Bolivia has been WONDERFUL, and also very busy. We spent one week working at a church in La Paz where we ran a VBS for four days, did various painting projects, and held a women’s retreat for one day.
Then our host, Juan (we call him Papa, Papa Juan, or Juanito), drove us 10 hours to his hometown, Apolo. It’s a small town of about 8,000 people, and the only way to get there is driving on a dirt road for 10 hours. We stayed there for 5 days, ran a VBS and held a short women’s retreat.
Next, Papa Juan took us on an overnight trip to visit a village another hour and a half on an even smaller dirt road into the middle of nowhere. We bumped and bounced our way until we arrived at a small village named San Andreas.
The village is mainly comprised of small mud brick homes and a one-room church. Papa Juan brought a big tent for all of us girls to sleep in so we set it up outside the church. Some men hacked a space out of the bushes and trees with machetes for us to use as a bathroom. Women from the village brought us fresh baked bread (it was delightful), and a scrumptious oatmeal drink for dinner.
The church was set to have a meeting to elect new board members from the community, and Papa Juan was going to run the meeting. He asked us girls to keep the kids occupied outside.
It was pitch black outside except for the light from the church and the moon. At this point in the race we are so used to doing kids ministry that we have a list of games and songs that we teach them. Well, the meeting went for 2.5 hours, and it’s kinda hard to play a lot of the games we normally play in the dark.
We ran through our usual list of songs, taught them John 3:16 in Spanish and English with motions, played freeze dance, taught them the days of the week and every animal we could think of in English. My teammates are absolute gems. Each of us just kept thinking of random silly songs or made up games in our heads to play with the kids. We had so much fun.
Towards the end we were running on fumes. We were exhausted. It was late. We were getting attacked by bugs, and it didn’t seem like the meeting was ever going to be over. That’s when I pulled one of my old camp songs out of my butt. If any of you ever went to Camp Hebron as a kid, you know which song I’m talking about…”There Was a Moose Named Fred”. It’s an ole classic. I haven’t sang that song in years, but it came back to me in all its glory.
So, there I was. Standing in the middle of a circle of giggling kids in the middle of nowhere jungle Bolivia, singing, “There was a Moose Named Fred” at the top of my lungs, while dancing like a lunatic. I was laughing so hard. We all were.
Sometimes I find myself pausing in the middle of a moment on the Race and just thinking, “How is this my life?!”. This was one of those moments.
Each month our Squad leaders give us a word to focus on. This month’s word is FREEDOM. We’ve been talking a lot about how the Lord defines freedom, and asking Him to reveal to us areas in our lives where we can find more freedom. This month, especially, the Lord has really freed me from a lot of fear. Some of that fear had to do with what other people think of me. Sometimes I am too prideful or nervous to speak in front of a group (especially in Spanish). God helped me work through a lot of that pride and fear this month, and I realized that as I was singing, “There was a Moose Named Fred”.
So, like I said before, there I was, dancing under the stars, head thrown back, belting out “HE WAS A STICKY MOOSE! HE LIKED TO DRINK A LOT OF JUICE” followed by an echo of giggles and kids attempting to repeat me. I’ve always been a little crazy. I love meeting people and dancing for fun, but there is always a small part of me that wonders what people are thinking. In that moment, in the middle of a village in Bolivia, I didn’t give a care in the world. I was having an absolute blast.
I want to live in that freedom more often. I want to live in confidence that I am doing what God created me to do, and then do it with my whole heart. Thank you, Jesus, for continuing to heal and change my heart. God is so good and so is ding dang Fred the Moose.
