The long journey to the country of Bolivia was well worth it when my team arrived at Santa Cruz after we spent the night at La Paz the night before going on our way. Santa Cruz was not our final destination though. We arrived in Santa Cruz on a bus ride that was a little over 24hrs which was our last traveling. In Bolivia we had already traveled over two days to cross the border into Bolivia with our squad then went separate ways after spending the night in La Paz. We found out on our way to Santa Cruz that we were going to be staying at a five-star hotel for the night when we arrived. We were going to be part of the medical teams from the states as well as translators from Bolivia for the afternoon after arriving there. We had the morning to get settled, had lunch at the hotel, then in the afternoon we split up into teams and went to different communities to do medical clinics. Us World Racers were crowd control, playing games with the children that came with their parents to the clinics. Getting to know the hearts of those from the states, and from Bolivia being translators was such a glorious time.
The next day we took off to Lagunillas with a small medical team. For a week they were going to be there going into the community seeing the people and we were going to help where we could. The first day they set up at a local hospital, and two of our teammates helped out and the rest of us went and visited a high-school. The next two days were about going to two different villages near the town called Kuruyuki and Kurupaiti.
In Kurupaiti I did not go on house visits inviting people to come to the medical clinic but instead I stayed and played with the children. This would have not started if it wasn’t for Firely Beatriz! She got them over and we started off with Christian songs in Spanish. She speaks Spanish, English, and a little bit of French which makes her amazing! The language in this village is Kurupaiti but most of them understand Spanish. After singing the songs I asked if she would explain a game I had in mind and then after we played it for a little while she had to leave and help out the medical individuals. The children got a little board after awhile so I thought hey, every chid loves pato pato ganso (duck duck goose). The hot hot sun beating down on us we played pato pato ganso for quite some time. In this time the children and I started to learn each others names and we started to build relationships. However I have a difficult time remembering birthdays so names are hard. On top of that their names are unique and a bit different then that of those in the states so that was another challenge but they forgave pretty fast.
One of the children that I really connected even more with and really stood out was a ten year old boy named Alvaro. His mom is Aleida who is starting a church in Lagunillas and every meal that we have is at her brothers house. Her and her family live in Santa Cruz but she is from Lagunillas and has come back to help start the church. Her son came with us to the village this day and by the end of the day he was talking to me as if I talked Spanish. His confidence was contagious. That day my Spanish with this ten year old increased tremendously because he chose to be my friend no matter the barriers. To him there were no barriers that existed between us. Just imagine if we lived our life like that all the time? The confidence of this ten year old boy was very contagious and he challenged me more then he knew.
This should be a challenge to all of us. The challenge is to not let let barriers stop us from building relationships. If we let that happen we could really be missing out on something completely beautiful. This looks a lot like love and that is what I want my life to be like. Have this confidence my friend, love like there is no tomorrow because there may not be tomorrow. My greatest challenge is to love like Jesus commanded his disciples to do in John 15:9-14, “As the Father loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
