As I write this I am in my sleeping bag covered by 3 wool blankets wearing Bolivian sweatpants that barely reach my ankles and a sweatshirt with the hood up and ear warmers. Going from Puerto Rico and the DR where it was constantly in the mid 80’s to 13,600 feet elevation in El Alto, Bolivia where it’s in the 40’s has been a big change. Most days start with blue skies and end with thunderstorms, often with inches of accumulated hail in merely minutes. All I can say is, sometimes, in life, God throws us curveballs. I should ask you this. Have you ever been anxious about how something was going to turn out? Or been 1,000% positive nothing could possibly work out or if it did, it wouldn’t be for the better? Unfortunately those were my thoughts exactly at the beginning of this month. My team and team Alegria landed in El Alto on February 28th and were picked up by Geronimo who works for Mission Adulam. The mission has 3 houses, a girl’s house for girls between the ages of 13 and 18, a boy’s house for the same ages, and a couple’s house. After arriving, we had the morning to get settled and already girls from team Alegria had altitude sickness. We met briefly, for about 10 minutes, with our host Fineke before she left to pick up friends from the airport. The rest of the mission left for the weekend as well since it was Carnival and we were left with no drinkable water, no bolivianos (the local currency) to buy food or water, and were told there were no ATMs in El Alto. After finally working through the basics of getting food and water, we were glad to have a weekend off to get acclimated. The Carnival festivities here include lots of water guns, water balloons, sometimes even buckets of water, and foam sprayed from cans…finally the ponchos being sold on the street in huge quantities made sense. Monday night arrived and Lydia and I as the team leaders were nervous since we had no idea where or when to show up for ministry the next morning. We met with Jhonny who asked us to be ready at 8am to meet from 8-8:30 to discuss our work for the month. 8:00 Tuesday morning arrived and we were ready. When 9:00 rolled around we decided to go hunting for the absentee Jhonny and found him in an aerobics class but he told us to just head to the girl’s house. Ok, no problem. We headed there much to Sister Ana’s chagrin when she had no idea what to do with us when we arrived and promptly called Jhonny to get some direction. Eventually we split the 2 teams up into 3 groups of four, members of each team and a Spanish speaker at each house and we all headed off to start serving, whatever that meant. Ana, Schuylar, and myself from my team would be working with Isa from team Alegria with the couples in Jesed, all of whom are living in the house for its drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. When we arrived they had us take down curtains that were hanging around the house and wash them by hand in cold water and once we were finished bid us good afternoon and sent us on our way. When we arrived on day two we were asked to hang back up the now dry curtains, we ate lunch with the couples who looked terrified of us, and then were told to head back to our house. At this point we were all asking, “What kind of ministry is this?” Sister Fineke and brother Jhonny were nowhere to be found and sister Fineke then left for 7 weeks of furlough. I kept asking myself, other World Racers have been here? What in the world did they do? It felt like we were just doing maintenance projects because they were trying to come up with stuff to keep us busy.
Fast forward to today, 2 weeks after we arrived. This is almost the best month so far. We can’t get enough of the couples and have created such deep friendships. All the couples have felt comfortable enough to share parts of their testimony with us and we have been accepted not just as friends but as family. We are working long days of 12 hours of ministry, usually without breaks but every night we are sad to leave and they only let us after we promise to return the next day. We arrive at 8:00 each morning to share in their daily devotional time, have breakfast (which consists of tea and bread) with them, do maintenance until lunch which we eat with them then we do different activities such as English class or board games then head off to play soccer, volleyball or “wolley”, or whatever the sport of the day is. None of the couples can leave the house unless it is specifically planned with the educators and all come from very tough backgrounds of drugs and alcohol. One was in a coma for 3 days because of overdosing, another girl has left everything including her 4 yr old son to support her boyfriend, another hasn’t been allowed to raise her 6 yr old daughter because her grandma told the hospital about her alcohol abuse. One young lady, after living in the girl’s house, was stable until both her parents died and she relapsed back into old behaviors. I am simply amazed and in awe of their strength to keep fighting for a future and a better life. It certainly isn’t easy. A new couple came into the house this last weekend and lasted 1 full day before they walked out and never returned. One of the boys from the boy house ran away on the way back from church and later was seen by Allie on my team sniffing glue on the street corner. We have been witnesses to fights where one within the couple wants to leave. We have witnessed lots of tears as the couples deal with past hurts, depression, and the desire to give up. However, we have also witnessed pure joy, lots of laughter, and acceptance. They have a deep desire within each of them to not only change but make God the center of their lives. They want to allow God and those in our small family of broken people to offer support and help pick them up when each one stumbles and falls. I am so thankful to God every day that I chose to live in the moment. What looked like a disaster has turned into an incredible month of personal growth and amazing friendships with the couples who will be impossible to leave.
Team Salmo 45:11 in El Alto, Bolivia
Lydia, Isa, and Karli from team Alegria partaking in Carnival festivities
It is absolutely B-E-A-UUUU-TI-FUL here in El Alto. This is looking down towards La Paz
The couples from Jesed after serenading us for Women´s day
Anita and I, she is graduating from the program so I will really miss her but it´s a great step for her
Ana and Ivan making bread dough…or a mess but it was super fun!
Making bread with the couples from Jesed. I was a very slow learner but they were unendingly patient with me and it was an amazing time of laughter and conversation
