In Bolivia, we are staying in the Hacienda. It is a house owned by Mike Timmers who runs an organization he started called International Orphanages. The top floor is for the girls, there are 21 of us, it has four rooms with bunk beds, one bathroom, and two hammocks.
Here is Matt Snyder enjoying one of the two hammocks usually occupied downstairs.
As for ministry, the first thing we did when we arrived was go to Baby Washing. This ministry was started by a Bolivian man named Mickey who wanted to take shoe-shine kids to lunch. As the story goes, none of the restaurants would let them in because they are very, extremely! dirty, so Mickey bought a bar of soap and washed them up in a main fountain. He did this every Saturday with the shoe-shine boys and the ministry grew from there. Now somewhere between 50-100 kids show up, get a free bath, hair combing, each one gets a new outfit, a glass of milk, and also fresh baked bread. I do not have more photos because it is considered impolite to take photos of the mothers and certainly the children because they were naked.
This pics are taken inside the Baby Washing tent. First Gretchen is waiting for actual little bitty babies. Second the other girls wash the older/bigger kids. My station hadn’t been set up yet, but I was helping give out new outfits in the right corner of the second photo. It was a fun, noisy, actually kinda’ smelly day!!
During the week we spent out time visiting Mike’s orphanages and doing painting jobs as well as small fix-it jobs. It has been a welcome reprieve from constant people ministry to doing manual labor.
On this past Friday, we did another of Mike’s favorite ministrys. It is called the Bread Walk. We visited a little pueblo outside of town and walked through the streets handing out bread, milk, cereal, and fruit. Giving each person a blessing as we went. Kids would come running from blocks away to greet us and then follow us a little after we gave them some of each thing. I don’t have too many photos because I did, after all, have my hands full of bread and other things! It was a beautiful day and the children’s smiles shone up at us as we passed through.
ABOVE: MIKE’S AWESOME LAND CRUISER
complete with bench seating for TEN in the back!!
TRADING FOR SUGAR CANE
After we handed out all the food we drove about 45 minutes up into the hills to visit some Inca ruins. These particular ruins are not sanctioned by the government so we were able to walk all around them and there weren’t any tour guides or police around. It was incredibly quiet and peaceful–perhaps that’s why they chose this out-of-the-way spot?
Robby.
Cochabamba is behind me (but first in my heart)
ROBBY, MICHELLE, AND ME
Terri and Michelle as we rode down from the ruins on TOP of Mike’s Land Cruiser. MAN, it was a beautiful day!
More to come, including our summit of Mount Tunari! I am going out to the rainforest for two weeks, though, so it may have to wait until we get back on 4/14.
Love to you all and I think of you often!
Blessings, Meredith
