Our first week in Bolivia has been amazing, challenging, exciting and just plain hard all at the same time. The Bolivian greeting of a kiss on the cheek here is awesome! Complete strangers will come up to us and say hello as if we are old friends.
Our team (and our sister team for the month: Bold Radiance) has been working with our ministry, trying to figure out the bus systems, and trying to process the weird things that go on here like having pink toilet paper and when you hear the ice cream man song coming up the street it means that the garbage man is coming (it’s so weird). Adjustments are always a challenge, especially when dealing with high altitudes.
Altitude sickness hasn’t been fun here; headaches like you wouldn’t believe, dizziness, lethargy, the list could go on. So on Thursday (7/10), I had to go to an oxygen clinic because my body wasn’t adjusting to living in the clouds.
I had a lot of tests done including an EKG, breathing tests, x-rays, blood pressure, and a lot of blood samples; and to top it all off they put me in an oxygen chamber for 2 1/2 hours to help me adjust to the altitude better. It just sucked, and I’m sick of being sick all the time.
I had been having such a bad attitude about this whole situation when The Lord placed a story right in front of me to put thing into perspective. The story is in Acts 5 when the apostles were persecuted. The Sanhedrin wanted to put them to death but they settled on just a good flogging. After they were finished, they left rejoicing. Rejoicing! And here I am complaining because I’m being taken care of at a nice clinic and in a nice home in La Paz…
There’s a reason God has me in this place right now, He’s teaching me something, I’m just not sure what at the moment. He has a master plan for this situation and I can’t wait to see what it is.
Sent from my iPod
