It is all-squad month in Bolivia and so all 6 teams of J squad are together working at a children’s camp just outside Coroico, in a valley between mountains. It’s beautiful! Our ministry this month is to help out Hermano Lucho, the camp director, in any way we can to make his life easier and to improve the camp experience for his campers. He doesn’t speak much English and my Spanish needs quite a bit of work, but he is such a joy to work with. We’ve spent most of our time collecting hundreds of rocks from the river, passing them in long assembly lines, and pushing wheelbarrows of rocks toward the camp grounds. The goal is to make nice stone paths all around the camp and we finally got to see the piles and piles of rocks start to resemble a path at the end of this week!
We’ve also been sweeping the dorm rooms, cleaning the pool, weed-whacking with machetes and doing other ground maintenance. We are all sleeping in tents at the edge of the basketball court, cooking our own food in a make-shift kitchen, and washing dishes with a hose spout on the side of the building. Internet and groceries are a 45 minute taxi ride away and the packs of cookies we crave are a 45 minute walk into a tiny town with snack stands.
While we don’t have a lot of interaction with other Bolivians around camp, we’ve come to realize our ministry this month is also each other. Passing rocks or laying down the paths provides time to better get to know each other, as we ask the hard or funny questions to pass the time. While relational ministry often seems more beneficial, it is nice that this month of having 41 of us all together is a month of manual labor so we can invest more in each other.
And sometimes squad ministry looks like smacking people’s hands to make them stop itching bug bites, showing your leg to make someone else feel better about theirs, or running to get hydrocortisone and bug spray. Jungle life has its beautiful creatures, but I’ve never had so many bug bites in my life! We’ve seriously resorted to wearing pants and jackets, as well as socks with our sandals, to avoid more bites, even though its plenty hot here.
Coming at you from a coffee shop in Coroico! All in all it has been a great time building arm muscles, building community, and serving El Puente Camp. So much love to everyone back home!
