So, you should totally play the above song as you read this blog. I mean, if the blog isn´t that great, you at least get to jam out to an amazing song. It makes anything better. 🙂
Soooo, after the longest bus ride ever (well, over 30 hours), we have now been in Bolivia over one week. My team this month is ¨stationed¨ in the second highest city in the world! That´s right. We´re up even higher than in Ecuador. Our town is called El Alto, which is right outside of the capital La Paz and overlooks it. So yeah, the first few days here were ridiculous. You know what happens to your chip bags or aerosole cans when you fly, and they like blow up and are super pressurized, well that also happened to our chips bags and aerosole cans on the bus ride, but not only did those blow up, but I´m pretty sure the same thing was happening in my head. Oh, and I´ve never felt so out of shape in my entire life. Take five steps= gasping for air. (well, that might be an overexaggeration, but still). So, what in the world brings us up this high and far away from like everything, including wifi and supermarkets (and sometimes it feels like people as the streets are often what I feel is eerily quiet)? Good question. Glad you asked. It´s the love of Christ. We are working with an amazing ministry called Mission Adulam which is a series of rehab centers in this beautiful town. There is a home for young women, a home for couples, and one for teenage boys which is where I am working. There is a huge drug and addiction problem in Bolivia in general, and this ministry we are working with was born out of our contact, Fineke´s huge heart for those caught in addiction to be able to break free from those chains and experience the love and hope found in Christ. So yeah, it´s Christ´s love that has brought us 14,000 feet above sea level. I am confident that God loves these men, and women, with his whole heart and desires nothing more than relationship and redemption for them. My hope this month is that regardless of language, culture, or just differing life experience barriers that the love of Christ that by grace resides in us would permeate all that we do, rather it´s tediously sanding door frames or playing and constantly losing at chess. This month, and you know every month, I hope that I can truly abide by Micah 6:8 which states, ¨He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.¨
Furthermore, not only has the love of Christ lifted us up to this amazing city to pour that same love out, but the love of Christ is daily lifting us up here, calling us higher and higher and into the women and men he created us to be. Yep, this city is enmeshed with the practice of witchcraft, and there has definitely been spiritual warfare and you can often just feel the darkness that El Alto resides in, BUT God is in this place and the manifest presence of God goes wherever we do as the Holy Spirit resides in us. And that same Spirit has been doing some amazing things here in my team. Sometimes it´s hard and sometimes the truth hurts, but most often, the truth that the spirit reveals is so uplifting as it calls out lies and puts forth the truth of the amazing people God created us to be. I don´t think that after this month I will truly ever be the same.
