Enjoy a photo blog of our time in Chejje, Bolivia!
A few of the teammates on an overlook on the crazy four hour drive to Chejje from La Paz.
Our home in Chejje for the past month. We stayed in an old abandoned building where the church used to have Sunday School. Quickly, our home turned into a safe place for kids and community members to gather, play, and chat about Jesus. God orchestrated some incredible relationships over camp fires, traditional Bolivian food, and games of baseball. The people of Chejje made the squatty potties (aka a hole in the ground out house) and sand flies a million times worth it.
Inside views of our home. We slept on hay mats, cooked on a propane stove, and had many sheep and donkeys outside our home at all times. Definitely not glamorous as we fell asleep with moths and spiders all around us, but we grew to love the simplicity of life and the absence of comforts here.
Our first full day in Chejje we were invited to a graduation. Classic South America – we heard it started at 10:30am and it didn’t start until 3pm. It was at the Cancha , which is like the center of the town. The Aymara women all cooked a communal dish called “pancaka” which is thin pieces of fried eggs & flour with rice or noodles underneath. We had this many times while being in Chejje. That and a tonnnn of potatoes.
This is Helen at our Vacation Bible School we put on everyday for the kiddos of Chejje. She always wears pink and a cheeky grin. We met her the first night in Chejje and saw her almost every day. She is a fearless leader, a giggle-monster, and now our lil friend.
Karen (age 10) and Daisy during craft time of our VBS. A bit about Karen’s story: her parents leave their kids for weeks at a time for work. Her older sis, Erika, only 14 herself, watches over Karen and her 3-year-old sister. Even without adult supervision, they make a priority to go to church weekly, a commitment solidified through Karen’s acceptance of Christ this past week!!
So Lucia is one of my fav relationships we made this month. She is one of the most devout Christians I know. “Gracious Jesús” in her cute elderly voice, will forever be engrained in my head. She cannot walk more than a few steps and cannot see well enough to read, so every day this month we had the sweet opportunity to bring the church to her.
Lucia’s quaint house that we spent many hours chatting, praying, and reading the Bible with her.
Just normal Chejje views as we walked from house to house building relationships and praying with community members.
After VBS many days the kiddos followed us home to play some more. They loved to do our hair and play Simon Says.
Here’s another pic of Chejje – this is from the Cancha – basically the center of the village. This is where we gathered for VBS every day with the kids, played lots of fútbol with the women and teens, and went to numerous community events!
Our trekking-adventure-turned-near-death-experience in Bolivia. With close to 16,000 ft elevation, lots of rainy days, and a very fast guide, every step I had to pray that the Lord would give me enough strength to get up the mountain. And the dependence on His strength made it all the more worth it.
Hiding in the tent from the rain outside. This was also when we realized we had to wait 4 hours for our iodine tablets to clean our water. We ate noodles for dinner and watched Silver Linings Playbook on my phone before trying to sleep at 15,000 ft.
This is Josephine. She speaks a bit of English because she studied English in La Paz when she was younger and worked as a cook amoung missionaries nearby. She is sassy and sweet and once made us literally go on a wild chicken chase to find one of her chickens.
Natural Chejje scenes. We woke up every day to rooster and donkey noises and passed cows and sheep on our way to the squatty potties.
Another room in our “house”. We decorated for Christmas using pink toilet paper, paper snowflakes, and hay as our Christmas tree. Christmas is not a big holiday in Chejje and being away from the western world, one can imagine how different Christmas was for us this year. And to be honest, it was hard, especially not being able to talk with my fam. BUT, we made it as special as we could with homemade secret Santa presents, Christmas carols in the neighborhoods, and dulce de leche. That night, our team had a time of communion and worship and the Lord asked me, “Am I enough?” Because if so then it wouldn’t matter what I was doing on Christmas or who I was with, because celebrating our Savior’s birth should be better than anything else. And giving up comforts for the sake of the Kingdom should be worth it. I surrendered and said “yes You are”.
One of the last days of us getting to read to Lucia. When we said goodbye to her, we all cried our eyes out and she reminded us that this isn’t goodbye, but a see you later in Heaven.
My team. In the salt flats of Bolivia. We had the opportunity to go to Uyuni for a day at the back end of the month and it was an incredible time.
It was Tori’s bday in the Salt Flats and here she is in her natural habitat (surrounded by country flags).
Our time is done in South America and we are on our way to Cambodia where we will be partnering with another YWAM base. We can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for us in Asia!
