the girls home.

The girls home is kinda a controlled chaos, a very well controlled chaos. The girls have a pretty set schedule that includes chores,

english class (and homework classes as well),

And plenty of time for girls just to be girls.

I am in the progress of taking over half of the english classes from another volunteer and also begining some bible study type activites with the girls as well. I sometimes help out with lunch preperation and am spending a lot of time watching the girls to makes sure they aren´t cracking their skulls open with their crazy antics.

One of the hardest things that happen this week was when one of our younger girls had a migraine. She had been in bed for 2 days with this headache and was literally in agony when I saw her. She was crying non-stop and her whole body was reacting to the insane pain in her head. Sitting there next to her trying to keep her calm yet being able to do nothing was the most horrible feeling in the world. Less then an hour later, one of the house Tías took her to see a doctor where she got an injection and some pills. She came home a completely different girl!

On a brighter note, I have enjoyed watching the girls´ spontanious creativity as they put on puppet shows with barbies and act in a play. I am very nearly done learning the 22 names but I still goof up every now and then!

My first week at the daycare

2008-12-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Before I start talking about my week, let me show you my kids! But do to privacy issues, I can not give you their names or if they are HIV positive or not. Even I do not have that information. So here they are, pics of 4 of my 5 little darlings.

This picture didn't work out so well, my little escapee was... well... escaping!

This guy is awfully cute but he is my touble maker! He doesn't eat well and sleeps only when he feels like it! He's 8 months old.

He is my hyper one, never met a baby that doesn't like to be held! He wants his freedom and is well on his way to walking, he's 8 months old.

She is my little escapee! She's 1 year 2 months but not walking yet and quite chubby. Ever opportunity she gets she's making her way out the door, and the door is too big for a gate.

And she is my most precious doll baby. She is 5 months old and trying really really hard to roll over but she hasn't made it quite yet. She's come a long way in a week, when I first started she didn't know how to drink from a bottle, she downs them in no time at all now.

And this is how I like them the best! If I'm lucky, I have maybe an hour during the day in which they are all sleeping!

Not shown is my big kid. She's 1 1/2 years and walking all over creation.

So I spent my first week working only with the daycare for a number of reasons, which is fine with me. It is so close to my apt that I can walk there in 5 mins. My day begins at 8:30 AM when the kids arrive. Remember, this is a daycare to help families effected by HIV and AIDS. All the parents are positive and some of our kids are, some of them are not, and some of them are too young to test. There are 4 other older kids that come that I am not responsible for.

So the schedule looks something like this for the babies. Eat breakfast (bottle and babyfood), change diaper, bath, clean clothes, bottle if needed to go down for the morning nap. If they went to sleep like good babies, they get up at 12 and get changed and ready for lunch, lots of downtime just playing in the playroom. 1pm lunch and then bottle and naptime again, if they go down nicely they sleep till 4. 4:30 is another bottle and diaper change and change back into their clothes and wait for the parents. I normally leave at like 5:30 or so. I do have some help from the Bolivian workers as I can't change one kid and keep eyes on the others.

It is very important for these kids to eat a lot and get good nutrition. They also recieve medication (not from me) and are regularly monitered by a doctor. If any of them arrive sick they are turned away as to not infect the others. We sanititize everything after every child too. It is exhausting work and I smell and am starving when I leave there. I love these babies so much I can't even tell you. After the first of the year I will be there only every other day to guard against burnout. The other days I will be at the girls home helping with the 22 girls that live there. Update on Christmas week coming soon!

Apartment

2008-12-13T05:51:00.000-08:00

I am now starting my second week being back in Bolivia. And what a whirlwind it has been. It can only be described as my second culture shock. I say this because for my first year I was living with host families. I never had to deal with relators and finding a place to stay, I never had to wait for things to be repaired in the house, I never had to buy my own food (except snacks), I never had to pay bills or anything like that. So needless to say, these last two weeks have been... educational.

I ended up renting the first apartment that I saw. The first shock came when I discovered that for the location and security level I wanted, I was not going to be able to get an apt with what I budgeted. So I crunched some numbers and made it work. The apt is 3 bedrooms, one of which I hope to rent out short/long term. It has a decent sized kitchen and a good refrigerator (most here are very small), dining room/living room big enough to host the International Bible Study. It´s mostly hard wood floors except the bedrooms, it has two bathrooms. I did get it fully furnished which has saved me a TON of money. Just getting the things for my kitchen, cleaning supplies, TV, ect has cost me more than I anticipated. The location is perfect as I´m right in the middle of everything and have a lot of public transportation options and walking distance to many things as well. The downside, its kinda noisy. Dogs across the street bark almost constantly, traffic noise, occasional concerts and fireworks, ect. But all these things I´m getting use to and sleep quite well at night. The apt was also kinda a fixer upper and I knew that when I moved in. There was a really bad electrical porblem in the kitchen and about half the lights in the apt were burned out. After a week of people coming and going everything is just about done. One door knob still needs to be replaced and the rest of the curtians hung and the area rug delivered. Otherwise its perfect :) Pictures coming soon!

In other news, I´ve been rather anxious to get settled so that I can start working with my new ministry. At this point I´ll be doing half my days at the AIDS daycare and the other half at the Home. I´ve learned that not all the kids at the daycare are postive. Most are too young to test but all the parents are positive and the purpose is to help families that are living with HIV or AIDS. There are 7-8 babies that come daily with a possibility of twice as many. They get baths and heath checks everyday and are feed VERY well with lots of fruits and veggies. The normal bolivian diet is meat, potatoes, and rice. Not good nutrition for these kids.

So this week, if all goes planned (and thats a big ¨if¨), I will sign my lease on Monday and get some legal stuff done with that. And then Tuesday I will run around with my team leader from Operation Harvest and do some visa stuff (blood test, fingerprints, ect). And then start working on Wednesday! Woohoo!

Back in Bolivia

2008-11-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

I have arrived safely back in Bolivia. I am staying with a missionary friend for a few days until I am able to rent an apartment. Getting the apt and then getting the unpacking and shopping done is the first thing I have to do and then I have to run about 100 errands associated with getting my residency visa (my current visa is only good for 30 days). I am very much looking forward to getting aquainted with my new orphanage and AIDS daycare.

Everyone was asking me before I left if I was ready to go back. And the answer is definelty YES! I loved being home but I had A LOT of down time, esp during the week. And I missed being busy, having a job, a reason for getting up in the morning. I also missed all the good excersize that I get here in Coch.

Rainy season has begun and it rains off and on most days. The ¨real¨ rainy season is in Jan and Feb were it might rain non-stop all day. Coch doesn´t see to much flooding but the sewers can´t keep up with a down poor so streets might be rivers for a few hours. And the market in the rain is just a slick, disgusting mess. I try to avoid it in rainy season if I can.

Politically things are quiet and will be (we think) until the vote on the constitution at the end of Jan. Happy Holidays everyone!

Political Update

2008-11-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/01/bolivia.dea/index.html

If you would like to know the current political situation in Bolivia you can click on the link above. My team leaders inform me the next vote on the constitution is scheduled for Jan. 25th 2009.

I continue to visit with supporters of all kinds while I'm visiting the United States. I am also doing a lot of paperwork (its a nightmare, trust me) to be able to apply for my residency visa when I return to Bolivia.

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers!

Bolivia

2008-09-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

OK, I´ve been told that some of ya´ll up there are worried about the political situation in Bolivia. In all honesty, we are all worried but not many missionaries are worried enough to leave.

Things that are true:
1. Bolivia kicked out the US ambassador and the US kicked out the Bolivian ambassador.

2. There are roadblocks set up around the country preventing basic foods from going for town to town resulting in meat shortages resulting in very high prices.

3. Organizations such as the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Peace Corps have been temporarily evacuated.

4. Things you are seeing on the news are taking place on the east side of Bolivia in Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, and the like. Coch is smack dab in the middle of the country and it is peaceful here. There has been a total of 30 deaths as a result of fighting.

Things to keep in mind:
I´m safe. I´m well cared for and well tuned into whats happening. At first sign of real danger and I´m out of here. I´m out of here in 10 days anyway.

Bolivia has a long history of ¨almost¨ having a civil war. Some think it is really going to happen this time, others believe that its going to blow over just like it always has. It depends on who you talk to really. My return to Bolivia is still scheduled to be at the end of November given things return to normal and not escalate.

For up to date information you can always go to www.cnn.com and click on the heading ¨world¨ and then on the link that says ¨americas¨. There is usually something new every few days.

So keep praying that I can get out of here in 10 days and that I can return to continue my work here in Bolivia.

Got Gas?

2008-09-14T12:55:00.001-07:00

Got gasoline? Because Bolivia sure doesn´t. This is the first time since I´ve been in Bolivia that I´ve seen gasoline so scarce. I walked out of my house yesterday with a friend to find a line of cars about 4 blocks long parked on the main road. Two blocks from my house is a gas station. Near to the station the cars were packed 2 or 3 deep waiting for their turn. You can see what I saw.

Now there is something that you don´t see everyday. And its funny and really sad at the same time. Sad because taxi and trufi drivers depend on their jobs for their daily bread. Suddenly there is no gas and they can´t make their daily pay and feed their families. I should clarify, there is SOME gas in the city but not nearly enough. As a result most taxi´s have doubled their nomal fares and a lot of people walk if they can. As a result of recent riots in Santa Cruz, a gas line was damaged or something like that. This is why there is suddenly a shortage. There are also major blockades between cities preventing food from getting around. In effect, the prices of meat and produce has been increased by substantial amounts.

Please pray for Bolivia right now... things are worse then ever before and many are worried about the future. For the time being I don´t have to leave... but I´m leaving in 3 weeks for the states anyway. I am concerned that I might not be able to return if things continue in the way they are going. Already some have died in the riots in other cities.

On a much brighter note... Its Cochabamba Day! Lets party... again! Here are some pictures from yesterdays parade. This parade was rather boring, as many of the parades here are. It consisted of marching bands and students marching by school and grade.

Tomorrow (Monday) is the actual holiday though I´m told nothing much happens on that day aside from lot of things being closed, including my language school and Viviana´s physical therapy.

This stinks!

2008-09-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

Quite literally. This city stinks. OK, cultural snapshot... garbage.. 1) its everywhere because people throw it out of cars and buses 2) there is no house to house garbage pick up. There are community dumpsters scattered every couple of blocks around the city.

OK, so then we have another problem. Street dogs and trash pickers, people who look for anything of value or that can be recycled. This is how some people make a living, esp at the Coch city garbage dump where all the garbage ends up eventurally, a whole community makes a living from picking through the garbage. Anyway, much of the garbage ends up outside the dumpster that should have been inside the dumpster. The dogs of course are just looking for food.

Next problem and the reason the city stinks at the moment. Garbage pickup seems to be on strike. The dumpsters have been full for a while and now the garbage is just piling up next to it. You can´t get within 10 feet of a dumpster without having to hold your breath. They stink normally but this is terrible. My house is a half a block from the dumpster, I walk out the door and want to hold my breath. Hopefully things return to normal soon.

Day of the Walker

2008-09-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Bolivia doesn´t go for very much time without have some kind of holiday! And yesterday has to be one of my favorites. Day of the Walker is a day when no cars are allowed on the road (with the exception of a few taxis with special permits). So there were no taxis, no buses, no cars, almost no motorcycles. I really wish motorcycles would have been banned just cause they are so noisy on an otherwise peaceful day. So quite literally, all over Bolivia (I would have given anything to get a birds eyes view of Cochabamba) people took to the streets, on foot, on bike, on skateboard, on rollerblades... anything that had wheels... and it was quite a sight. I was in Coch once before on this special day but unfortuntely, I was terribly sick and unable to leave the house. So this year, I took some pictures.
This is a view looking down from the top of El Prado, the nickname for a very popular street about 5 mins from my house.

There were so many bicycles on the street I thought they might as well have a bike-a-thon. Two seconds later, I saw this...

Turns out there was a bike race as well.

I came down to Prado in the morning as my church was having a sort of service/outreach time in the midst of all the actvities. We had to relocate due to the loud speaker competition that was going on all around us. It was loud and it was in English, go figure that one.

Prado looked very much like a ¨taste of...¨ in chicagoland. Including many activites for the kids.

The rest of Prado looked a lot like this

There was a lot sitting around in the shade, a lot of entertainment and concerts and games.

And I´ve saved the best for last. I asked a stranger if I could take a picture of her dogs as she was arranging them. Hands down the most wackiest thing I´ve seen in 10 months in Bolivia

Thus concludes ¨Day of the Walker.¨

Road trip

2008-08-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I woke up at 4:30AM to make a day trip into Chapare. 5 of us met up at 6AM to make the 4-5 hour trip into the jungle (or the rainforest, whatever you want to call it). On the trip this time was our SEDEJES social worker, the psychologist for our homes, the construction manager for the 2nd home, my teammate Nate was driving, and of course I was there too.

It was a dreary morning with low clouds that made it so that you could only see about 6 ft in front of you. It was cold and rainy too. Mountian roads in Bolivia are something you just have to experience. Even though this is the road that connects Coch and Santa Cruz, its a two lane road and is made with stones in some places and is paved in others. You are either surrounded by mountians or very sharp drop offs. There are no emergency exists, or exit ramps, or turn around points. Or if there are, they are very few and far between. And don´t even think about there being street lights. Every other vehicle is a semi truck loaded with heavy something or other that makes the trucks move at a snails pace. The rest of the vehicles are inter-bolivia buses, also called Flotas, that travel between all major Bolivian cities. They are a very cheap way to travel around Bolivia. When a friend and I traveled to La Paz earlier this year we were told one or two very specific bus lines to travel on, not all are safe.

Well... about an hour into our travel we came to a dead stop. Everyone was getting out of their cars to see what had happened up ahead. So we joined to crowd. Less then 1/2 a mile ahead a crowd was gathered looking over the side of the road into a short ravine of sorts. And thats when we saw the huge inter-city bus lying completely on its side, all wheels in the air. It was laying about 20-30 feet down from the road. The cause of the traffic stop was not a gaukers delay but rather an equipment delay as the heavy machinery was blocking both lanes. We got there in time to see them pull the bus back onto its wheels. My friend took a picture and I´ll send it as soon as he sends it to me. As soon as that was done, the crowd started hightailing it back to their cars (and buses and trucks). It looked like a stampede. And we joined them of course. So we had sat there for about an hour, more or less.

We didn´t travel far at all when we again came to a stop. This time there was no one getting out of vehicles, no explaination at all. But there we stopped for almost another 2 hours. I had the unpleasant experience of using the bathroom in a bush on the side of the road. Every now and then we´d move up a couple of feet and then stop again. Turning around wasn´t an option, plus the other side of the road wasn´t moving either. Finally we were on the move again. Thank God there wasn´t any more delays. We finally arrived in Chapare and pulled up to the orphanage at 1:30PM, after 7 hours of traveling.

And the first word out of my mouth, and the psychologist was laughing at me, was ¨wow¨! Same in English and Spanish by the way. And here is why:

This home is HUGE! It will very easily be able to hold 12-15 kids. Its even more imposing for two reasons. Its on stilts of sorts and the houses surrounding it are small, nothing more then shacks. There is a very good reasons why the house is raised up. And these houses tell you why.

The blueish looking house during last years rainy season had flood waters past the first board of the house. Every house has stilts, every year it floods. In other parts of Bolivia, people literally lose their houses every year and rebuild them because they live in poverty and cannot afford to move to a different area.

The return trip was mostly uneventful, just normal traffic and normal stops. Until we reached the place were the bus had gone off the road. By now its about 8pm, over 12 hours since we had been there. The bus had been pulled up to the road and was now on something that raised it up off the ground and there was a man with his head in the engine. I couldn´t believe they were trying to fix the bus on site, but then again, this is Bolivia. So traffic was taking turns going around it on the one lane road. In addition to this accident we saw about 4 other trucks turned on their sides against the mountians durning the trip, no of which were obstucting traffic. I finally arrived home at 9:30PM and went stait to bed, it was a long day. My house mom had heard about the bus accident on the radio and assured me no one had died, though some had been injured. If it hadn´t been for the mountian, the bus would have surely rolled. Thank God for the mountian!

So that, friends, was yesterdays adventure.

Moving at the speed of... a trufi

2008-08-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time traveling around the city in Micros, Trufis, and taxi trufis. It is the cheapest form of public transportation available but its not without its downside. Somedays I spend close to 3 hours in these things and believe me, I feel every minute of it. I often times come home and need to just rest to relieve the ¨trufi headache¨ that is pounding inside my head. A LOT of missionaries skip this cultural transportation and simply buy a car. Which I could do if I wanted to except for the fact that on average, my teams vehicles are in the shop about twice a month. It would save time but waste a ton more money, something I really don´t want to do. The other option is to take a taxi everywhere I need to go in the city. And that folks would get expensive really fast as well.

So even though I get a headache, or get frustrated with the traveling speed, I continue to ride this transportation because I do actually like it! I like seeing the people, making little babies smile, watching the culture out the windows and knowing, whether I ride for 5 mins or 1 1/2 hours, it will only cost me about 25 cents. :)

Sunday´s results

2008-08-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

The best that I can understand that voting went as follows. Something like 60% voted in favor of Evo´s new policies, effectively keeping him in presidency. There was also a vote taken on all of the department govenors. The govenor of Coch´s name is Manfred and he has always been against Evo and actually ran against him in the last presidential election. As of Sunday, Manfred was voted out of his position. Manfred is yelling that such a thing is unconstitutional and the whole ordeal will now be going to court. I heard that there has never been so many people to show up for a vote in the history of Bolivia.

Watching the ongoing coverage on the TV was almost painful. Watching video of someone reading the ballet while someone else marks the vote on a chalkboard... not my idea of fun. The interviews were nearly impossible to understand, not only because it was in spanish, but because microphones and the sound stuff is really not great. You end up with a lot of white noise and background junk and bad speaking (mumbling). But I did try!

So what does all this mean? At the moment, not much. There is peace in the city and thats good. For the future of Bolivia... I can only hope and pray. Because I really don´t understand what Evo is trying to do, I do know that he is doing a lot for the extreme poverty, even if I can´t see it. I have been told several times now, if you want to know what Evo is trying to do, look at the governing styles of Fidel Castro and whats-his-name in Venesuela (sorry, brainblock). And thats all I have for now folks.

6 de Augosto

2008-08-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Happy Bolivia Indepedence Day, well, two days to late anyway. There is really not too much to say about Aug. 6th except that you saw a lot of Bolivian flags. There was a very long military parade that lasted almost all day. I only saw a few different divisions march by, it does get rather boring after a while. And I didn´t know that I would be seeing it so I didn´t have my camera with me. And when I was warned that it was dangerous to go to the parade, I kinda shrugged it off. If I always listened to things like that I would never leave my house! As it turns out, it was good to be warned. I was with a friend and was getting VERY squished. I had a small purse and my cell phone in my pocket. I was very paranoid about being pickpocketed. In the end, I didn´t loose anything that day, praise God! So the parade completley changed traffic routes that day and I ended up walking to just about anywhere I wanted to go. So that was Happy Birthday Bolivia Day.

The good thing about that day was that it was a break from the blockades and protests and everyone was celebrating. Thursday it was back to normal. The referendum is in 2 days now and the tension is getting worse. If the vote passes with the majority accepting Evo´s new policies Evo´s stays in power. If the majority vote against the new policies then Evo is not allowed to stay in power and a new presidential election will be held. When Evo was elected he won with 54% of the vote. My church has partnered with two other churches and there will be someone constantly praying for 72 hours strait. I had 6:30 last night, a time just to pray for Bolivia.

For the first time since I arrived in Bolivia, church is cancelled on Sunday. Mostly because 1) they want people to vote and 2) there are no cars allowed on the road that day. People will walk to their nearest school to vote. I was told today by my spanish teacher that ¨you are too blonde to go out of your house on Sunday.¨ I just had to laugh! I love my teacher. I had no intention of going out that day anyway.

And with that I will let you know what happens on voting day sometime next week.

In response to John

2008-08-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

I recieved this comment from a blogger named John who I can not reply to personally.

¨Believing that your heart is in the right place, I can only believe you are somehow misinformed. In an effort to inform you, as you attempt to inform others, I am left to ask in amazement--HUH? You want us to "Pray for President Evo and that his heart might be changed by the power of God?" I can understand the first part all right--it might be good to pray for others--but the second part?
In what way exactly, would you like "God" to change Evo's heart?
To be less good to the poor, the less educated and the elderly?
To reinstate the governance that has kept the impoverished in destitute circumstances? To not redistribute the 50% of Bolivia's arable land now owned by .2% (yes, that's point 2% or .002) of the population, much of which was stolen or gained through graft? To not gain for all Bolivians, the excessive profits that before nationalization went to foreign owners while Bolivia received a mere pittance?
I understand you not wanting to debate your blogged views, and ask instead for clarification. Precisely how would you like "God" to change Evo's heart?
Respectfully,,,John¨

So here is my clarification...
I have never claimed to be a political expert on Bolivia´s government. I hear bits and pieces of things both for and against Evo. I do believe that he is doing everything that you mentioned in your comment. However, I know that he and others in power hate the US, which is my home. They are making it nearly impossible for me to obtain a Visa even though I have come here to HELP with his countires over 200,000 orphans. And not just me but thousands of vounteers like me who don´t care about coca and cocaine and stupid politics. I know that he takes advise from other presidents from other countries and that he wants to president for life. I know that because he is indiginous that his religion does not focus on God, the creator and sustainer of life. But that is where my knowledge of the man ends. I DO know that everytime there is a vote like this the Christian churches spend DAYS on their knees praying to God for their country. Now if Evo was such a wonderful man doing such great things for their country, why would they be petitioning God in such a way? I realize from your comment that you think praying to God is some kind of joke. Thats a whole nother issue I´m not going to address here. And with that I think I am done responding. I´ve intentionally linked my email to this blog and you can feel free to respond via that link. However, I can not debate something such as politics that I don´t fully understand. And as for God, prayer, faith, ect... I still don´t understand that fully and thats the most wonderful part about it. I don´t know it all and never will. John, this is the best I can do. respectfully, Kim

Pray for Bolivia

2008-08-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

OK, here is a bit of a political update. Those are always fun. But just in case something manages to make it into the US world news reports I don´t want anyone to worry.

First the fun stuff. Aug 6th is Bolivia´s Independence Day. There is no school, most business will be closed, and there will be a city wide party. I hear there will be a few parades as well. There are Bolivian flags for sale everywhere and trufi´s are being decorated with colored streamers. I´m not sure what I will be doing that day but I would like to see at least one of parades. Hopefully be able to take some pictures without my camera being stolen.

Aug 10th (a week from tomorrow), there will be a referendum regarding the president. From what I understand, if the vote passes, Evo remains president. If it doesn´t, then he is not allowed to stay president and there will be an election. With the elections in the states fast approaching, it is good to remember that Bolivia is a different world. When this kind of vote is coming up, inter-bolivia travel is nearly impossible due to the blockades on all major roads between cities. There will quite possibly be blockades within Cochabamba as well as the two political parties try to make their point. All of this is normally non-violent but its recommended that white folk like me stay away from demonstrations, stay home the day of the vote, and watch the news carefully. And to stock up on food as business will more then likely be closed for a day or two. And I´m no fool, I will do as I´m told.

So please pray for Bolivia in the coming week. Pray for peace, but most of all pray for justice. Pray for President Evo and that his heart might be changed by the power of God. I´ll let you all know how things go this week!

almost

2008-07-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

ok, so not a whole lot has been happening since the crazy days of VBS. I´ve restarted Spanish tutoring at a different school. I´m now there 3 days a week and working mostly on remembering what I actually already know. Its just lost somewhere in my brain.

Last week I was ALMOST run over by a bicycle, remember, pedestrians have no rights whatsoever on the roads. Anything that has wheels has the right of way. I ALMOST took out a motorcycle with the door of a trufi, though I could swear I looked over my shoulder first... they appear out of thin air it seems. I also was ALMOST robbed on a trufi (this would have been the second time, the first time I lost my camera). However, I am proud to say that I have learned a thing or two in the last 9 months. I figured out quickly that something just wasn´t right. I put my hand to the latch of my purse to find the man next to me´s hand in my purse (not an easy task, my purse is hard to get into). When I looked at him and said ¨SEÑOR¨ he immeditaly took has hand out and got off the trufi. I checked and he didn´t take anything, didn´t have enough time before I caught him. So praise the Lord for that!

The rest of life continues on as normal. I´ll soon be preparing a special day to teach the kids about dirt and germs and the importance of washing their hands, ect. Having come from the street, our kids normally put any food (or anything for that matter) in their mouths that they find on the ground. Even after living in a good place for months, they still have this habit. So thats the next project. I´ll let you know how it goes!

The new kiddos

2008-07-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

ok, well, on top of everything else last week, we had two new children arrive in our orphanage in Villa Isreal. Also known as home #2. Here they are, in all of their cuteness.

Their story is a sad one. The older brother will be 6 years old in September. His name is Elion (I don´t know if that spelling is right). The baby is 2 1/2 years old, his name is France (again with the spelling). The little guy doesn´t respond to the name France but to the name ishmeal. But we do have their birth certificates and that is his name. They are not completely orphans. Their mother died of an epileptic siezser (I am sooo sorry about my spelling!). Their father is an out of control alchoholic. They have old siblings but none are able to take care of them. It is hard to try to comfort them, talk to them because they don´t speak spanish, only Quechua. They are both extremely small for their ages and terribly malnourished. The little guy is worse off then his brother. In the 6 days they have been in the home, he has been to the doctor every day, some days twice. He has a skin infection and resperatory something that needs in office treatment. They both needed several shots to get rid of stomache bugs.

This is sadly the story of nearly every child that comes to us. In a few short months the children will be much healthier and adapting to their new home and family. Please pray for this home and the house parents. There are now 9 children living there (8 boys, 1 girl) and the parents have one child of their own who is often sick.

During our VBS days at the home, the older boy kept saying something to me in Quechua that I couldn´t understand. Ana, the only girl, translated for me into spanish. She said that he was saying that he missed his family. That was his first day. It was all I could do not to go to tears right there. It broke my heart! I just got down on my knees and just held him. And he didn´t respond, that made it even worse. ok, I gotta quit now or I´m gonna cry in the internet café!

VBS

2008-07-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

ok, deep breath. Last week was a little crazy in my life. ¨Little¨ being an understatement. My team and I held a VBS for our kids in home #2. Keep in mind, that home is on the complete opposite side of the city from where we all live. 30 mins in a car (if your lucky) and 1 - 1 1/2 hours in a Micro (bus). Well, things got intresting when neither of the two vehicles owned by our team were working. Yep, both were at the mechanics. So we all were traveling in Micros. Not bad per say, its just long travel time.

Even with the travel complications VBS went very well! And I took plenty of pictures so here you go. As I´ve mentioned, I was preparing 3 days of puppets. Here is Day 1, Jonah and the whale. Taking the styrofoam on the Micro was quite a trick! With a little team work, it survived the trip.

I had chosen a theme verse for each show. Here is a friend helping to teach the verse and the kids standing up to recite it from memory.

The each day we had a craft time as well. A friend made a fishing game and others had drawing and coloring crafts for the kids to do.

I really enjoyed the time I was able to spend with the kids during VBS. I feel like I have finally connected with them and they accept me as part of their lives. After the final puppet show they were chanting ¨una más, una más¨, I guess they wanted an encore :) Finally, here are just some cute pictures of our kids.

Check back soon for information on our two new arrivals, pictures too!

Puppets!

2008-06-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

I´ve have become rather lazy when it comes to updating this blog. I did promise to update every week. As I kinda expected, the longer I´ve been here the busier I´ve become. Somedays I´m lucky if I can spare 30 mins to sit in an internet cafe. And even then, thats not enough time to write my family and post a blog. So there is your reason. However, when I have had a crazy experience or there is important information to pass along, I always ¨make¨ the time to update.

Last Sunday I preformed my first real puppet show. It was a crazy time getting it all put together. I spent a lot of time shopping (sorry, no hobby lobby here folks), spent time writing a puppet script and finding a place I could print it out, and creating the puppet stage and props. And I am glad to report that all that time I invested made a for a very sucessful puppet show! One of my good bolivian friends helped me to perform the story of Noah and the Ark. I wrote the script in a way that it was a Grandmother telling her granddaughter the story. I also worked it so that my bolivian friend had the majority of the speaking parts as my pronuciation and speaking speed still need a lot of work. I also found a Noahs Ark childrens song in Spanish and we sang along with the CD as part of the show.

The children loved it! We had their complete attention the whole show (which, granted, wasn´t THAT long). A friend did a practical application afterwards and then I gave out coloring sheets related to the story.

This week coming up is pretty much the same for me. My team is planning a VBS for our orphanage kids and I have written a 3 part puppet performance. The theme is Obedience. I´ve almost completed the shopping portion and now I am working on creating the props and other helps.

I´ve been despartely looking for something I can make props out of instead of posterboard. Posterboard is rather ¨floppy¨ and can´t stand on its own. I decided that I needed styrofoam. And then I saw someone carrying a huge sheet of it in La Cancha. If the man hadn´t been a soldier I would have asked him where he bought it. I described in spanish the best I could to my house mom but she wasn´t understanding. Then I was talking to my teams interns and one guy said ¨You mean the stuff they sit on at futbol (soccer) games?¨ I was like, you´ve got to be kidding me, could it be that easy? That what I told my house mom and she´s like ¨of course! We call that ´plastoformo´¨ and she told me where I could find it. Well, that turned into an adventure all its own... and in the end, I did find my styrofoam! And its soooo cheap too. Now to make the props out of it, hahaha. So thank God for plastoformo!

I´ll update up the VBS as soon as its completed :)

Finally starting to feel like...

2008-06-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

A Missionary! After 7 solid months of having restricted time available for ministry due to langauge tutoring, I have finally cut back to just one hour of class a day. There were multiple reasons for this one of them being that my team leaders are now on furlough and I wanted to have more time available to help my team. All my newfound ¨free time¨ is getting scarce because something good is happening. I´m busy preparing and doing ministry! I can´t tell you how good it feels to be helping my team and bringing my own gifts and abilities into play.

For example, last week I spent a good deal of time preparing for an upcoming puppet show in my church´s ministry in Sacaba. There was a lot of shopping for supplies, creating a puppet stage, and most important, writing a script in Spanish. It is looking very probable that early next month we will be hosting a VBS of sorts for our kids as they are on their winter break (remember everything is opposite here). I am excited like you wouldn´t believe to begin preparing a three part puppet show for our kids. I have also begun going to our 2nd orphanage once a week to help ¨watch¨ our kids for a few hours. I prepare some small things for the kids to do during this time as well. I´ve also picked up some misc chores that the team needs done.

I´ve been praying a lot about what my role on this team is suppose to be. And at some point, I couldn´t tell you when exactly, I discovered that I have a really strong desire to see these kids develop their individual personalities, gifts, and strengths. What exactly this will look like I don´t know yet. Mostly I think it will have a lot to do with giving them opportunites to express themselves, be it artistically, with writing, with music, ect. Please pray for me as God continues to reveal this vision to me. Its quite a stretch for me considering I´m not artisitic, or musical, and not entirely too crafty. But it is what God has laid on my heart and He will enable me to fulfill this vision. How would you know if a child was created to be a painter if no one ever put a paintbrush in his hand? Think about that.

random bits and pieces

2008-06-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

First of all, I´ve made changes to my blogspot profile and you can now email me from my blog.

This past weekend I went to the main plaza to help out with babywashing. Earlier I had been walking around the down town area with a friend and noticed that the 7th Day Adventist church was having a parade (and totally screwing up traffic!). I didn´t think too much of it as different groups have marches, demonstrations, ect all the time. My friend and I grabbed some coffee near the plaza and noticed that the parade had entered the plaza. I swear it was like a never ending line of people in this parade. We couldn´t see much from the coffee house so after the marching stopped we went to the plaza. The parade had congregated exactly where babywashing would have been set up and there were hundreds of people in the plaza. My friend, being more observant then I, noticed that the whole thing was against SMOKING! There were large cigarettes on top of cars, huge blackened lungs, a coffin, a few different floats, ect. We didn´t get close enough to hear what was being preached to the crowd but I think we can guess what the message was! I couldn´t stop laughing! Only in Bolivia would that happen.

Walking down the street yesterday I saw a man walk strait into a post, hey, he even thought it was funny.

Last sunday while I was helping my group in Sacaba they left me alone with my kids. Not two or three mind you... but 30! I had brought photocopies of coloring sheets for them to do but no one remembered to bring the coloring pencils. So someone bought a pack of 14. 30 kids, 14 colored pencils... hmmmmm. I learned the word ¨to share¨ and they actually did a halfway decent job! They didn´t get a bible lesson from me but they had a great time coloring and were so happy they were allowed to bring what they had done to their homes. Next week I will be much more prepared. These kids become more and more precious to me every week.

Everything that happens to me ends up being so stinkin complicated. Last week I had an ATM malfunction and not give me any money yet it was debited from my account. This actually happens to a lot of people. Normally you just call the number on the back of your reciept, tell them what happened, and they credit your account. Well, I didn´t get a reciept! So I wrote down the number on the ATM and hoped that would work. I went to the bank that owned the ATM, explained what happened and they said a lot of things that I didn´t understand. But I did understand that I didn´t need to do or call anyone else and it would be taken care of. haha, no, didn´t happen. A week later I had a teammate help me make the call but they couldn´t do anything over the phone, we had to go to an office building downtown, which took a while to find. Once we did they said they needed a copy of my bank statement to prove the money had been debited. So we had to find an internet cafe with a working printer. Easier said then done. Then we got back to the office and he sent a message to the bank in the states and said that they money would be put back in 1 or 2 weeks. Pray that the money gets credited soon!

I visited an english church on sunday and enjoyed singing in english and hearing a friend preach. More odds and ends later!

Well, it finally caught up with me

2008-05-30T13:33:00.001-07:00

After a very proud 7 months of being free from any serious stomach bugs, I came down with terrible stomach pains at the beginning of this week. After a sleepless night with frequent trips to the bathroom, my house mom called in a doctor to see me. Yes, they do that here for only about $20 US. Oddly enough, by that time I was feeling much better, just tired and weak. He didn´t do any tests but made sure I was ok, assigned some meds for pain and what not and left. That night I started feeling bad again so my house mom decided we needed to go for blood and stool tests. 8AM the next morning I had blood drawn for 3 or 4 tests. By 5pm we had results. Again, costing only about $13. Really a waste of money to have insurance down here! But anyway, the tests showed no stomach bugs, THANK GOD, but a high white blood cell count. Meaning that I had an infection in my intestines.

So basically I laid around and slept for 2 days, didn´t eat a whole lot and by Wednesday I was back to life as normal. But it has been a very odd week! I am very happy to be eating normally (after having a somewhat restricted diet for the week), feeling strong, and alert.

This week also contained a ¨surprise¨ party for my spanish tutor and a going away dinner for another one of my teams interns. This morning I took two of our newer interns to Viviana´s physical therapy as they are psychology majors and were curious as to what kind of therapy she had.

This afternoon I began a log that I will continue to update every month on our kids. Simply put, its a height and weight chart. But I am trying to make it as fun as I can by using fun stickers, asking questions about what they want to do when they are grown up, and possibly building on those answers in the future. What did you want to be when you were 9 years old? I think I wanted to be a nurse! The chart will be used for when the kids go to the doctors so we can give a month by month history of their growth. I believe it will also help us to see if they are having a stomach issue if they are not growing and gaining each month. Many of our kids came for very malnurished situations and are still on the mend. I look forward to getting to know our kids more personally in this way as well.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-05-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

ok, so my actual birthday was a week ago today, I´ve not had a chance to post since then as my birthday was actually a birthday week! On May 20th I gave myself a break and took the day off of Spanish tutoring :) I slept in and relaxed during the day. I was able to talk to my family at home during the day as well.
I was very happy to find out that Viviana and I share the same birthday! She turned 7 and I turned 27! Here we are, the birthday girls :)

Birthday night I met up with some of my Bolivian friends for dinner at an Italian place. There was much talk, laughter, and good food. Thankfully they didn´t sing, but then again, the whole youth group did that on Friday night. So here are some pictures from that night.

The next day, I met up with some of my teammate for cake and coffee and one of my favorite resturants cause they make a killer frozen cappachino. More pics of us.

And of course my house mom had a cake for me too.

And over this last weekend, I had two meals out with friends who couldn´t make any of the other get-togethers. All in all, it was a wonderfully exhausting week. I can´t tell you how many phone calls, text messages, ecards, facebook messages, cards, and gifts I recieved. It was a very good birthday!

¨walmart shopping¨ in Cochabamba

2008-05-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

I´ve been putting off a trip into La Cancha for some time. So I made a great big list of stuff I have been needing to get and some things I needed for a ministry project I am doing. Knowing a had a lot of ground to cover I left pretty early, risking the fact that some shops aren´t open till after 10AM. All was going pretty well until I had to buy some office type supplies. There are easier (but more expensive) ways of buying office supplies. La Cancha is a mad house, esp on Saturdays, but it the cheapest place in town to buy anything. And since I´ve learned a few of the main areas of the mad house I can normally do my shopping by myself. Anyway, I got stuck on two rather simple items... I forget sometimes that I´m in Bolivia, not Chicago. I needed rubberbands (how would you describe a ruberband, even in english?) and a folder for papers. I was so frustrated I was nearly in tears, I just don´t have the spanish vocabulary to describe what I was looking for. And my spanish dictionary gave me words they didn´t understand so that was of no help to me whatsoever. The folder I was able to describe well enough and someone finally had what I was looking for, the rubberbands I just happened to see sitting in a window case of a store on my way out of the area. Just a reminder that I still have a LONG way to go on Spanish, but it also reminded me just how far I´ve come in 6 months as well.

The other problem I encounter in La Concha on a fairly regular basis and that I can´t find the same ¨aisle¨ twice. I swear they move them around! Try as I might to remember street corners or other good landmarks I still find myself walking in circles, getting lost, getting found, and accidentally finding what it was I was looking for. All this, mind you, when I´m weaving inbetween thousands of people, stores, carts, and merchandise. Its something you´d really have to see to understand. But I don´t dare take a camera into La Concha (though I did on my vision trip), thats like asking for it to be stolen. I don´t even bring a purse there for fear of theft. So after I whoppping 3 hours, I finally got on a Mirco and headed home. What an exhuasting day!

And now I will head over to the main plaza for Babywashing and then go to my young adults group for worship, teaching, and fellowship with my friends. ´Til next time...

Food, glorious food

2008-05-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

As I begin my countdown to furlough (5 months), I´ve begun thinking about the questions ya´ll will ask me about Bolivia when I get there. One of them will definetly be about the food. If you think that all Latin American countries eat Mexican style food you are very very wrong! And I´ve recently realized that I probably have experienced more Bolivan food then anyone else on my team as I am the only one that lives with a Bolivian family. So here we go!

Bolivian food is dry! I´ve never had anything with gravy on it. They have all the normal types of meat. Lots of beef, chicken, and pork. Ocasionally, cow heart, duck, or otherwise really foreign meats to me. As it is with most Latin American countries, lunch is the biggest meal of the day. It almost always included rice and potatos, meat and veggies, and always fresh homemade soup. There is potato in everything possible. Nearly always in the soup, in the salad, and as a side to your main plate. There is one meal, I can never remember its name, but the beef or chicken is pounded out into a thin circle and then lightly breaded and fried, then served with rice and potato. Another is a vegitarian dish and its an egg or two fried, served over rice with tomato and/or onion. In a dish on the table is a very hot sauce that most bolivians add to their soup and main dish. I was tricked into trying it once, never again! They are also very fond of fried foods. Potatos are either fried to make a kind of french fry or are just boiled. Rice is either served white or it may be mixed with veggies, they don´t use soy sauce. Pasta shows up in the table every so often as well but with varying types of sauces. Salad dressing is oil and vinegar (in most houses). I could go on and on! But I won´t just cause this might be boring to some people. I have no complaints about the food! I will be buying a Bolivian cookbook soon and might bring it home with me for show and tell. But mostly I want it so that I can continue to make some of these dishes when I´m out on my own, given I have the time. Our house cook starts making lunch at 8AM, we eat at 12:30. A lot of normal north american food is available here, for a price. Anything imported costs more then it would in the states. And they don´t exactly have weekly sales here. A jar of Planters dry roasted peanuts costs $5.

Food they like to buy on the street: empanadas (a type of pastry, normally with cheese), chachas (breaded with chicken and stuff in the middle), salteñas (similar and more popular then chachas, with beef and potato), cow heart, and some others. Thre are plenty of places to buy hamburgers, tacos, burritos, pastas, and other fairly normal north american foods. They even have a Burger King, haven´t been there yet, don´t want to.

They have endless types of potato and many more fruits then they have in the states. Some favorites are Ego (not sure of the spelling), tuna (not a fish, but the fruit of the cactus), different types of bananas (I esp like the fried ones, yum!), and many more.

Things I miss from home (hint, hint): bagels, starbucks, dad´s hambugers, speghetti with Prego, Taco Bell, salad with iceburg lettuce and italian dressing, good quality chicken, pancakes with bacon and sausage and syrup, buiscuts and gravy, eggs and toast, flavored oatmeal, frozen pizza, mashed potatos, Arizona flavored teas, stir fry, honey dew melon, and the list goes on.

My lactose intolerance continues to worsen if thats even possible. Thankfully soy milk cost less here then normal milk and I can have that without a problem. ok, there is your food lesson for the time being!

La Feria

2008-05-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

The International Fair 2008 arrived in Cochabamba 2 weeks ago. On this, its final weekend, my church Comunidad Cristiana Cochabamba (CCC), partnered with 3 other area churches to do an amazing evangelical outreach. My friends have been praying, practicing, and otherwise preparing for this one day event for many months now. I helped with the preparation as much as I could, which really was not much. The day before all the churches came together to run through their programs. I was able to help count out groups of handouts and such. The day of (Friday) the group started arriving at the ¨fest¨ at about 4pm. There was many times when someone just hollered at me ¨ayudame¨, ¨help me¨ in english. And thats just what I did, I helped in whatever little way I could. We all had wonderful matching t-shirts :)

And then the sun went down and it just got really stinkin cold! May and June are amoung the coldest in Coch and I came dressed for it. Guess what? I was still cold! Not like the cold in the midwest (I could still feel my fingers and toes, couldn´t see my breath) but I was cold and tense from trying to stay warm. That aside, I decided to take pictures. Here is a sampling from the program, only a few of them are my church people.

When all was said and done, it was after 1am! We tore everything down, packed it all away, packed ourselves (rather tightly) into a couple of cars and headed for home. After being cold for hours, no one minded being a little cozy in the car, thats how Bolivians ¨roll¨ around here anyway :)

I shall find out tonight, I think, the number of contacts that were made, the number of people who excepted Christ last night, and other information. So that was La Feria!

6 months in Bolivia

2008-04-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

Time sure flies in the country where time is not all that important. I knew before I even got here that Latino time was very different from the time I was accustomed to. This was evident the first time I got to church very “late”( 30 minutes past the time I intended to be there), and found that most of the Bolivians where just arriving as well. Everything here takes time. It takes time to learn this language and learn it well. It takes time to develop friendships. It takes time to even go into La Cancha (the market) to get the few items that you needed. Taking public transportation takes time, its good and cheap, but at times seems to take forever and a day to get where you wanting to be (esp when it is hot and crowded in the Micro-the bus). I keep thinking that I have all the time in the world since I’m planning on being here long term. In some ways that is true. But I have realized that teammates come and go, friends come and go, life changes quickly. Bolivians are very much the kind of people that live for today, not for tomorrow. I am trying to learn how to live like that but it is very hard!

Bolivians work very hard, so hard that it puts me to shame. It never ceases to amaze me how many children are working. They work the markets, often offering use of a wheelbarrow for folks buying a lot of stuff. They are street performers in training and they juggle and do cartwheels. Or they are window washers and attack your car windows when you are stopped at a red light. They walk the streets with items to sell such as flowers, candy, ect. It was an awkward moment when the man I was meeting with at an outdoor café had to buy a rose from a small girl while explaining to her that I wasn’t his girlfriend and the rose was for his wife at home! Others offer to shine your shoes, even if you are not wearing shinable shoes, or sing you a “nice” song. Still others just ask you for money. It is upsetting to think about the parents of these young ones, how can they force them to do this work? And I believe the answer is poverty. After 6 months in Bolivia I still can’t understand poverty. Why does it exist? What can be done to eliminate it? How can we get parents to stop drinking and take care of their kids? I don’t have any solution. But this is a daily reality in my life.

Some fun things that I have learned in the last 6 months:
1. I have learned to appreciate taxi drivers that wait for me to enter into my home before driving off. This happens maybe 50% of the time.
2. I have also learned to appreciate taxi’s that flash their head lights at you, rather then honk, to see if you need a ride.
3. I have learned to look both ways before crossing a one way street (not kidding!). 4. I seem to need to re-learn daily that pedestrians have no rights!
5. I have learned that it is better to cross then street when cars are moving then when they are stopped.
6. I have learned that everything, literally everything, is cheaper if you buy it in La Cancha.
7. I have learned that La Cancha is a never ending madhouse.
8. I have come to appreciate my wonderful Bolivian friends that are bi-lingual and very patient with me as I stumble through nearly everything I say. They help me so much!
9. I have learned to laugh at myself, which is more important then I ever knew before.
10. I have learned the importance of the siesta! A 30 min power nap after lunch does my brain a world of good.
11. I have learned that Spanish is really hard but that English is even harder! I know I’m doing well though because I have learned how to be funny in Spanish!
12. I have learned that I have a knack for pronouncing difficult words in Quechua.
13. I have learned that a Coca-Cola does a better job of keeping me awake then a cup of coffee.

Things work related:
It is hard to do a lot of missionary work without being fluent in the language. It is hard, but not impossible. I am currently doing most of my missionary work on the weekends and focusing on Spanish during the week (except Viviana’s therapy).

Since I have a good deal of Spanish under my belt, we are currently trying to find my exact place on my team. I would appreciate your prayers concerning this.

I am currently helping out two other ministries on the weekends. I continue to volunteer at Babywashing and I continue to volunteer Sunday afternoons to help my church group in their ministry in Sacaba. See previous blog postings for more information on the ministry in Sacaba.

My weeks tend to go by in a whirl wind of activities. At the end of the day I often find myself forgetting what it was I did even that morning!

There is a lot of work to do that is for sure, but I never underestimate the importance of spending time with God and developing “outside of work” friendships. Worshipping in Spanish is still difficult at times and I miss singing in English. Unfortunately, I am still unable to understand the bulk of sermons. My Bolivian friends, like I said before, are absolutely wonderful. They have adopted me and loved me in a way that still amazes me. They help me to understand this culture more and give me the invaluable gift of conversational Spanish. They have also invited me to participate in their ministries as well. I love my new friends!

Health:
My health has been amazingly good, Praise God! I am sure to take vitamins everyday though at times I wonder if I need them. My host family is very careful to buy good food and clean everything well. I am also very particular about the restaurants I eat in. “Gingo friendly” has become a part of my vocabulary. I have come down with a few sinus infections and/or chest colds but, praise the Lord, nothing over the counter antibiotics (isn’t that cool?) couldn’t cure. I now weight 15 pounds more then I did when I left the states!

Finally, photos from Sacaba

2008-04-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

I finally felt I had reached the point where I could take pictures at Horita Feliz (happy hour) at my ministry site in Sacaba. First let me tell you this story. I had mentioned in a past blog about a little girl named Nyleen that was speaking to me in Quechua. This litle girl and her sister Nadia have settled into a very special place in my heart. I barely get out of the car when Nyleen is running towards me with outstretched hands yelling ¨hermanita, hermanita!¨ ¨Sister, sister¨ in English. Thats a very common title given to Christian workers when they don´t know your name. And mine name is tough for them to remember. My heart just melts when she runs to me like that. Its on the level of a child running to his mother saying ¨mommy, mommy.¨ We do have a bond of some sort developing, I love her so much. Her sister Nadia as well. These two sit on my lap during lesson time, one on each leg. So here we/they are:

These are some other photos from yesterday. A whole bunch of kids:

Lesson time and giving food:

And this is a picture of the next age group up. There is also a group of teenagers that meet in another area that I didn´t get to take a picture of.

Field trip

2008-04-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

This last week we had a short term team of 8 here. On Thursday I took the day off of Spanish and hung out with them. The biggest part of the day was visiting a children´s nutrition center. A nutrition center is not a hospital. They care for malnurished kids aged 0-5. Some live there and another part is like a daycare center. Most of the kids have 8 or 9 brothers and sisters or they are orphans. It was really hard because the kids don´t smile hardly at all. No laughing, no one bouncing off the walls. They are there to get better and then they move on. One baby I was holding was so skinny... and mad at the world it seemed. He was probably only 2or 3 months old. I think it was time for him to eat. I had to leave him screaming in his crib. The center and a hospital were founded by a family that got rich off the mines in Bolivia and suprisingly enough, gave back to Bolivia. They are very professionally run, they have child councelors, students of psycology, and nutritionists all on stuff. They disinfect everything, make their own clothes for the kids, measure all the food and monitar every child very closely. Yet they are starved for affection. You look at a child in a crib and they just start crying cause they want to be picked up. We helped to feed them lunch. A lot of the kids in the daycare are sick with coughs and whatnot. My girl could hardly eat between coughing fits. She eventually threw up a little and I called it quits. What the point if she can´t keep it down cause of the cough. Regardless, it was a very eye opening day as the facilities look like they were transplanted here from the states. Maybe at some future time I might be able to go back there and just hold those babies!

I was also able to help the team a good deal with their tourist shopping in La Concha. It felt really good to know that I know enough spanish that I can finally be of a help to my team! Praise the Lord!

El Día del Niño

2008-04-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

I apologize again for not keeping up with this blog weekly. I have been waiting to post because I wanted to add pictures to this entry. But it seems everytime I try, I´m on a computer with a non working USB port. So I will write this now and add the pictures later.

El Día del Niño is Kid´s Day in English. Its not entirely different then Mother´s, Father´s,or Grandparent´s Day in the states. Its simply a day to celebrate kids being kids. I think the US should adopt this holiday! The date was April 19th, a week ago yesterday. The festivities actually began on the Friday before. Never is a holiday here restricted to 1 day! All the schools celebrated as did the physical therapy at the hospital. Viviana left that day with a balloon in hand.

Saturday my team was split into two groups and assigned to our two orphanages. The first home decided to take their kids to the water park. Can you imagine a waterpark on kids day? Yeah, we couldn´t even get the car near the entrance. We had to drop them off a couple of blocks away. The report after that was ¨That place was insane!¨ But the kids had a blast and thats what matters right?

My team went up to the home in Villa Israel and we took the kids to the play ground. We had some games planned like:
A clothing relay

Three legged Race

and the all time favorite, Water Balloon Toss. I got a kick out of what I call the water ballon bandits. Cute huh?

After an hour in the blazing sun, we went back to the house for some treats.

In the afternoon, rather then having the Super Saturday ministry, the main ministry (what we normally just call the Center) had a fair for the kids in the community. I was manning one of three game booths. I had the mini basketball toss. My friends had the ring toss and ¨bozo¨ buckets. The kids had a blast with facepainting, prizes, and treats. I was nearing exhaustion but I was glad to help. I literally ran out of there in order to get ready to attend a wedding reception.

Sunday the festivities continued. Rather then have our regular program for the kids in Sacaba we simply played games with them for an hour. And of course, treats were a given. One little girl, Nylin, has adopted me as her favorite ¨leader.¨ Every week now I have her in my arms. She kept repeating a word to me last week that I didn´t undertand. I asked a spanish friend and she didn´t know it either. She thought she was mispronouncing another spanish word. When I said the word to my tutor she simply said ¨Quechua.¨ Oh, now that made sense. What I thought was ¨marcame¨ in spanish (I thought it was some kind of command form) was actually mark´away in Quechua. The little girl is only 4 and wasn´t pronouncing the ¨k´¨sound that would have told me right away that it was Quechua. Anyway, in Spanish the equivilant is ¨levantarse¨ or ¨pick me up¨ in english. Thats a rough translation anyway. Apparently I pronounce Quechua words very well, my tutor is bugging me to take Quechua after Spanish. I told her one langauge at a time. My spanish still has a long long way to go!

So that was El Día del Niño in Cochabamba. Next week: 6 month update.

¨Day 1¨

2008-04-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

My friend has started a ministry that is branching off of an existing ministry (same location) that she has been involved in for the last several months. This ¨new ministry¨ is called ¨Super Saturdays¨ and runs from 3-5pm on Saturdays. She has asked me to help her to get things started. I said ok, I can do that. Our target age group is about 5-12. Its not geared towards teenagers. This last Saturday was Day 1.

Basically the program consists of 1 hour of free time in which the kids trickle in and play whatever games they want to. We have puzzles and board games, foozball, legos, matress and tires (don´t ask!), and many other things to choose from. Keep in mind folks that these kids don´t have a playroom full of toys in their homes. Their play area is the dirt and their toys are the trash in the streets. This hour of free time is really important to them.

At about 4pm we put all the stuff away and we play some kind of group game. Saturday it was musical chairs. They laughed and loved it even if most of them were trying to cheat. And we did manage to break one plastic chair in the process. I was in charge of turning the music on and off.

Then we had them get into a big group (about 15 of them or so) and we tried to teach them 3 popular childrens songs (originally in English but translated to spanish). Our Bolivian helper wrote out the words for us and then I am writing them out on large poster board. That didn´t go that well as the kids have seemingly never heard these songs. It will take some time to teach them. Us leaders need to learn the spanish words too! I´m confident that they will be singing and doing actions very soon.

And then we had our lesson time in which my friend did the talking and had a rather messy object lesson. Which of course the kids loved! The special thing about this program is that it is not only speaking of the Bible but is also addressing the very real practical needs of these kids. Saturday we talked about the importance of washing your hands with soap. Such a simple thing right? These things are never taught to these kids by their parents. At the end of our time we gave out bars of soap for them to take home.

After the lesson we have them wash their hands and faces in washtubs that we provide and then we give them some food. The average milk intake for kids in Bolivia in 2 liters A YEAR (a knowledgeable Bolivian friend told me this, I can´t direct you to a website for the statistic). So as often as possible, we give out milk or yogurt (drinkable). One package cost about .20 US. We also gave them some cookies, not so healthy! But they enjoy it :)

Next time I will be introducing puppets which is my greatest challenge so far. One, I am a puppet team of 1. Two, I am voicing the script, its not on CD. Three, I am writing the script! Four, I´m doing it all in Spanish! At this point it is a very simple script using very simple language. But they are kids after all. I don´t think they will hold it against me. It was a proud moment for me when I handed my first script to my spanish teacher for her to proof-read and correct and she changed very very little of what I wrote! Praise the Lord :)

So please be in prayer for this little ministry. That we would be able to teach the word of God and meet their practical needs as well. Next time we will be talking about the importance of brushing your teeth or you will get cavities and in the same way how sin eats away at you, ect. Photos to come in two weeks hopefully as well as an update on how things are going.

Little update

2008-04-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

I´ve decided to wait to do the 6 month recap till the end of the month. Then I will have been here for 6 months. So here is just a little update for the beginning of month 6.

I´ve been a little behind on weekly blog postings simply because there is not that much that happens outside of ¨big¨ events (like Tunari). I´ve decided that my life just seems more intresting because I´m living it in Latin America. And so it makes my daily activities sound really exciting compared to those of you at home. Really truely, my everyday life is pretty typical!

I said goodbye to a good Bolivian friend this weekend. And that was hard for me, much harder then I thought it would be. I never expected to have to say goodbye to another friend so soon. But he is now off to go to seminary in Gautamaula (sp?). But coninciding with his leaving, it seems I have passed some kind of test in my youth group. Its like the group is finally realizing that I´m here and I´m not leaving. I dug my heels in, made friends, joined ministry, and found out that I am really really happy. I run into my friends on the streets all the time and thats a good feeling, I don´t know, I guess... just being known. And accepted. There are a few foriegners in the group, most have been here for years and speak nearly perfect spanish. Me, I still bumble through nearly everything I say, and they like me anyway! Go figure.

For all who are asking... I come home on furlough the first weekend in Oct until just after Thanksgiving. I will be in a wedding in Southern Il the second weekend of Oct. I have a lot of things to do when I get home but there will be time to see everyone. No te preocupes :) That means, don´t you worry.

More stuff coming soon... I promise.

Mt. Tunari

2008-03-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

As the song says ¨Well, I climbed a mountian and I turned around¨ the song was remade by the Dixie Chicks, made originally by Fleetwood Mac (thanks Amy). Anyway, it was in my head as I climbed yesterday.

Yesterday I rode in a bus for 2 hours and reached Mt. Tunari with my some of my team and 18 of the 27 short terms we have with us at the moment. Mt. Tunari is the highest peak in Central Bolivia and is visible from Cochabamba. We took the bus as far as the road would let us, which was 14,500 ft above sea level. After that, those of us that wanted to, began the hike up to the summit. Keep in mind folks, at least you chicago folks. Ya´ll live at less then 1000 ft! Coch is at 8000 ft. The higher you go, the less air you have. So when we STARTED to hike from 14,500 breathing only got harder the higher we went. Here are some pictures of the bus trip up:

I was worried about the hike but wanted to give it a try anyway. My knee hasn´t been bothering me all that much lately so I said what the heck. Its now or never and up I went. This is the lake we started the hike from:

The first section wasn´t too bad, like walking sideways on the side of a mountian, not going uphill yet. The next part was the steepest incline I think I´ve ever tried to climb. Unfortunatly, I didn´t get a picture of it first. I was much to focused on breathing! Halfway up I was really struggling to breath and wondering if I´d even make it to the summit of this small hill. I did make it, thank God, but I knew I was done for this hike. By the time I got to the small platoe (sp?) I was wheezing and coughing a lot. I looked at the next incline and said ¨nope, not going to happen¨ so I parked myself on one of the many rocks and rested. We think I was probably at around 15,100 ft. This is the view from where I sat. This is the next incline I didn´t hike:

And these are the other directions:

I sat here for over an hour just being in awe of God´s creation around me. I spent a lot of time in prayer and just listening for God´s voice as I seek his direction in my life. I didn´t have any visions, or hear any voices (other then my friends when they screamed when they reached the summit), but I did enjoy the solitude and time of reflection (¨and I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills¨ another part of the aformentioned song). There wasn´t any snow but there was a good chill in the air and I was glad for my layers, hat, and scarf.

Finally I grew bored and started to hike back down the mountian by myself. Probably not the smartest thing in the world but hey, I´m super woman right? There were a few slips and slides but nothing broken or twisted and I didn´t get lost. I was happy to be back in the warmth of the bus and to talk with those who opted not to climb. Many of the short terms were struggling with severe reactions to the altitude (fevers, headaches, stomache aches, ect). I seemed to be ok, but then I´m used to the altitude of Coch.

Now for some funny stuff. This is not like a north american national park. If you had to pee, you went and found a rock and peed behind it. Now that was fun :)

To the local wildlife, it was US that didn´t belong, we were on their turf. This is the best picture of the trip for me. This is me and Al (Alpaca, like a llama but smaller and softer):

And these are the oh so famous Bolivian llamas:

Local houses, can you pick out the house from the landscape?

We finally headed for home, all 25 of us, exhausted, sore, and not feeling well. Even I had a headache. But we ran into a bit of a roadblock:

And that was my Tunari adventure. Maybe someday I´ll make it to the summit, Lord willing. For now, I am happy to have seen the beauty I have seen. And I am thankful for God´s hand of protection on me while I climbed back down that mountian.

Coming soon: my 6 month recap.

A much needed update

2008-03-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I tell a lot of stories. Intresting enough as they are, I thought maybe some people might be intrested in knowing my progress in my adjustment.

And honestly, it depends on the day! Somedays I am confident and other days I want to hide out in my house all day. Spanish is still a daily struggle. Granted, I´m now in the second part of my text book, which means I actually know a heck of a whole lot but I still have sooo far to go. I struggle a lot with understanding what other people are saying. This is a common problem for everyone, even spanish speakers since everyone speaks in a slightly different way depending on where they come from. Other latin american countries speak very very fast, other parts of Bolivia pronounce words differently as well. It takes a lot of concentration and often I have to ask them to repeat or slow down what they said before I can understand what they are trying to say. When someone is talking directly to me its easier for me to understand then if they are talking to someone in a group. Or for example, I can´t understand my Pastor as he is 1) from Columbia (speaks very fast)and 2) he is not speaking directly to me. I try really hard to listen to my bolivian friends as they are talking to each other, trying to pick up on what they are saying. Sometimes I catch bits and pieces, other times I understand nothing at all. But the only way to learn is to just keep on listening to them speak and to use what I know as much as I can. I sound like a fool and make a lot of mistakes but its all part of the process. Someday, years from now, I will look back on this time and just laugh and laugh!

I am feeling very confident about knowing my way around the city. Or at least the parts I travel most frequently. With my move to a new house last week I´ve had to familiarize myself with new bus routes, ect. I am still working on being able to know my way around La Concha. Even Bolivians don´t know their way around La Concha! So I´ve not got my hopes up too high but I would like to have just a basic outline in my head of which sections are which direction. Some say that La Concha in Coch is the largest open air market in latin america. I can´t say for sure thats true but La Concha is HUGE and complicated and smelly and crowded. But its the cheapest place to buy anything in this city!

Praise the Lord, stomach sickness as been far from me! I have an occasional stomach ache from eating too much sweets :) but nothing more then that. I have gained probably 10 pounds since I arrived here. Some of it thankfully is leg muscle as I basically walk everywhere. I can blame the rest on eating bread and tea for 2 meals a day and eating a huge lunch of soup, meat, potatoes and/or rice and then of course taking a siesta after that. Overall, this is a good thing for me!

I´ve been able to read some books that have ben written by people who came to live in Bolivia for a time. Both of them I highly recommend. One is called ¨When invisible children sing¨ and its about street children in La Paz, Bolivia. And the other I´m currently reading and its called ¨¡Gracias!¨ and has a load of wisdom in it, I am browing it but hope to own it myself very soon.

I continue to have very limited involvement with my team as Spanish is still my priority. I still take Viviana for therapy 3 days a week and pitch in to help my team as often as I can. My friends from training arrived last week and will also be staying here long term.

And for those who may be wondering, I do not have a Bolivian boyfriend! I do however have some really good friends that I enjoy spending time with. Many of whom speak English which is hurting my spanish but helping me to build relationships better. As my learning allows, I hope to speak with my new friends more and more in Spanish.

And that should do it folks!

Sacaba

2008-03-05T06:29:00.000-08:00

Cochabamba is a great big city. Because its so big there are named sections of the city. For instance, I live in an area called Cala-Cala. The Cristo is situatated on a small mountian on the far east side of the city. However, there is still more of Cochabamba even behind the Cristo, this area is known as Sacaba. And it is also known to be amoung the poorest areas of the city.

2 weeks ago a Bolivian friend had invited me to what is called Hora Feliz or in english, Happy Hour. Its a ministry that several of my friends from my church have every Sunday. I was unable to go the first week but decided this last Sunday would be a good time to check out this happy hour thing. All I was really told was that it was a childrens ministry and it would be a good opportunity for me to practice my spanish. I show up at the meeting place and start asking questions like ¨where are we going¨ ¨what are we going to do¨ ect. And the answer was Sacaba and we sing songs, teach Bible stories, and give out milk and bread.

I was not prepared for what I saw and experienced that day. I live in the north part of town, which is really not the poverty part of town. What I saw in Sacaba was children covered in dirt and wearing ill fitting clothes. Houses that can´t even be called houses. More like shacks with bricks holding the tin roof down. Our meeting place was a covered patio without walls or chairs. In the beginning, all of the children were together and we sang some songs that I didn´t know. But these children knew these songs well and I was impressed that so many of them actually sang. Then they were split up by age groups for the Bible lesson. I stayed with my friends that had the 2-5 year olds. Always a challenge since they have about a 2 min attention span. I spent some time chasing after run away kids and trying to get them to listen to the teacher. While the other groups were still going we played some games with the little ones to keep them from interfering with the other groups. After a little while, it was finally time to give out the food and head home. I was relieved only because it was freezing cold (probably 40-50 degrees with no wind protection and only a light jacket). We had to hunt down some christians they knew in the area and gave them the left over food and we left for home.

There were two little girls, not more then 3 or 4 years, with shawls on their backs carrying baby dolls in immitation of how the grown women carry their children and things. They were too cute for words. I also left there with a terrible terrible headcold which I still have 3 days later!

As I was talking to my friend about the experience later I was reminded that however little impact we think we are having, we may be the only Jesus these kids ever meet. We will never know the lasting impact we are having on these little lives. Its something we would all do well to remember. I would like to be a part of this ministry on Sundays (outside of my orphanage work and spanish studies) but I will be more of an observer and helper until my language improves to the point of being able to teach. In the next few weeks, if I am able to go out with them, I would like to see the older childrens classes and I think there is also a class for teenagers/women as well. If I can I will take some pictures for this blog but if its a sensative thing there then you will just have to make do with my descriptions.

Prayer request. Ever since last week when I carried Viviana uphill I have been having some problems with my right knee. Its kind of been an on going problem but this last week I´ve had more pain then usual. Its not so bad that I need to see a doctor or need medication but please pray for healing and that it might not get worse. Roads around here are rocky and uneven at best and I believe my knee is on the verge of dislocating or something similar to that. Thank you!

Did you miss me?

2008-02-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

Sorry about that folks, I´m slacking on my weekly updates. But honestly, there hasn´t been much to share lately. Except the three men and a baby in the front seat of the taxi trufi last week... that was a pretty funny site. But lo and behold, something intresting happened today! So here is the story :)

Today has been an intresting day in my life. I picked up viviana to take her for her therapy as usual. In the taxi on the way I noticed one of the main bridge intersecions had two of the passageways kinds roped off. So traffic was moving slow through there but it was at least moving. I thought maybe it was construction or something. Well, an hour later we are on the return trip and we are on another road and the driver tells me ¨blockades¨ which makes me groan cause I have the baby with me. I look around and see a lot of people walking and not a lot of cars moving. Great. But the driver, thank God, doesn´t give up. He worms his way (on the wrong side of the road) up to the road we need to turn left on (a big main road that circles around the city) and we get across. Thank God we didn´t have to turn right since that is where we would have hit the blockade for sure. Once we were headed up into the right area for the orphanage I breathed a little easier. Too soon! The closer we got to the home the more traffic we hit. And this is up where there is very little traffic! It was because everyone was trying to take the backroads since the blockade was on the main road. We finally got close enough to the home that I got out of the car, picked up viviana (she´s a pretty big girl) and walked inbetween half moving vehicals, walked up a steep, rocky, semi-wet hill (still walking inbetween cars, the whole place was like a parking lot on Christmas eve), and finally got her home to the orphanage without incident. Phew! I think I had a few more angles with me today then normal! Rather then try to ride back in a Trufi I opted to walk. Turns out walking was a faster choice too! So that was my morning! A good part of the eastern side of the city looked much like the area I was in but everything in the west seemed pretty normal. Thankfully.

In other news, I will moving leave my host family this weekend and moving into another house. Its a really long story which, if you don´t live in this culture you will not understand, so I will just say that it had become nearly impossible to live in the same home as my language tutor. My new home will be across the yard from my closest friend in Bolivia, it will be costing me less money, but will be the same arrangement as I have now. Three meals a day, laundry, and a decent sized room to stay in. Señora Carmen has been housing foreigners for many many years and is one of the sweetest women I´ve ever met. My friend Amy lived in the room I will be in for 9 months a few years ago and never had one complaint about the house or family. I am looking forward to this move.

More later!

We´re in the jungle baby!

2008-02-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

Over the river,
over the mountians

and into the jungle we go.

Around here though, its know as The Chapare. Many people have told me about the climatic differences between Chapare and Cochabamba but this was the first time I experienced it for myself. We left Coch at about 7am and drove 4hours across the mountians into Chapare. By 11 o´clock we were hot, muggy, and swatting at millions of little bugs wanting to suck our blood.

For those of you who don´t know, my team is in the midst of building 2 more orhapange homes in the Chapare. We make a trip into this area at least once a month to bring workers, supplies, and money to the construction sites. This was the first time since I arrived in Coch that I was able to go on the trip. I was just along for the ride but 3 of my teams 4 interns went with us to stay in Chapare and work construction for the next week or so. So here are some pictures of the home #1 (we didn´t have time to go to the second site).
This is the front and back of the house

This is one of the inside rooms.

At the moment, the plumbing has not been installed.
This is the shower.

And this is the house the our contruction manager Remberto lives in with his family.

And now for some fun pictures of me enjoying the jungle.
This is me and a little bitty parrot. He´s cute I wanted to take him home with me.

This is an alligator who at one point in time was alive but is now stuffed but very much alive looking!

And finally we have me posing with a banana tree in one of the many banana plantations.
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At one point of the trip we had in our car 3 missionaries, 1 child, 1 SEDEGES social worker (think DCFS), 1 special agent of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and 1 tree grower. Only in the Chapare! I actually learned a lot more about coca on this trip as the Chapare grows a lot of coca. Our friend from the DEA goes to the international church in Coch but spends one week a month at the Chapare base. I live just 1 block away from the main base in Coch. This is what I learned:
1. It takes 400 pounds of coca leaf to make 1/2 pound of cocaine.
2. The DEA finds 80 to 100 cocaine labs every week in the Chapare.
3. The coca leaf in Chapare is only good for making cocaine and is not good for making tea or for chewing for medical purposes (a legit and legal way of growing and selling it).
4. Legally, a family can grow coca in an area 40 meters by 40 meters.
5. After the leaves are picked they have to dry in the sun for 3 days.
6. Most of the cocaine made in Bolivia ends up in Europe, not North America.

And thats it for this trip to Chapare!

Camping!

2008-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Technically, Carnival is over. Technically. Rumor has it that the waterballoons may continue in a dumbed down fashion until Monday of next week. I almost got hit today so I gotta say its true! It looks like the whole city had a great big block party, and thats because they did! There are MILLIONS of broken balloons litering the street. But by far, I missed the worst (or the best, some would say) of carnival by going on a church retreat for 4 days.

In some ways, I almost felt like I was on a youth retreat in the States. Except everything was in Spanish and my shower didn´t have any hot water. When my friend invited me to go with his group I was hoping to practice my spanish and make new friends and enjoy a little bit of a break from my day to day life. And that is exactly what I did. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

We actually ate about 5 times a day! 3 meals and two ¨snack¨ type meals. This was our dining hall and these are some of my new friends. All the food was Bolivian, which I´m now acustomed to so it didn´t make me sick. However, camp food is still camp food and I missed my Bolivian Mom´s cooking :)

We had church services 2 times a day. There was always a lot of music and a message. Most of the speaking was lost on me except one service that a friend translated for me. These pictures are from 2 different services. These Bolivians don´t sit down and sing, they stand and shout and dance. More often then not, the chairs got stacked up, and they would worship in a great big circle like in the picture below. I took comfort in knowing that God knows my heart and God knows Spanish, even if I don´t understand every word I´m singing.

Perhaps the most important part of the weekend for me was making new friends. Going into the retreat I kind of knew 3 of the guys, I didn´t know any of them very well. And I didn´t know any of the girls. The first couple of hours were rather ackward for me but by the morning of the first full day I suddenly had like 5 girlfriends! Alcicel, Maria, Dani, Cecy, and Marcela. These girls immeditaly felt like my best friends and we hung out all the time, sat with each other in services and at meals, ect. I tried to get to know as many of the older people as I could. Side note, youth group here is a very broad group, you don´t graduate out of it. So we had like 12 year olds and then like 33 year olds. We had about 50 something in the group. This group is also in a more upper class in society and many of them speak English. Good and bad for me at the same time. But they helped me with Spanish and I helped them with English. It will never cease to amaze me just how accepting these people are. How many people would you welcome into your group gladly that didn´t have a firm grasp on your language? I love these people!

And finally there are the silly games, like in this picture.

In down times, I played a lot of frisbee, sat around with my new friends trying to talk to them, and generally just chilled out. Its rainy season here and the sun has been scarce. That would be the reason I never thought to pack a hat and sunscreen... my face is terribly red at the moment and very painful. My phrase for the weekend ¨Lo siento, soy gringa¨. I´m sorry, I´m a white girl!

You just don´t see that in the States EDIT

2008-01-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

Recently I´ve found myself thinking ¨you just don´t see that in the states.¨ So I started to write down some of the more oddball type things I´ve been seeing. Some make you laugh, some make you say ¨aawwww¨, some will make you say ¨cool¨ and others will make you say ¨what?¨. So here they are:

1. Recently saw cars, not just double parked on the side of the road, but TRIPLE parked. And not a cop in sight to write up tickets. They don´t really do that here...

2. On the back window of a van trufi a window cling said ¨Soy de cristo¨ literally, I am of Christ. You don´t usually see bold statements of faith like that.

3. Grafiti on the wall of a home ¨It´ll be alright¨ spray painted in English.

4. Car trufi´s that have the steering column moved from the right side of the car to the left. All other dashboard things remain on the right side. Where the steering wheel used to be is a hole, normally with a stuffed animal stuffed into it. Cute but wierd at the same time :)

5. In a bus trufi (actually called a Micro if I want to be culturally correct) was a hand made sign from a child that said quite boldly ¨Feliz Día papí¨. In English, have a good day daddy.

6. In a bowling alley a sign says in English ¨Road Closed, you didn´t behave last night.¨ Which didn´t make one bit of sense to any of us that was reading it.

7. A lot of trufi´s have stickers on the walls with sayings. I can´t normally translate them but one of them said ¨ Don´t blame the driver if you left late.¨ And another ¨Its better to wait for a minute of your life then to lose your life in a minute.¨

EDIT
8. A saw a HUGE chopped up cactus sitting on the curb in front of someones home. A cactus, like a tree, that is not wanted in ones yard gets the chainsaw apparently.

9. More english grafiti ¨I´m not home...¨ odd, very odd.

As I come across more I will add them to this blog. Hope they made you laugh.

I have also been hit with my first drive-by super soaking. I´m still dodging water balloons and usually take taxi´s at night. During the working week most college students are in class and the rest of the people at the streets are profesionals. The little kids don´t really have anyone to target. Which makes me think that most of the water balloon wars are instigated by 20 something year olds.

I have decided to attend the retreat with my friends church. I just cannot pass up the opportunity to make friends and spend time in worship. It will help my Spanish SO MUCH too. Carnival comes around every year. Maybe next year I´ll feel safer and more confident in my Spanish to attend it. Next weekend may be carnival but Bolivia has a huge celebration of some kind or other every month or two.

My weeks tend to be fairly predictable lately. I take Viviana for her therapy, I have language tutoring, I see my friends, I go to a youth service, I go to church, I study, ect. But I like predictability so thats ok. There hasn´t been strikes or blockades in over a month, Thank God.

I have my email newsletter coming out on Friday, till next time!

Can you run faster then a balloon?

2008-01-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

This was the question posed to me by the leader of the Babywashing ministry. Even though he asked me in English I still had no idea what he was talking about! Finally he said ¨The water ballons... are you faster then them?¨ Now that made more sense! You see, Bolivia is coming up on their Carnival celebration which is the first weekend in February (its actually 4 days long). One of the biggest reminders that Carnival is almost here is the constant barrage of water balloons being thrown at you! Its all in good fun but sometimes these water balloons HURT! So far I have been safe from any direct hits (they apparently have pretty bad aim) but I have been told that sometimes they actually freeze the water ballons. So it hurts when you are hit and often leaves a bruise. Others have told me that the water balloon may contian more then just water, for example, ice, urine, and/or oil. I recieved my first (attempted)hit about a week ago with someone yelling in English ¨Its Carnival!¨

The main street I live off of (America Ave, go figure) is a war zone as the day goes on. You can see broken balloons everywhere. Students are still out of school and well, water balloons are cheap. I went down to the market with my sister only to find a HUGE water balloon fight in progress right in front of the store. We ran as fast as we could! I have never seen such a funny thing in all my life.

I have been trying to get an accurate history of Carnival which is hard to do. Originally, I´m told, it was an Inca tradition. It was the peoples way of telling the god´s that they had enough water, by throwing water around. Thus Carnival would signal the end of rainy season (summer to them). Other people say that its a Catholic holiday (nothing religious about it though). They said something about it being a certian number of days before Easter. Others say its the same as Marti Gras in the the States. Its a conflicting story because when the Spanish people came in with their Catholic religion they super-emposed the ¨church¨ holidays over the existing pagan holidays. So really, it just depends on who you ask.

Whatever the actual history is... its a big long party here in Bolivia. It includes a parade, fairs, dancers, music, ect, ect. And it lasts 4 days. It is also a high time for theft as there are so many people on the streets. These thieves are profesionals and you have to be very careful with your belongings. During this time transportation may not run normally and many non-fiesta related stores will be closed. Its a big long holiday!

There is a good chance that I will miss most of the festivities as a friend has invited me to go on a church retreat over that weekend. I hope to still be able to go to the parade but we will wait and see. The retreat would be good for me as I´ll be developing new friendships, using my spanish more, taking time to really focus on God and worship him with other believers. I have 2 weeks to make a final decision... party hard or spend time with God? Hmmmmm... this is really not a hard decision for me. But I do want to experience all the customs of this culture, Carnival is definetely one of them.

Until then, I will be dodging water balloons and working on my Spanish lessons!

By the way... if you are not registared with Blogger and want to leave me comments. You can just click at the end of an entry, enter a message into the box and then click on the annonymous option and that should work. Thanks all for your notes and encouragement and prayers!

Back to daily life

2008-01-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

My extended holiday has finally come to an end. For about 3 weeks my life, my schedule, ect were completely abnormal. First it was all the Christmas festivities, the New Years, and then my trip to La Paz. Holidays in Bolivia are not just a one day ordeal... it sometimes takes days for the city to return to normal. One of the most relieving things about the last couple of weeks is that there has been no blockades or buisness closures. It was very kind of the protesters to take a break for the holidays!

So this week I got back to the grind of daily life. I have Spanish class for 2 hours a day, I try to give at least another 2 hours or so to studying time.

I have also been given my first ministry assignment. One of the little girls in the first orphange (Vivianna) is a special needs child. She was flown into Coch serveral months ago from a jungle village where she either fell or was pushed into a fire. Her entire back and most of her legs were terribly burned. Thank God, her face was completly untouched by the fire. She has come a very very long way in the last couple of months. It is now my responsibility to take her 4 days a week to the burn therapist for an hour of theapy. Hospitals in general make me a little queazy and it is hard to see the other children waiting for their theapy as some of them are even worse off then Vivianna. While Vivianna is having her theapy I use that time to study my spanish book. In time I hope to be able to have conversation with the other women waiting with their children.

An intresting aspect of the story is that Spanish is neither mine nor Vivianna´s first language! We are both in the same boat as we continue to learn Spanish. Vivianna´s first language is not Quechua as I had thought but is a totally different language from the jungle. There is something like 17 languagues spoken in Bolivia. So we have a fine time trying to talk to each other! But hugs, humming songs, smiles, and candy go a long way in communication. She has finally managed to remember my name!

I wish I could say that the bad stuff is over for her but its not. She will probably have a couple of more surgeries in the near future so she can have more movement with her arms. She also needs to see a doctor for some sores that are not healing by themselves. We are not certian of her exact age but I would say she is between 5 & 7 years old. She´s been through more in her young life then most adults in this world. Please keep Vivianna in your prayers. Thanks be to God, someone from the States has covered her medical expenses 100%. Please pray for her continued healing, language learning, and emotional health as well. I will try to put a picture of us in next months update email, she is a beauty!

Road trip at 14,000 ft above sea level

2008-01-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

I returned last saturday from the highest road trip I´ve ever taken! One of my fellow missionaries here in Cochabamba, Amy, convinced me to go with her and spend a few days exploring La Paz. And what an experience that turned out to be! First a few facts about La Paz that make it different then Coch. La Paz is the largest city in Bolivia and also the capital. It sits at about 14,000 ft (Coch is at 8,000). It has the highest airport in the world and also one of the highest peeks in all of South America. La Paz is very much a cone shape with the richer folks living lower down where it is warmer and the poorer folks living up on the edges of the city. Also, La Paz is a Aymara city whereas Coch is a Quechua. Those are the names of the two largest indiginous groups in Bolivia. They are similar yet completely different. So on we go with the road trip.
This is the bus, called a Flota, that we rode for 8 hours to get to La Paz. It was 100 times more comfortable then the buses I take in Coch daily.

It was quite literally all uphill and we almost immedietly felt the affects of the higher altitude. We were however treated to some amazing views of the mountians. Pictures could never do it justice but we tired. By the way, combined, we took over 200 pictures in 2 1/2 days! I´ve picked out some of the best for you.

Our rest stop was my first real experience of the trip. This, believe it or not is a toliet. No I didn´t fall in!

We were more then happy to finally get to our hotel and have a good nights sleep. It was also very important at the rest stop to have some Coca Tea. Coca is the only reason the US cares anything about Bolivia. Coca is the main ingrediant in cocaine and they monitar how much coca is being grown. However, it is also a natural way of counteracting altitude sickness and has been used in the fashion for as long as people have been living in the highlands. They either put the leaves in hot water or chew the leaves themselves. We opted for the tea. I commented that someone could make a lot of money if they can figure out a way of putting the coca into a gum. They did it with nicotine so why not coca? Anyway, I drank A LOT of tea in La Paz. The altitude really does a number on your digestion, the tea helps with this, it also helps you breath easier. There is just less air up there. Most of Chicago land is somewhere around 700 ft above sea level. Just to put that into perspective for you. Here is some pictures of me enjoying my tea.

We had a grand old time acting like tourists! Here in Coch I try my hardest to NOT look like a tourist and I enjoy laughing at the tourists we do have. Anyway, we tourist shopped and took a lot of pictures. We didn´t really have a schedule so we did whatever we wanted to. We ate at different resturants every meal, walked probably 100 miles in 2 days (kidding, but we did walk a lot), saw a lot of the city, and created a lot of memories. My favorite place was the main plaza. And this picture says why.

La Paz is also the center for a lot of political turmoil. These policemen are quite literally keeping the peace.
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We also visited Old La Paz which was nice since there was hardly anyone there. So of course we took some silly pictures. This is how La Paz used to look.

And this is La Paz today, this is the view from our hotel room window.

We had 2 days of cold and rain and 1 day of gorgous sunshine. Of course I got sunburned! But after the 70 or 80 degree average in Coch, the cold was quite a shock to my system. I bought a scarf and Amy bought a hat and scarves. And here we are!

I was ready to come home by the third day. I enjoyed my vacaction but I missed being in a familar place. So we got back on a bus and 8 hours later we arrived at home sweet home cochabamba. But not without another experience along the way. This was the bathroom at rest stop number 2.

So thats La Paz in a nutshell, there are a ton of stories to tell and more pictures but that is good enough for right now. Normal weekly blog coming soon... I promise!

Yester- year

2007-12-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

It was quite overwhelming for me to look back on this year and see all the different things that I´ve done. How often does one´s beginning of the year look so drastically different then one´s end of the year anyway?

Lets call the first quarter of the year ¨College of Dupage¨ (COD). Looking back I am thinking that the spanish class I took was a big waste of time. But as it is, it occupied nearly 4 months of my year. I really enjoyed that class because it gave me a lot of time to talk and hang out with one of my high school friends whom I normally wouldn´t have been able to see much of. But that class itself was difficult for a lot of reasons. One, we were a class of about 24 students all at varying levels of spanish experience. Two, the class went according to a book. We had to complete a certian amount of chapters before the end of the semester whether we were really learning it or not. Some people blazed through the elementary stuff and some people, like me, really struggled to keep up with the pace. It ended up being a really stressful time and I really didn´t retain a lot of what I learned. Upon arrival in Bolivia I had to all but start from scratch.

The next quarter of the year I´ll call ¨insane¨ for that was exactly what my spring and summer months were in my life. Beginning in about May or so, my spanish class was ending (thank God)and I started to re-focus my time and energies on fundraising for Bolivia. It was also at this time that I recieved instructions from my missions agency about the pre-training for the field training that would begin on-campus in the fall. It ended up being a good 3 solid months of reading, test taking, and paper writing. Also, keep in mind at this point that I was still working at my job 40 hours a week. If you´ve never done fundraising for a long term trip you´ll never understand how much time it requires. So with those ´big 3´ my summer was nothing less then completly insane. It was filled with work, training, and fundraising and not nearly enough FUN. Fundraising included: 2 car washes, a week of VBS, several presentations at other churches, writing updates, printing ministry reports, sending support letters, doing follow-up on those letters, researching Bolivia, putting together powerpoints, and checking daily to see if anything I was doing was having an impact on my support levels. I was absolutly exhausted! In the midst of all of that I managed to spend a week volunteering at a camp in Illinois (which I really enjoyed) and a quick weekend get away to go camping with my family. By the end of the summer, it was amazing to me to see that all my hard work and prayers had payed off. Just before I left for fall training, I had 100% of my funding. Anytime I get discouraged all I need to do is think back to this summer and remember that I saw the power of God at work in me and in other people. They told me that fundraising would stretch my faith and indeed it did. There is nothing like asking God for something and then truly believing by faith that He would answer/provide and then rejoicing when He did. If you want your faith to grow you have to depend on God for your everything, I knew that on my own I could do nothing but fail. That is why, despite all the work I listed above, I give all the glory and honor to God who has called me to this work. Gloria a Dios.

The next quarter of my year would hold the most drastic changes of the year. At the end of Aug I quit my job and quickly found myself amoungst other people just like me as we gather together for 5 weeks of pre-field training. That is also the time that I began this blog site. I made many friends and was encouraged by them. Some where leaving for their mission field ASAP like I was, others had barely begun their fundrasing. I had learned some things the hard way and I was glad to be able to share with them my experiences. I also met some of my future teammates, 2 interns who are here with me now, and also a married couple that should be coming down in the early part of 2008. The last two weeks of my north american life were filled with meetings, goodbye parties, and last min details. There was so much encouragement and prayers that I was completley overwhelmed with the love my family and friends have for me.

The final quarter of my year found me on a plane headed for a new life in Bolivia. I´ve been here for about 2 months and indeed everything in my life has changed! But the daily details are pretty much recorded in this blog. In summary, I have been adopted by my Bolivian family, I have had more hours then I care to count of language tutoring, I´ve made new friends outside of my team, I´ve laughed, I´ve cried, I´ve gotten sick, I´ve been tired, I´ve been lost, I´ve been surprised, I´ve been loved, I´ve been stolen from, I´ve been well fed, I´ve gained weight, I´ve learned, I´ve missed my home, I´ve gone through culture shock and lived to tell about it, and I´ve never been more positive that this is where God wants me to be. Its not always easy, there is nothing glamorous about life in a third world country. Its hard for me to not be able to say all that I wish I could say in Spanish but its getting better everyday. Its hard for me cause I don´t always feel like I´m being a missionary here, but thats ok, you can´t be a good missionary if you can´t speak to the people in their own language. I do as much ministry as my language will permit and spend the rest of my time studying spanish, learning the city and culture, and de-stressing with friends.

Looking forward will be a whole other entry. But I was sitting and talking with one of my sisters the other night and we both were thinking the same thing. We feel very positive about the next years of our lives. More then likely its for different reasons but I myself can not wait to see what all is going to happen! Because I know that God is good, all the time. Even when times are hard, I have a Saviour who loves me and is never going to leave me. THAT is the hope that I have and that is the hope I wish to share with every man, woman, and child in Bolivia!

Christmas Part 2

2007-12-29T12:24:00.001-08:00

OK! Finally I will finish this Christmas story! I don´t know how these last couple of days have gotten away from me. So... on with Christmas!

After having stayed up late with my family I took part of the morning to sleep in. My teams interns (3 of them), another longer-term missionary, and I had planned to have a Christmas brunch together. For all of us this was our first Christmas away from our families in the States. So they all went grocery shopping and bought all the items needed for a very north american breakfast. We all gathered in my friends tiny apartment and attempted to cook this meal together. As you can see in the picture below it was a tight fit when all 5 of us were trying to work in the kitchen! I was standing in the doorway when I took this picture!

When all was said and done, we had a great brunch together of French Toast, Fruit Salad, and fresh squeezed OJ. There were hash browns on the menu but they didn´t quite make it out of the frying pan! Then we all just rested for a while and enjoyed each others company while listening to Christmas music.

Christmas Day ended with a traditional US dinner at the home of my team leaders. there were 16 of us gathered together there for dinner and a gift exchange. There was sooooo much food! We all had a good time just talking with each other. We then had the traditional gift exchange game where you draw numbers and pick a gift or you can ´steal´ a gift that has already been opened. Always good for a laugh! By the time that party came to an end I was really tired and ready to head back to my own home. All in all, it was a wonderful first Christmas in Bolivia, the first of many to come.

In addition to these things, I also attended a Ladies Christmas Tea put on by the International church, I saw a play called ¨Haven of Hope Hotel¨ (the inn that had the manger, ect), and also 2 different Childrens programs. I sang Christmas songs in both English and Spanish and discovered that even Bolivia´s Concha (market) gets insanely busy the week before Christmas. It got to the point that I was having to take taxi´s around simply because I could NOT find a trufi with room for me on it (I generally try not to hang out the doorways!). There is still a ton of fruit cake hanging around (sounds pretty north american huh?) but everything else seems to have returned to normal. This is a picture of the play.

Bolivia does celebrate the New Year in the traditional way, with parties! I´m not sure at this point where I will be partying or with whom but I will be with friends or family. Next week begining Jan 2nd, I will be taking a short trip to La Paz, Bolivia with a friend of mine. La Paz is the biggest city in Bolivia and is at an altitude of nearly 14,000 ft. My friend and I will travel there by bus (about 8 hours) and stay 3 days and return on the 5th. Please pray for safety during this time.

Tune in soon for a year in review entry as well as thoughts, dreams, and wishes for the coming year. Happy New Years!

Christmas Part 1

2007-12-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone! My Christmas was so full its going to take a couple of blog entries to tell it all. I have some wonderful pictures to share with you all as well.

To start with this is a picture of my Bolivian family, ALL of them. And believe me, it was no easy task to get everyone in the house at the same time looking decent enough for a picture! But finally on Christmas Eve I managed to get everyone to co-operate. The last family photo I posted was missing Jaime and his son Marcello. Marcello is the middle child and is a doctor. He is currently in medical school in Argentina getting a speciality degree (for the back I believe). He just arrived back in Cochabamba the Sunday before Christmas. The family is very happy to have him home for a couple of weeks and I was glad to be able to get a complete family photo. He also came to my rescue with some antibiotics as I have been struggling for a while with a chest cold. He, like the rest of his family, have accepted me as one of their own. I thank God for them daily!

The traditions of Christmas in Bolivia vary by family, the same as in the states. My family orders all their food from a resturant. When I went with my family to pick it up my sister told me we were picking up DUCK! I told her, ´maybe you should have just told me it was chicken!´ This is a picture of my plate. It was actually very good! Dark meat. And no it did not taste like chicken! Well, maybe dark meat chicken, either way, it was moist and flavorful. Add this one to the list of Bolivian experiences :)

This is the family all sitting together enjoying our plate fulls of duck :)Oh, and this meal takes place at about 11pm. Most families however would have their meal at midnight.

This is also a tradition. Estella, Tina, and Natalia all worked together to make empenadas. I wanted to help but was afraid to as I was still sick at the time. These were made in preparation for the rest of the family gathering on Christmas day.

This is our tree, very similar to those found in the states. Side note, all the Christmas lights here ´sing´ but there are settings and you can turn the sound off. When I was helping to pick up the food for dinner I was singing in English along with the wordsless tune of the Christmas lights. My sister Natalia said to me that she´s never heard to words to the songs! That was a fun moment for me.

This is the manger scene in our home. At exactly midnight some candles are lit and baby Jesus is placed in the manger. That is followed by a time of silent prayer. Then came the opening of the presents. Very chaotic! Everyone was standing and handing out presents to everyone and then opening everything at once! I recieved s burned CD of a popular Bolivian band (excellent!), shower flipflops, a crystal angel pendent for a necklace and a bunch of candy. I enjoyed giving my small gifts to the family even more. Esp Marcello as I had only met him two days before. I gave both him and his parents framed copies of the family picture I had been in such a hurry to take. For my sister Patty I gave a framed picture of her two daughters. My sister Natalia recieved from me a rose candle holder. Estella and Jaime recieved a ¨Jesus bless this house´ plaque (in Español) and the family picture in a frame. Tina recieved from me a 2008 calander and some of her favorite chocolate. The little girls (technically my nieces) recieved candy and toy daiseys.

It was a night that I will never forget. I swear I fell asleep with a smile on my face. Its hard not to be happy when you realize you really do have TWO families! Its really hard to explain but its the most amazing feeling in the world.

Tomorrow look for part 2 as I tell the story of the rest of Christmas Day with friends. Stories and pictures galore :)

My mis-adventure

2007-12-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

To make a long story short, I took a trufi going the wrong way. But the long story is so much more intresting! So here it is, in full:

Tuesday of this week I was in a semi-unfamiliar area of the north end of town because I was making a phone call home and the one store was said to have cheaper rates. What can I say? I´m cheap! Anyway, after making the call home I needed to get to one of the plazas to meet a friend for coffee (and girl talk!). If I had been going there from my house I would not have had a problem at all. But I was not close to home. So I had to try to take a trufi to the plaza that I was not familiar with. Luckily, most trufi´s have signs on their windows stating which locations they drive past like plaza colon, post office, ect (in spanish of course). Well, I was running late and I saw a trufi that said plaza colon so I flagged it down and was on my way. Well... I knew almost immeditaley that I was not going in the right direction. I have a good enough map in my head to know that I needed to go west and south, not east to get there. But a bus route is a bus route so I knew I would end up there eventually so a waited for a while. By the time I decided that this bus was never going to take me to the plaza I was way out in the middle of some highway that I had never seen. I was on my way out of the city! So I had to take my chances and I got off of the trufi. A white girl, out on the middle of a highway, at nearly 6 at night was not really a good thing. So I was praying hard and waiting for a taxi, any taxi, to stop and take me to the plaza. I felt like I was standing there forever. Every trufi was going to other places and some taxi´s were not pulling over. Finally one stopped! Praise the Lord! All I said was ¨Plaza Colon¨and we were off. This cabbie had his wife with him too so that made me feel safer too. I finally got to the plaza and it only cost me 10 Bolivianos (less then $2) for the cab. I met my friend (she hadn´t given up on me thankfully) and we were on our way.

Unfortunetly, that is not the end of the story! Since I arrived late at the plaza we ended up talking past the time it had gotten dark. It had also started raining. So we headed out together to get a taxi to our homes. Well... easier said then done! As soon as it starts raining everyone in Cochabamba tries to get into a taxi, trufi, car, ect. Anything with wheels! So we waited in the rain, checking every bus, every taxi for free space. Nada. Nothing at all. (I told my friend that I would take whatever came first, a taxi or trufi just to get out of the rain. The next trufi that came by literally had people hanging out the door it was so jam packed full of people). We finally went to the other side of the road, grabbed a taxi headed the other direction, made him make a U turn and we finally got home. Wet, cold, and tired but we made it home!

The next day I decided that maybe it would be better if I just stayed home! Which I did :) Today all of life has been back to normal, thats a relief! But looking at it in retrospect, the ordeal with the trufi going to wrong way was really a worse case scenario. And I lived to tell about it. Thats a really really nice thing about Coch, you can grab a cab, anytime, anywhere (except when its raining!) and tell them exactly where you need to go and it actually costs very little. But praise God, He was with me on that highway!

A giftcardless Christmas

2007-12-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

I finally put my finger on it. That´s what is so different about Christmas in Cochabamba! These people wouldn´t know what a gift card was if it came up and hit them in the face. If anything they might try to use it to get money out of an ATM :) So that got me thinking that when the people who can actually afford to buy gifts for their friends and family actually buy them real gifts! A well thought out, meaningful gift. I always kind of thought that gift cards were the easy way out of gift giving. Not to stir up a great big debate about them or anything, I´m just saying that I like having to think about what I´m giving. Thinking about the persons likes and dislikes and not thinking ¨I have to spend at least $20 or I´ll look cheap¨. Around here, $20 could probably feed a family of 6 for a month. I spent about $1 on my nieces here and they are going to love their gifts.

Since I´m talking money... after the first of the year I will begin attending another church. I´ve been going to the International Church since I didn´t (and still don´t) know enough Spanish to understand a sermon. Plus I didn´t know where else to go. Churches down here are not on every corner and are not well advertised. But almost from the beginning I didn´t feel right at the English church. I´m in the middle of Bolivia and I´m sitting in a very western church service. That just seems wrong to me. I enjoy latino services, esp their worship time. The English church is a haven for North American missionaries to worship in their native tounge but also a ministry to the upper class of Bolivia. The upper working class either knows English or is trying to learn it. There are also headsets that translate for them. I didn´t come to Bolivia to hang out with the rich, more and more lately I have felt that it was not where God wanted me to be.

So I kept my eyes open and I stubbled upon a church sign after Babywashing a few saturdays back. All I could read of the sign was ¨Evangelical¨ and I always meant to go back and try to find out more about it. Today at a church event I was talking to another missionary and she mentioned a Bolivian church she used to go to. When I asked where it was she started drawing me a map. And guess what!? Its the same church I had seen a few weeks ago! And she offered to go with me when I wanted to go. I knew I had seen that sign for a reason and I can´t wait to go and see it soon. I will stay at the International church until Christmas but them I´m going over to the other one.

It seems to be hitting me a lot lately (due to a really good book I´m reading called The Irresistible Revolution) just how much the Bible talks about the poor. We all know that Jesus was born into poverty (in a manager for crying out loud). But I realized today while I was watching a skit that God chose to announce the birth of Jesus to the shepards (poor people) FIRST, not last. Jesus didn´t grow up the son of a King living in splendor, he grew up a son of a carpenter. And then he was a refugee and then homeless. He always went to the poor people, talked to them, listened to them, hugged their children, healed their sick. And the poor people listened to him and most of the rich people didn´t (but not all). I won´t quote the chapters and verses right now but just read the gospels and you will see too. If you can, give that book I mentioned a good reading. I don´t agree wholeheartedly with everything in it but I believe the Bible says what it says for a reason. Compared to 70% of Bolivians I am fithy rich. Compared to the middle class of North America my total monthly income (donations) wouldn´t pay thier mortgage and car payment much less anything else. Don´t let yourself not see the poor, I think thats all Jesus ever saw. Think about it. The love of Christ will change you!

Politics and junk

2007-12-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

Some of you are going to see the title of this blog and decide to skip it. Thats ok. I´m actually kind of proud of myself that I can follow some of the political happenings and what they mean, what the people do in reaction, and the over-arching political mess that exists in this country. Its important that I understand it because I live it. There are strikes nearly every other week that make getting around town to run errands nearly impossible, there are rallies (like today) in the main plaza that although it was a peaceful gathering Americans (esp with white skin) were told to go nowhere near the plaza. So here is the breakdown as far as I can figure:

There are 12 departments in Bolivia. Each department has a govenor. 6 are for the President, 6 are against the President. This week the 6 that are against tried to get to the US UN meeting before the other six. Those who are for the president got there first. But they basically went to tell on each other! Anyway, the result was that the strike that was planned for today was cancelled and a simple rally that was held in the main plaza instead. This was a rally FOR the president. It was being said that 80,000 people where being bused in from the mountians and rainforest and I believe it. Folks that traveled more today then I did said the city was packed, every bus was full, ect. I watched the news tonight hoping to catch a shot of the crowd but no such luck. I did hear a report that said 3 people died in transit when the driver of their car fell asleep at the wheel. That made me very sad.

My upcoming trip to Chapare (rainforest) has also been cancelled do to unstable political conditions. The constitution is being voted on actually in the Chapare region. Blockades are almost a given. The church leaders do not want to get stuck out there with a busfull of teenagers. I don´t blame them. I went to a house sale today (we don´t have garages!) of some missionaries that are moving back to the states soon. Missionaries help each other out like that, sell stuff a decent price so they have more money to move home with and we get furniture and what not for less then we´d pay in The Concha. Anyway... they are moving home because their ministry is to literally bus people all over Bolivia, Bolivian believers, short-term teams, church groups, ect. All they charge is the cost of the deisel for the bus. Side note, Bolivia has had a huge shortage of deisel for a long time now. At times they are even short on gasoline. I´m not sure why. So not only do they have a diesel problem but they are running into blockade problems nearly every week. Sometimes strikes/blockades are country wide, others are for specific departments. Given these missionaries drive all over Bolivia they have decided to pack up and move home until the political situation calms down, or when Evo is no longer president.

Also a problematic thing has been that the dollar as been dropping. In other words, the exchange rate is not what it used to be. This is not just for Bolivia but for the whole world. European missionaries have had major problems with the exchange rate there for years. These last couple of weeks the rate has been 7.60 B´s to $1. This is down from what used to be about 8.2. My tutor has had to increase the cost of my classes to cover the difference. There is goodnews however, my team leader told me today that he saw on CNN that ´the dollar was strong´. There is a good posibility that our exchange rate will increase in the next couple of days. This is yet another thing that is outside of my understanding. What exactly makes the dollar strong or weak???

In other news, I have come down with a headcold of sorts. All this delisious food and it hurts to swallow it. Although tonights warm bananna bread tasted wonderful! I bought a ´chair hammock´ today as a real hammock is not possible for me in this house (long story). This is the next best thing and I got it at probably half the price of a new one at the house sale. I had a two hour ´review´ for Spanish class today and she tested me on chapters 1-5. All verbal. And I did good! Its a relief to know that I do remember this stuff and understand it! Thats it for now, hope I didn´t bore anyone.

Un día de descansar

2007-12-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

A day of rest. And boy did I ever need it! This is probably the first Sunday since I´ve been here that all I´ve left the house to do is walk to church and back. I should probably back up... by like a week! The overview style seems to work pretty good for me.

Like walking through water. I´ve definetly have hit a new level in my spanish learning. And it feels a lot like trying to walk quickly through water. As hard as you try... you just end up moving in slow motion! The good news is that I am understanding the concepts behind some rather complicated things like direct and indirect objects. The bad news is that it take me for what feels like forever to come up with the correct response. It is literally exhausting. I thank God every day for having such a patient tutor. As of December 1st my host family has been instructed to speak to me only in Spanish unless we really can´t understand each other. This will force me to use the Spanish I do know and will be an added reason to learn this language quickly. I´ll admit that I´ve been lazy and enjoying talking with my sisters in English. Now is time for the hard stuff!

Mid-week update. Most of you should have recieved my mid-week update via email. I´ve not had internet in the house for a week and have been using internet cafés. My camera was stolen on Tuesday while I was riding a Trufi back from one of the orphanage homes. I have received word from my supporters and I will be able to buy a new one sometime this week. The protests did not last more than a day, thank God. They rarely do. The city has gone back to normal though there are always political tentions. More so in cities like La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Sucre though. Cochabamba is semi-neutral ground. Our President Evo Morales is much like the Venesuala president Chavez. He makes the news a lot more then Evo, but they are of the same mind. Please, if you remember to, pray for this country!

´Tis the season to go shopping. Fa la la la la, la la la la. This morning in church I sang my first Christmas songs of the season. I have also offically started my Christmas shopping for my host family and teammates. I have to limit my gifts to about $3 or so (less if I can get away with it) since I need to be careful with my money. I just located this week one of the very few Christian (non- Catholic) bookstores in the city. Everything in that store screams JESUS! Its awesome :) I bought my house parents a nice (but cheap) plaque there. I am on the hunt for something for my tutor/friend, one sister, and her two daughters. I am very much looking forward to experiencing the Christmas traditions in this house as well as having a traditional dinner with my team leaders and spending time with my friends from from the States. From what I´m told the Bolivian celebration begins on Christmas Eve. Everyone stays up till Midnight and has a HUGE meal. They then open presents and sleep in the next morning. We don´t have any decor up yet but I have been told a little bit about this homes traditions. But I will wait until they happen to tell them in full.

Nightmares. This is going to be a little hard to say. This week, for the second time since I´ve been in Bolivia, I have had a nightmare. This is not the kind that you wake up and then its gone and you can go back to sleep. This are the kind of nightmares that I believe fall under the catagory of spiritual attacks. Both times I had the same continuing dream all night, despite waking up repeatedly. I woke up not feeling rested at all. And worse the dreams stayed with me ALL DAY. The story line was different but the feeling was the same. My friends and I were being attacked by ´monsters´ of some kind that we could not fight. The latest dream from this week I can still remember vivid details and its been 48 hours. In that dream I did rebuke someone in the name of Jesus and he backed off. The monsters I never see, only what they do. Now that I´ve given you all the chills... I read my bible and prayed a lot before I went to sleep last night. I fell asleep with a song of praise in my head and slept soundly the entire night. I have continued to sing praises to God all day today. God is protecting me, even as I sleep.

Chapare. December 17th I am joining a short-term mission trip from the International Church here in Coch to the Chapare region (the rainforest). We will be gone for only 5 days to help with construction on our orphanage homes there. It is mostly a youth trip but I will be going as am extra leader and worker. I have not visited the area yet so I am looking forward to it and meeting the people in this place. We have 2 homes being build there right now so you know the need is great. They tell me that bananas are free because they grow wild there. They also tell me there are rather large bugs, mesquitos, and humidity and rain like you wouldn´t believe. Sound like fun to anyone else???

Tomorrow is the monthly meeting for my team and the Bolivian social workers. The rest of the week I´m not sure yet. But always, always tutoring and homework. That is basically my life for the next 6-12 months!

Don´t blink

2007-11-25T12:17:00.001-08:00

The title of the popular country music song certainly rings true for me. Life passes too quickly, blink and you´ll miss it. I´ve been busy this week and haven´t even found the time to blog until now.

It is hard for me to believe that I have already been in Bolivia for 1 month! I have met so many people, seen so many things, and learned so much that I hardly know where to begin anymore. This last week seems to have just flown by. Last Saturday I attended my first Babywashing since I arrived (it had been cancelled the weeks before). I´ve now gone twice and each time is different. Different volunteers, different number of kids, ect. Its fun getting to know people as we chat while washing these little ones. My Bolivian sister Natalia has taken to calling it a ¨baby shower¨. The kids are so different from one another, some splish & splash in the water, others scream bloody murder, some actually help us wash them. Ever Saturday feels like a brand new experience. My schedule should nearly always allow for 2 hours or so for babywashing.

As much as possible I have been trying to run my errands by myself. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I want to cry because I can´t communicate well in this language or I just can´t find the store that I am looking for. My pride has taken quite a hit this week. I have finally managed to: make photocopies, mail something to the states, drop off money for my one year visa, and buy a half a dozen donuts. That last one I just returned from. It took an hour round-trip on foot. Speaking of these donuts... they are the closest thing to Dunkin Donuts that they have in Cochabamba. and there is only ONE store. My sister here bought me one a few nights and I fell in love with it! Not bad for 50 cents US!

One night I attend a free piano and cello concert with my sister and was treated some amazing music. It was associated with the music college here. The woman was born in Cochabamba and the man was from the states. Both with musical resumes a mile long. I am so glad that I am friends with my sisters here, I am never lonely for friends. If I ever get to feeling lonely or bored, all I need to do is walk out of my bedroom and find my family. Problem solved.

Along with Thanksgiving this week I was also celebrating the birthdays of 2 of my friends. So I´ve been introduced to two more restaurants with good food. I don´t eat out a lot normally since I have 3 meals a day at home. But a birthday is a birthday and it calls for a change in schedule! And something else I have noticed... it is important for me to have a life here in Coch. It doesn´t mean I have to spend a lot of money, but it does mean that I have to spend time with friends outside of ministry and just build relationships with them. I miss all my family and friends at home dearly. The friendships I have here are just in the beginning stages and will take some time. But I´ve realized that it means I have to actively pursue them. Yeah, so I can have a somewhat normal life here with ministry and social life.

OK, Thanksgiving! I was so happy to answer my Bolivian families questions about this North American holiday. They wanted to know the history, the food, the traditions, ect. But mostly the food, I had a heck of a time trying to describe stuffing! So the day finally came we headed over to Earl and Rosie Adams house. We had an amazing meal of turkey, stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry stuff, melt-in-your-mouth rolls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and chocolate cake. I ate soooo much food! I still can´t believe I actually ate desert :)

Following dinner Earl read a passage from Psalms about praise and thanksgiving. Then came a time of just sweet fellowship as Earl (they call him Carlos) told about his church-planting ministry among the Quechua people, as my family recounted my many mis-adventures here in Bolivia, and the rest of the family talked a lot in Spanish so I didn´t always know what was being said. But talking about huge dragon flies and the spider in my bathroom that my sister kindly killed for me, I got the gist of those!

Here is a picture of my family, minus Jaime who didn´t come to dinner

And here we all are at the dinner table

One last thing! Rainy season is on full swing here in Coch. Coch doesn´t nearly have it has bad as some areas in Bolivia. This last week we had 2 solid days of the dreariest weather I´ve ever experienced in this city. Cold, about 40-50´s I think, which is a big big change from the strong strong sunshine and 80-90 degree days. I´ve also learn that my shower is solar heated. No sun, no heat. After 2 cold showers I started showing upstairs where they have electric heated showers. As long as it was sunny the day before I am A-OK though. The cold weather has also sent me on a shopping trip. I came down ill-prepared for rainy season and have been borrowing warmer clothes from my sisters. My family worries about me constantly, more so when its cold. I try to tell them I´m from Chicago and I´m USED to this kind of weather. But they worry anyway. So now I have proper clothing, its only took nearly 4 hours in La Concha!

Week in Review

2007-11-16T14:18:00.000-08:00

So the week didn´t exactly go as planned. Things here rarely do. If you can´t be flexible, you´ll be miserable. So you just have to learn to roll with it. I still had a full week though!

Monday morning began with meetings with my team leader. It was good to just sit down with my ministry goals in front of me. Quite thankfully, we are on the same page and will be working towards those goals together. It will take time to learn all that I need to know. Unbelievably, Spanish is only a small part of it. But sometime in the near future I will be able to be a big help to my team. There are some ways that I can start to help immediately. For example: responding to email inquiry´s regarding the ministry to the orphans, the culture, money issues, fundraising helps, ect. We will have weekly communication meetings so we are always in touch.

Monday night was Natalia´s Ballet at the biggest theatre in town. It was so fun to see the family all dressed up for this important event. In most of the cultural dances there are 6 couples on stage so we can always pick out which one is Natalia. Mamá made all of Natalia´s dresses and that helped to pick her out to. We had a front row seat in the balcony. The dancing was amazing, I´ve never seen anything like it. I got a very short video clip with my camera and will try to post it to this entry from an Internet café later. It was such a wonderful night! The next day at lunch they told me that there was a young man that was watching ME the whole night and not the dancing! I was, of course, totally oblivious to it! Papá said he almost went to tell him to knock it off. That was hilarious to me!

Tuesday I went with my team leader to drop off the needed paperwork to get my one year visa in progress. That was the first step. Next comes a drug test, a criminal background check, and one more thing but I forgot what it was. Pretty normal stuff I guess. I meant to go to Villa Isreal orphanage that afternoon but was feeling ill after lunch and needed to stay in and rest instead.

Wednesday the country was on strike. Yes the whole country of Bolivia was on transportation strike. There were some blockades set up in Coch but nothing that you couldn´t get around. But all the trufies were not running, though I´m told some taxi´s and mini buses were. I still had tutoring that day as well as studying but I took the time to get the photo´s posted from the Internet café.

Thursday I went with my team leader to the Sedeges office (which is kind of like a DCFS branch office). 4 brothers from the Villa Isreal home had to meet with their mom for the first time in 4 months. The children were reported to Sedeges because the mother would leave the 4 boys to beg for food in the community while she took off for days at a time. She has another son that she has been taking ok care of, he´s now 2 years old. She is also 5 months pregnant. She is saying she will abandon the 2 year old when her child is born. This is the sad, sad reality in Bolivia. If she does abandon him, he will come to live in the orphanage with his brothers. It was a very emotional morning and I found myself fighting tears as the children cried and even when one of children led the group in prayer for his mother. Yes we certainly do tell the children about Jesus and teach them to pray!

Today, after my Spanish lesson I spent that afternoon with another missionary with International Teams checking out a new area of the city for me. Prado is where a lot of American tourists go and there are a lot of restaurants and such there with good safe food to eat. I hardly ever eat out as the house food is excellent but its nice to know I can go out somewhere good when I want to. And believe it or not, at the plaza (park) at the end of that road there was a huge craft fair. A lot of tourist type stuff that can be bought in Concha for a little cheaper, but it reminded me a lot of the community craft fairs back home. Then we went to her apt and drew some maps and talked about how to get different places ect. She has an open door policy, I can always go there to get away if I need to. She´s not on the orphanage team so I won´t see her unless I intentionally make time to see her.

And now I am exhausted from my long afternoon walk and looking forward to dinner with my family. Tomorrow afternoon is Babywashing, I just need to figure out which bus will take me there. Check back soon!

Photo Tour

2007-11-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

Finally, here are pictures of my home.

This is the living room that is not used.

This is the dining room that is used for company.

This is where the family eats all their meals.

This is the sitting room, kinda of like a waiting room.

This is the backyard and back of the house.

And most importantly (not!) is the dogs of the house. This one is Tina´s dog Clara.

And this is Toffé (but say it in spanish!)
That just about covers it. My family pictures I put in the newsletter. I took pictures at the ballet but they didn´t come out. I will describe that another day. More later!

Clarification

2007-11-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that I have been a little to general in my statements on this blog. I can only hope that this entry can clear up any confusion and apologize to those whom I have offended.

When I speak of my family here in Bolivia I really do intend to speak of them in the highest regard possible. In a very short period of time I have come to love each and every one of them dearly. And I want them, more then anything, to have hope for eternal life in heaven with Jesus that I do. Many of you know that I am a born-again Christian. I use the words ¨born again¨ because Jesus used it in John 3:3. In many ways, my Bolivian family has loved and accepted me better then some born-again Christians have. In this way, my Catholic family puts many born-again Christians to shame.

¨Christian¨is a very broad term and many many religions use it. Christian literally means ¨follower of Christ or little Christ.¨ Catholics to Evangelicals and everything in between claim this name. And that is OK but I wanted to clarify what I believe. And what I believe is very much different from Roman Catholicism which is why I differentiate between myself and my host family (and catholics in general).

I believe that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to have eternal life in heaven (John 14:6). I believe that all our good works on earth are ¨as filthy rags.¨(Isaiah 64:6.)Not to say that they are not important and there are rewards in heaven for how we lived on earth, but I believe the only way to get to heaven is through accepting Jesus´ sacrifice for my sins on the cross. I can never be good enough. Period. And that is what makes me a ¨born-again Christian.¨

I apologize for not clarifying before now, but I do not apologize for my faith. And I will never be ¨politically correct¨ in this life :)

This and That

2007-11-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

Crossing the Street. Crossing the street is like trying to enter the jump rope game ¨Double Dutch¨. You see many intersections here are what they call ´rotundas´´ meaning the traffic is circular with 4 streets going off in different directions. If you don´t time it just right, well, I think you get the picture! Also, important to note, pedestrians do not have ANY rights in Bolivia. Bolivians don´t walk across the street, they run! Oddly enough, the street I travel most frequently is called America Ave. I live ¨a Bolivian walk¨ away from my team leaders, about 20-25 mins. Yes I could take a bus or taxi for very very cheap but why waste money when I can enjoy a walk? It is good for my health and is helping to build my endurance and build up my muscles. Also helping me to work on my tan :)

´Tis the Season. Christmas season is in full swing back in the states. Everywhere you go you see Christmas. Bolivians do celebrate Christmas but you are hard pressed to find a store carrying anything for Christmas. Yesterday I was at La Concha (Quechua for The Market) with my Bolivian sister Natalia and I saw just 1 store with Christmas decor in it. They say no one decorates because they don´t have any money. Sometimes you just get used to seeing the poverty and you forget that these people literally live hand to mouth... everyday. It makes me sad to think about how much money we spend on such superficial things in the states. We do so because we have A LOT of money compared to the rest of the world. And its the American culture and that's fine. But it sure helps me to put all those things in perspective now that I see how a poor country does the holidays. Sorry, I hope I didn´t offend anyone with that.

Family Funnies. I was helping Natalia cut up some confetti for her upcoming ballet (cultural dance). Raffita said something, I have no idea what, to me in Spanish. She does that A LOT. So I said to Natalia (who speaks English)¨It will be a happy day for me when I can understand what she is saying to me.¨ Just a few mins later Raffita is whispering in Natalia´s ear and Natalia laughs and she tells me that Raffita says that she can never understand what I (Kim) am saying!

I impressed the whole family when I asked a question in perfect spanish. I said ¨¿Dónde están las niñas?¨ Where are the children in English. But it was the first grammatically correct thing I´ve said in a week of living here. I got very many ¨muy biens´in response, then they answered the questions :)

Stopping to smell the roses. If there is one thing I´ve been extremely surprise by is the flowers in this city! We have 3 rose bushes in our back yard and they are always in bloom (so it seems). Everyday I check to see what new ones have opened up. Everyday when I walk to where ever I´m going I am amazed at the many bold colors in the flowers, flowers that just grow wild. I like to pause a moment and just appreciate their beauty.

Opposites. Lunch and dinner are opposite here in everything but name. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and dinner is very small, more like a snack before bed. All the children come home from school in the middle of the day and have lunch with the family. Lunch in my house is @ 1 and dinner is served at 7:30.
You have to peel most fruits before you can eat it. Apples, peaches, pears, ect. Its just too hard to get them clean enough to eat the peel.
You can´t eat oranges at night, they will make you very very sick. Something about the altitude???
There are more... just can´t think of them right now!

The Five Day Forecast.
Monday will begin with a meeting at my Team Leaders house followed by Spanish class (everyday for 2 hours) and studying and attending Natalia´s ballet (I will take pictures if I can).
Tuesday will again be Spanish class and in the afternoon I hope to take a Trufie ride out to Villa Isreal to play with the orphans.
Wed- Fri is unscheduled at this point. I have a list of things to do that I need my team leaders assistance on. But at least 2 hours everyday is set apart for Spanish.

Prayer Requests.
1. I have been semi-sick this week. I hope I am just adjusting to the food because they don´t give me anything ¨iffy¨ for a gingo.
2. I´ve only cried through 1 spanish class so far! Pray that I would be able to control my frustrations better and be able to learn quickly (which they say I am anyway.)
3. Pray that I may be able to build up my relationships with my Bolivian family in such I way that I may be able to share with them the Love of Jesus Christ.

Photo Tour postponed

2007-11-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

This is the view from the back balcony :)
Sorry folks, even the public computer is taking too long to post all my pictures. I will try again from another computer another day. Check back soon!

My new home

2007-11-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

This house in NICE! I have my own room, juest big enough for me. It came with a desk, a wardrobe, a nighstand with drawers and even MY OWN BATHROOM! Minus a shower curtian. Bolivians don´t use them, go figure. So the bathroom gets really wet but there is a sqweegy thing that you use on the floor when you are done. Its a good hot shower too. The family consists of Tina (my tutor), Jime is Tina´s brother, Astralla is Tina´s sister in law. Jime and Astralla´s two daughters Natalia is 23 and Patty is 29. Patty is divorced and has 2 daughters Raffia who is 4 and Belén is 7. Both insist on talking to me in spanish, they are sooo cute! Tina, Natalia, and Patty all speak a good deal of Engish and that is helping me out a lot right now. I use as much spanish as I know and they use both when talking to me too. mama and papa of the house don´t speak english at all but we are getting along just fine. They are the nicest, most welcoming family you´ll ever meet. I immediatley became daughter and sister and aunt to them, I nearly cried! They are not born-again Christians but Catholics. But I can see they are not just Catholic by culture. Patty told me, in english, that she knows that God is present in their house everyday. They know that I am a missionary and that I am here to serve Jesus in this country. Pray for them, they would make awesome Christians!

They are intent on fattening me up! Seriously, they feed me until I feel like I´m going to burst. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day (like the US dinner). Lunch starts with soup of some kind, the a main dish (pasta, chicken and rice, ect) and then dessert. And bread too. Breakfast is pretty basic, eggs, bread, tea or coffee, fruit. Pretty much whatever you want. Everyone leaves at different times so its no big deal. Dinner is very small and more like a snack then a meal. Yet I feel full all day long! Sickness comes and goes, nothing major but keep praying!

The house is very large. They have a ´nice´dining rooom and sitting area that they rarely use. Then the sitting area they do use, 4 bedrooms upstairs (awesome winding staircase), balcony, in ground pool (that they say has freezing water since they have no heater for it) and then 2 more bedroom type rooms not connect to the main house and a sewing and ironing room and the very top part is where they do the laundry. They have some beautiful rose bushes too.

I began my ´formal´ spanish lessons this week. But I feel like I´m in a constant spanish lesson!I am learning and that is what is important! Monday Natalia is in a ballet, not like the US though. They say its a cultural dance and the whole family (including me) is going to watch her perform. I can´t wait! I´ve also been invited with the family to have Thanksgiving dinner with some missionaries from another organization. It´s so cool to me that they immediatly include me in everything.

Ok, that was a pretty long description! Pictures will be coming soon, I promise!

I´m Here!

2007-11-01T07:50:00.001-07:00

Wow, this has been a crazy week! And this is only the second time since I got here on Saturday that I´ve been able to get on the Internet. As most of you know, I did lose my luggage on the way down here but it came in on a plane the very next day, praise the Lord. I´ve been staying this week at the Hacienda or guest house with the teams interns. I just found out that my host family will be ready for me to move in on Monday. I can´t wait to meet them and see my new home! I have had a really good time with the interns this week (there are 3 of them). They have been teaching me some Spanish and teaching me how to get around town on the Trufies (Bolivian buses). I spend A LOT of time riding around in Trufies. They are either mini-buses (all very colorful) or vans. Always hot, always crowded, but always always cheap. And very dependable. The exchange rate on money is approximately 8 Bolivianos to the US $1. It costs 1 1/2 B´s to ride a Trufie. It is a hot bumpy ride but it beats trying to find my way around the streets on my own. I won´t have a vehicle for quite some time so this is the cheapest and most dependable way of getting around town.

I have been doing some clean-up work at orphanage #2 with the interns. A short term team was here last week and they were painting. Well, when you mix highschoolers with paint, what do you get? A mess! So we´ve been on our hands and knees cleaning up as much as we can so the floors look nice again. We´ve also been running some errands for the team leader as well. We´ve gone twice this week to work at the Center (the after school program) and have helped with lessons and crafts. In both the orphanage and the Center we just love to play with kids! Many of these kids come for abusive homes or just plain don´t get a lot of love and attention from their family. I am more then willing to shower them with love!

Next week will likely look very different. I will be moving into my semi-permanent home and will begin language tutoring. I have a list of things I need to get done in the coming weeks including getting my Bolivian ID card, applying for my year visa, setting up a PO box, and setting up my room in my new house. And I´m sure there is more to do then I even know at this point.

What I do know is that everyday is different from the one before. I don´t think there is such a thing as ´normal´ down here and thats ok. It just takes some getting used to. I am so far sickness free (though my allergies are having a hayday) and I have adjusted to the high altitude. It is rainy season so we get rain about every other day and it is making all the flowers bloom. They are beautiful! And making me sneeze :) I am on a public computer so I can´t post any pictures but look for a formal update in your email by the end of next week. There will be a good number of pictures there.

This weekend is Day of the Dead, it is a Catholic holiday that nearly all of Latin America observes. It is their was of honoring their dead ancestors. It should be a very cultural experience! There is so much more to say but my time is running out. I´ll be sure to update again sometimes next week!

I'm a leavin' on a jet plane

2007-10-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

The time has finally come! My bags are packed (and nicely underweight), all of the goodbyes have been said, and prayers and words of encouragement have been given. Like never before in my life, I feel truly loved. I will miss all of these friends and family at home more then I can ever express. As soon as I am able I will update this blog with new information and answers to some of the questions you (and I) have about Bolivia. There of course will be pictures as well.

My flights are as follows: I leave from O'Hare @ 6:15pm and fly to Miami. I have less then an hour layover at Miami and then fly directly to La Paz, Bolivia. La Paz is just a stop over and then I land in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. In Santa Cruz I change airlines and then fly once more into Cochabamba, Bolivia, arriving at about 2pm on Saturday. I'm flying American Airlines all the way to Bolivia.

As always, thank you for your prayers during this time of transition. Please pray specifically for safety in travel, adjustment to culture and my new team. I'll update as soon as I can!

El Fin!

2007-10-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

At times I wondered if it was ever going to end, but at last, training is finally finished. I am looking back on these last 5 weeks and I am absolutely amazed at how much I've learned, how much I've grown, and how many amazing people I have met. I have so many inside jokes from these training weeks and now I'm not with any of the people who understand them! That is so sad to me.

I am currently still at International Teams. Tomorrow is an event that they call The One Day Immersion. And its a time that people come in from all over the country to learn more about International Teams and where we serve and how we serve. There are about 70 people registered to be here tomorrow. I decided to stay (everyone else from training have already left) because I started out this whole process by attending a One Day Immersion. That was about a year and a half ago. I now I am in my last two week before I leave and I wanted to finish training where all of this started for me. It is always encouraging to be with others that are missions minded and actively pursuing missions. One Day is just the first step. Not all who come will end up serving with IT, and some, like me, will. I wanted to be here as an encouragement to them and to see the next wave of missionaries. Its an awesome sight for sure. I will be headed home after that and I'll be back at my home church for Sunday service.

As of today, I have 14 days left before I leave for Bolivia. Actually, exactly 2 weeks from now I will be on a plane :)

The last part of training was by far the hardest. And this last week the hardest of all. Don't get me wrong, its all very good information to have but I really struggled with the phonics end of it. And now it is over! Yay! These next two weeks are already quite full of various appointments, going away parties, and other last minute details. Guess what folks, its finally time to go!

SLA

2007-10-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

The official summary from the syllabus for the Second Language Acquisition course is as follows:

"The goal of this course is to equip each individual participant to maximize her/his language learning potential. The course focuses on how to make decisions and structure your learning in order to acquire your new language as effectively, as efficiently, and as enjoyably as possible. You will also begin to acquire key skills that are essential for successful language learning."

If that sounds like a mouth full trying taking the course! We are the most ridiculous sounding group of people you've ever heard. We sound like monkeys most of the time! But honestly, it is the only way to break down vowel sounds so we can hear the differences accurately. Consonants too! Ever hear of a phonic alphabet? Yep, I'm learning how to write phonically too (for example: writing a different symbol for the first 'p' in pepto then the second 'p' in the same word). So I am getting quite the education on not only understanding the mechanics behind the words I naturally say in English but preparing for new sounds that I'll be learning when I start taking Spanish in Bolivia.

And actually that has already begun. We have 2 language helpers that come in for an hour a day and we ask them a lot of questions regarding vocabulary and pronunciation and then "act out" the conversation as if it we were really having it in our future countries. We tape record those sessions and then study them during the evening. Homework is a daily event (and oftentimes so are headaches!) and mental exhaustion takes over if your not careful. I've found that a good brisk walk directly after class helps a lot.

So will this two week course help me when I get to Bolivia? Absolutely! Do I wish it was already done with? Absolutely! But as it is, we still have another 6 days of this class.

This weekend I am hoping to get my formal monthly update newsletter written and emailed out as not everyone will be reading updates via blog. It should have a new picture or two as well. So watch for it :)

Let the acquisition begin!

2007-09-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

That's right folks, this week begins my final section of training. This next 2 week block will be focused 100% on language acquisition. Some of you may be wondering what that exactly means. I am wondering much the same thing! What I do know at this point is that we will be learning about HOW to learn a language and then I think we may begin learning the language we will be going into. Otherwise I really don't know!

We are the ever-shrinking training group! We started with 16 the first week, went down to 12 for these last 2 weeks, and now we have 7 :( We had to say good-bye to two couples that have been with us since the beginning. One is on their way to Ecuador and the others have begun a cross-country fundraising tour. We are however, still able to stay in contact with them via blogs, email update letters, and sites such as Face Book. Isn't technology wonderful!?!

4 weeks till I'm on a plane for Bolivia! Yay! Picture: the newest team members headed for Bolivia!

By The Grace of God

2007-09-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

That has been the phrase I feel I have been hearing over and over and over again while in training. In fact, it is such a true statement that I have found that I have been saying it more frequently as well. I see it as a very simple way of making sure that God gets the credit while you are speaking of your ministry, your personal life, or anything for that matter. In and of myself I can do nothing. But by the grace of God, I have been able to raise my full support, by the grace of God, I have sold my car, by the grace of God all of my unexpected needs have been met. To GOD be all the glory, honor, and praise.

Above is a picture of all of us here that are going into long-term missions. We have so much fun together when we share meals. Even the simplest of games end up being hysterical since as we have such a wide variety of personalities.

I have recovered nicely from my "information overload" from last week. This week has been special since we've been being taught by the man that founded the organization. IT was founded over 50 years ago. I feel very privileged to have heard him share about his experiences overseas, cherished his advice, and been blessed by his prayers. We have also been talking about our spiritual gifts and what exactly they are and how they are used in ministry. A team is made up of so many people with different gifts that it is important to know your gifting and your role. And we still have half a week to go yet! We are never bored I can assure you that!

Pre-field training for Bolivia

2007-09-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am on information overload. Big time. This week of classes have been really good, lots of information, guest speakers, ect. We had 3 classes just talking about spiritual warfare. what it is, how Satan attacks, how to fight, ect. it wasn't really "new" to me but I am so glad we had the class cause some people really haven't ever had any experience with it or even heard about it in their churches. Then I was able to apply it in a very practical way both yesterday and today. Yesterday we visited a Hindu Temple, I was feeling sick to my stomach even before we left IT so I asked everyone stop and pray. The Temple is a stronghold of Satan and I felt like we needed to be covered in prayer. I was, however, the only one feeling ill. I would have just said it was coincidence except that as soon as I prayed, my stomach felt much much better. Today we spent the entire day in Chicago on Devon st at South East Asian Friendship Center. We then went to a mosque for their 1pm service (their equivalent to our Sunday morning). Then we went back to the Friendship center and had someone who is an Apologetic (debater kind of a person) who came to Christ through the Quaran (since it led him to the bible) and now debates with Muslims. That guy is GOOD! He must have hundreds of verses memorized, from both books and can quote them, chapter and verse, at a moments notice. The local mosques will no longer debate with him publicly since he is very right and they are very wrong and they don't like to be embarrassed by him. Most of his debating is now done online.

Anyway, all that to say... I feel like I'm going through culture shock, American style. Hinduism and Islam have been right here on my doorstep my whole life and I've never once set foot in their buildings to learn more about them. I found myself actually crying at the mosque because of a whole lot of things. Again, I felt very very sick (Indian food at lunch didn't help matters) but I knew for a fact that it was demon enhanced considering where we were and the fact that once again I prayed and the pain/nausea disappeared. Like never before in my life I feel like my eyes have been opened to the darkness that exists in this world (esp in America). It occurred to me that you can't (generally) see the darkness if your closed up inside your own church all the time, when the mosque is on the very next corner. And as we've been told this week, this darkness is growing faster then the church is growing. I just... I'm having a hard time explaining it well. Just a lot of information, A LOT of information in one week. I'm just trying to digest it all and try to explain what that means to me, my worldview, my missions, ect.

I am not going to an area of the world where there is large following of either of the above mentioned religions. Bolivia is largely Roman Catholic and Indigenous religions. But no matter where you are, what your doing, knowing about these other religions will be useful.

I have 3 more weeks of training ahead of me though 2 of those weeks are focused only on language acquisition. Just 5 more weeks till Bolivia!

Tidbits from Bolivia

World AIDS Day

Back in Bolivia

The latest arrival

2 1/2 weeks till furlough!

Update

Overnight with Baby G

Park trips

Happy 1st Birthday Lucas!

Like giving birth

New Baby Girl

Happy Easter and Happy Kids Day!

This and that

The dream becomes reality

La Moda Loca!!!

Vote

This and That

wet again

El Campo

The girls home

My first week at the daycare

Apartment

Back in Bolivia

Political Update

Bolivia

Got Gas?

This stinks!

Day of the Walker

Road trip

Moving at the speed of... a trufi

Sunday´s results

6 de Augosto

In response to John

Pray for Bolivia

almost

The new kiddos

VBS

Puppets!

Finally starting to feel like...

random bits and pieces

Well, it finally caught up with me

Happy Birthday to Me!

¨walmart shopping¨ in Cochabamba

Food, glorious food

La Feria

6 months in Bolivia

Finally, photos from Sacaba

Field trip

El Día del Niño

¨Day 1¨

Little update

Mt. Tunari

A much needed update

Sacaba

Did you miss me?

We´re in the jungle baby!

Camping!

You just don´t see that in the States *EDIT*

Can you run faster then a balloon?

Back to daily life

Road trip at 14,000 ft above sea level

Yester- year

Christmas Part 2

Christmas Part 1

My mis-adventure

A giftcardless Christmas

Politics and junk

Un día de descansar

Don´t blink

Week in Review

Photo Tour

Clarification

This and That

Photo Tour postponed

My new home

I´m Here!

I'm a leavin' on a jet plane

El Fin!

SLA

Let the acquisition begin!

You just don´t see that in the States EDIT