What a month! Bolivia was the first month that really felt like I was on the World Race as far as the adventure and being in remote places and “roughing it” aspects. Bolivia was by far the most beautiful country we have been to yet. Coming into this month, we knew there were going to be challenges coming we knew it would be tough. From what we had been told, Bolivia sounded pretty sketchy and dangerous, but I have enjoyed every single place and part of our time here. It is a country rich of culture, beautiful views, and wonderful people. Majority of the month my team and I had no access to wifi at all, so please forgive me for the late blogs, but I hope you enjoy them and the video blogs I’m in the process of making. God has given me new revelation about my pride, His wild love for people, and His creations and I am so thankful to have started the new year completely devoted to serving Him. That in itself is a blessing. Below is an overview of what the past month has looked like for my team and I all over Bolivia.
* Dec. 6th- From Argentina we took a 20 hour bus ride to the border of Argentina and Bolivia, then waited at the border 6 hours to get across. From the border we took a very sketchy 8 hour bus ride to Uyuni to visit the salt flats.
* Dec. 8th- We arrived at about 3:30am and stayed at a wonderful hostel that had breakfast and a salt flat tour company connected to it. We took a tour all day with a man named Amador. He was a Christian, too, and we had a really sweet conversation with him before he took us home and were able to pray with him, too. It was really encouraging.
* Dec. 9th-11th- From Uyuni we took another bus to Ururo, then switched buses to get to La Paz. We arrived in La Paz around 9:30pm where our host, Phil (aka Papa Phil) picked us up. We stayed the night at his house and went to church with him in the morning. He made us a wonderful pancaked dinner that night and another team came over and had dinner with us. It was soooo good! We stayed one more night then took the overnight bus to our “base” in Apolo, Bolivia. That was about a 12-13 hour bus ride and we arrived in Apolo around 4:30am, and slept on the bus until 6:30am. Apolo is a small little town near the Madidi National Park, so some tourists come through there, but there was absolutely no wifi anywhere. It’s more developed than the other two villages we visited later this month, but it kind of sits right next to the jungle (Madidi).
* Dec. 12th- From the bus stop, we walked to the Lutheran church in Apolo and met Pastor Froilan, a 70 something year old man who was extremely kind. He did not speak any English so he introduced us to a man named Juan Fernandez later in the day. Juan is amazing. He totally took us under his wing, showed us around, helped organize things for us to do, invited us to hang out with his family many times, and showed up anytime we were in need. And all of this was just out of his own kindness. He is not related to Adventures in Missions or the World Race at all. Juan grew up in Apolo, then went to bible college in California where he met his wife Anne. They lived in Minnesota for knots 20 years and then they moved back to Bolivia in La Paz about 5 or 6 years ago. They have a 3 kids, two of who we met, and they just happened to be in Apolo for a month while we were there. I don’t know know what we would have done without him.
* Later that day, Juan took us to the Nun convent, a coffee shop called Cafe Madidi, a place to find paint to paint the church, a store for me to get a SIM card, and then invited us to try “cukies” which are actually ant butts the size of peas. They were surprisingly really good.
* Dec. 13th- We spent the day in Apolo painting the church
* Dec. 14th-15th- We took a quick trip to Huaratumo and played with the kids. We rode in the back of pick up truck and it poured down rain. We arrived in the afternoon and left after lunch the next day. (((Check out my vlog about our first few days and time in Huaratumo…..))))
* Dec. 16th-18th we caught up on rest, finished painting the church, cleaned the house we were staying in, and spent some quality time as a team
* Dec. 19th- Odell (Papa Phil’s son) came to Apolo and we prepped for our hike to Mojos. Odell invited us to his friend’s house that night and they prepared fried plantain chips for us. These are my FAVORITE 🙂 We also tried some natural, unfiltered honey made by little bees from that area, as well as some homemade rose tea.
The Hike to Mojos (((check out my vlog on our hike through the Amazon and time in Mojos))
* Dec. 20th- We picked up last minute food and supplies then began the adventure with a 3 hour van ride to the Tuichi River and the small town of Virgen del Rosario. We ended up having to swim across the river and then camped out in Virgen that night.
* Dec. 21st-23rd- Hike to Mojos ((((check out my blog about what God taught me on the last stretch of the hike Day 3))))
* Dec. 24th (Christmas Eve)- We did a Christmas Eve service at their church where several of my teammates shared about the Nativity story, the prophesies of Jesus coming as the Messiah, and shared some testimonies, also. We sang some Christmas songs, too. 🙂 Later in the day we did a short hike uphill to a spot where we could overlook Mojos and all the surrounding mountains. It was gorgeous. Later, we helped make a volleyball court using machetes to trim an area of grass. We played volleyball with the women and some of the teenagers for a few hours which was a ton of fun!
* Dec. 25th (Christmas Day)- Christmas Day was beautiful. My team and I did a secret Santa gift exchange with little to no budget so it was fun to see everyone’s creativity and thoughtfulness. With the kids, we made some drawings and paintings with scripture using my watercolor paints and Calli’s markers. A few of the women in Mojos killed 6 chickens to prepare a huge community lunch together which was delicious, and later we played some more volleyball! In the evening, after dinner, a few of my teammates and I (some of my teammates were sick) did kind of a Q & A session with the church where it was just an open floor to ask questions about the Bible, Christianity, Jesus, whatever. My teammate, Bry, felt like God laid it on her heart to do this, and it turned out to be amazing. Something helpful to know is that Christianity has only been in Mojos for 5-6 years. Some missionaries were hiking through one day and they were musicians and ended up living there for 2 years and taught the pastor everything they knew. Also, most of the adults can’t read, so they can’t just pick up a bible when they want to learn more, hints why we thought the Q & A would be really beneficial and inviting. It took a while because we would speak in English, Odell translated to Spanish to the Pastor, then the Pastor would translate into Quechua to the people, but they asked really great questions like:
* Why do we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th?
* Why do we have a Sabbath?
* Why do we take communion? What’s the importance of the Passover meal?
* Where can we find the story of David and Goliath in the Bible?
* It was so cool. God also gave me a word of encouragement that I was able to share with them which was really special.
* Dec. 26th – Our Last day in Mojos…it rained all day so most people stayed in their houses and several of my teammates were sick, but we did get to spend some time with the Pastor and found some scripture references for him. Fun fact- sometimes God gives him dreams about bible verses or scriptures that he has never read, so he was able to ask about those and leave those with him. Unfortunately this was the point where my phone died so in the vlog there aren’t any pictures. I was able to get a few from my teammates for the hike back, thankfully.
* Dec. 27th & 28th- 2 day trek back to Virgen del Rosario and the Tuichi River. Praise God that some of the people from Mojos needed to go to Virgen del Rosario to pick up some supplies, so they offered to carry our packs on their donkeys. This saved us!! There is now way we would have made it back in time otherwise. We stayed one night in Soriani, then stayed the last night in Virgen del Rosario again.
* Dec. 29th- Our van was supposed to pick us up from the Tuichi River around 10am, but it took us over 2 hours to cross the river. It is rainy season right now in this area, so the river was even higher than before and very strong. There was one man who took our bags about 2 or 3 at a time across on an inter tube, then my team and I swam across in the safest place we could find even though it was still pretty dangerous. It’s pouring down rain at this point so we are trying to quickly change, load up the van and get on the road so Odell would make it back in time for his bus. However, it was difficult getting up the mountain in certain parts because of the mud, so we had to get out and push a few times to make it. We finally made it back to Apolo at around 3:30, Odell made his bus, and later we had a huge dinner with Juan’s family, Pastor Froilan and his wife, and a few other people. It was a great way to end our time in Apolo on our last night.
* Dec. 30th- The pastor’s wife offered to make lunch for everyone, so we had a very tasty BBQ style lunch and said all our goodbyes (which don’t get easier, by the way) and then we left Apolo at 4pm and arrived the next morning in La Paz at 4am. We took taxis to Phil’s house again and stayed there with his family.
* Dec. 31st (New Year’s Eve)- We were some stinky jungle cats and so were our clothes so we made it a priority to go to the laundromat and do some laundry. Some of us even got to check out some of the tourist shops in La Paz and find some little souvenirs and gifts. Then around 7:30 we ordered pizza & watched the movie “Jungle” together with Phil and the family at the house. After the movie, some of my teammates and I went to a bonfire with Joey and Odell (two of Phil’s sons) and some other people they knew to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We walked down to a bridge where you could see the whole city and watched fireworks going off everywhere. It was the most exciting and beautiful night because it was so surreal. What a great way to bring in the new year! I ended up going to bed around 2 am then we had to wake up at around 5:30am to pack up and head to the bus station the next morning.
* Jan. 1st (New Year’s Day)- This morning at 7am we met the whole squad at the bus terminal in La Paz to head to Puno, Peru where we will stay a few days then fly out of to begin our travel days to Cambodia! Asia here we come!! 🙂
