Bolivia has been a whirlwind! It has FLOWN by! My team has been serving in La Paz with a precious host family that has absolutely been the best part of Bolivia.
We arrived in Bolivia at the beginning of this month feeling a little beat up, Peru was hard ya’ll. Crazy hard. The first night as a team we sat in our cute little house in La Paz and talked about what we were praying for and over the coming month. Each of us spoke words like joy, rejuvenating, peaceful, and united. God showed out and gave us the best month we could have possibly desired!
Our hosts Juan (Papa Juan or Juanito) and Ann (Juanita or Annita) were fabulous. They served alongside us in everything we did, made sure we had everything we needed to cook meals (brought us cooking utensils from their house if we didn’t have it accessible at the church), hosted us in their home for a couple of days, drove us all over the city, and made us a part of their family.
For the first week while here in Bolivia we served in La Paz and worked with Juan and Ann’s church. We did projects around the church in the mornings that included painting an outside wall, cleaning windows, and painting a mural in one of the children’s rooms. A delicious lunch was prepared for us by some of the women of the church, a small siesta was had by all, and then the afternoon fun started! We did a VBS for the kiddos for 4 hours every afternoon. We sang every song we could think of, told them bible stories, played Spanish-English Bingo (everybody loves that game. Had no idea it would be such a hit. Thank you Katie’s mom for that gift!), and just hung out. It was great!
The second week we headed out to Apolo. Family road trip with Papa Juan! Apolo is the small town that Juan grew up in. It is on the edge of the jungle and has a population of about 8,000 people and is quite honestly adorable. It took us 12 hours in Juan’s range rover, we got to see so many beautiful things on the way there!
We did a couple days of VBS for the kids in the morning and had an afternoon ladies retreat. Bingo was pulled out again and honestly was a lifesaver…again.
After a couple days in Apolo we headed to a tiny village further into the jungle. Juan was preaching in the church there that Sunday and requested that we teach the kids a song and bible verse to present to the congregation. Saturday night we spent 3+ hours in the dark wrangling a bajillion kids exhausting every Sunday school or camp song we could possibly think of. It is amazing how many random songs and games the 6 of us have knocking around in our noggins.
I was reminded watching all the sweet kiddos that kids just want to be kids and they want to be seen and loved. That is universal. And the ways that kids resort to getting attention is also universal. There was a little boy who was 11 and was obviously starved for attention. He just wanted to be loved. But he didn’t know how to seek it out or accept it. At one point I looked up and he was just angrily stomping around the yard, far enough away from everybody that nobody could easily love him, but close enough to let us all know that he was hurting. I beckoned him back to the group and he grudgingly came (took a hot minute but homie finally caved…I’m kind of persistent) and stood next to me. Every song I made sure to dance with him and give him attention that he didn’t have to seek out or misbehave to receive. After a few minutes I got distracted by another wild child and though I was still physically standing there I wasn’t giving him individual attention. And that’s when it happened. A small hand slipped into mine and just held the tips of my fingers. He felt safe and he knew all he had to do was reach out and he would receive love in return.
It doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take huge loud productions, it just takes being willing to stand there and take the fists raised threateningly, the angry words, the spitting, you just gotta stick out the defense mechanisms. So often beneath those things are sweet tender humans that just want to be loved and protected.
Bolivia has been healing, wonderful, hard, breaking, rejuvenating, and I never want to leave.
