If you wake up to a large roach crawling over your toes, you might be somewhere in Bolivia.
Yeah. It was just like two inches long, ya know. It’s the first time I ever chased a roach and beat him with a Chaco in the middle of the night.
There’s many other “firsts” the race has handed me already.
Here’s a list, to name a few:
* Played my first basketball game
* First participation in a lip sync battle
* First time I touched a wild sloth (wild, as in, not caged in some zoo. Wild is the last word I’d use to describe a sloth)
* Rode a metro for the first time
* First celebration of Hanukkah
* First time I witnessed crowd of doctors and nurses in protest.
* First time I ate so much bread
* First time I walked the streets with a little green purse full of candy, looking like a cat
Lemme highlight on that last one.
Last Sunday our ministry looked a lot like a bunch of clowns goofing around with a bunch of kids. In it though, was some very intentional and effective ministry.
Let’s just clear up any assumptions that this was our initial plan. No. Here in South America plans are held very loosely and often unexplained.
My team and I left the house in two taxis with some pastor that happened by our door a few minutes before. We were dressed for church and carried the general idea (because we’d been told the “likely” plan) that we were going to church services in the morning, some afternoon evangelism and another service at night. We had 3 sermons prepared for the weekend, one for Saturday night service which didn’t happen.
Well. We discovered this is more like a VBS style Christmas party with 200 kids in the neighborhood.
Instead of church service, we had dancing and games. Instead of preaching, we did our skit that Taylor composed a few days before.
For starters, we worked up some face art with paints and actually planned a program for the day. I wore the cat look, thanks to my teammate, Sarah.
We then split up into groups and walked through town stopping at houses to invite the children to the event. I donned the little green candy filled purse and took up the challenge with a guy whose language I didn’t speak.
Said guy would open the invitation and I’d woo the little ones with candy and my cat face. Speaking of effective.
This whole day: quality time with my team, getting to know and connect with a new church family, and loving unrestrained some darling young Bolivians, has been among my favorite ministry memories so far.
Blessings from Bolivia!
??Edna
