My team and I have successfully arrived to Bolivia March 3rd for our third month! What?…third month already?
Let’s just say it was quite the adventure itself. Ready to read it? Bamos! On my journey from Peru to Bolivia, I have completed 54 hours of travel by buses, traveled through the vast Andie mountains, watched movies for the first time since I started the WR, saw wild llamas and alpacas running in herds, saw lake Titicaca, stayed one night at an awesome hipster hotel that reminded me of some Harry Potter scenes and that provided free pancakes (yes, I ate 3 of those thick scrumptious pancakes – what racer wouldn’t take advantage of that?!), enjoyed my first HOT shower since the WR began, used a scuatty-potty for the first time (proud moment), rode in the front on top of double decker bus on DEATH ROAD (l.i.t.e.r.a.l.l.y thought I was going to meet Jesus then…but He still wants me here for now, yay!)
Now, my two team mates and I are about to sleep in our tents inside a brick house that’s located on a mountain in a tropical forest in order to avoid roaches from crawling all over us.
Let me rewind to explain how I got here. Yesterday after the bus dropped us off in the small town of Caranavi, our host, David, picked us up in his truck to bring us to his house. Then we were finally informed of what we were going to do for ministry this month! Except this time we were given options. David told us that he needed 3 of us to work at the orphanage, 2 to work at the soup kitchen, and 2 to work at the school. We know each other pretty well so it was obvious that the majority of us wanted to work at the orphanage – aka slight dilemma.
My team and I went into our bedroom, sat in a circle, and prayed a few minutes to ask God where He wants to place us this month. Once we knew, we wrote it on a small piece of paper and gave it to our team leader. I desperately wanted to work at the orphanage, but in Ecuador I got to choose first which age group I wanted to work with. My thought for this month was to give my teammates the opportunity to choose first to be fair and to show them more love, so I wrote down ‘Soup Kitchen’ on my piece of paper. God gave me peace over it.
When everyone was done, we laid the pieces of paper right side up and the results were shocking to all of us. Five of them were Soup Kitchen, one was Orphanage, and one was left blank. I told my team why I wrote down soup kitchen, but if there was an open spot at the orphanage I would love, love to take it. Right before my eyes, my team leader put 3 pieces of paper off to the side and one of them was mine! I get to work at the orphanage this month, ahhhhhhh!!!! I feel that God was testing me in my obedience with Him and since I obeyed, He blessed me with the opportunity to work at the orphanage :). I am so happy that this is God’s will for me this month – a wonderful surprise indeed!
Today we had an off day to prepare before we start this months ministry, so me and 4 of my team mates visited the orphanage today for a few hours. It took 20 minutes by van to drive up the windy, gravely, narrow road on the mountain from the town. It was quite scary and we have to ride down and up that mountain every evening – yikes! Once we got there, we got a tour of the ground and where we would be staying. I even got to play with the kiddos! Holy moley, did we already fall in love with each other :).
The orphanage provided us a beautiful brick house for us to stay in that overlooks the vast mountains and lush forest, and that’s located literally right by the kiddos. They will be fun to have as our neighbors. They even have a shower and beds here, and someone to do our laundry for us! This is the moment when I tell you why we are sleeping in our tents inside the house instead of on the comfortable beds. Drum roll…this place is crawling with roaches!! I don’t know how many we have killed thus far but there’s an endless supply of them. There’s no point in washing our dishes until we use them because they crawl all over them. They are all over the floor, the kitchen counters, the kitchen sink, the dishes in the sink and the dishes on the shelves, in the bathroom, on and in our packs, and yes even on the beds. When we were cleaning earlier to try and get rid of them, we felt inspired by them so we remixed some lyrics to a popular song. It’s goes like this: “It’s all about the sponge, bout the sponge, no roaches. It’s all about the sponge, bout the sponge, no roaches.”
