Oh. My. Goodness. We are already in month three, day 69 of this amazing adventure! I feel so blessed to be living this dream and I just want to start this post by saying THANK YOU for making this possible. I can already see tons of growth in myself, in my teams and in the contacts we have worked with. God is so good.
It was certainly difficult to leave Peru. We have new family members there now and are so grateful for the time we got to spend with these wonderful people. If nothing else, I hope that we brought encouragement and renewed life to Laredo. This church has an amazing vision to reach their community and are doing an excellent job. They certainly have a piece of my heart forever.
This was our house in Peru: Ginny, Cristhian, Nathan, Me, Evan and Evan. It was the house of Cristhian and they welcomed us and made us feel at home.
My brothers in Peru: Christiam, Rentao, Juan Carlos, Josue and Cristhian. Love them
SO, after over 50 hours on about 8 different buses, we have reached Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I am super excited about our ministry this month. We get to work with a variety of ministries: The main one is a boys home and we will be building relationships with them, helping with youth group and discipling. These are young men (19-27) that have been taken off the streets and are being transitioned into college and work. We met them all today and love them already. We also played some Foosball and got beat pretty bad. My goal is to beat Ruddy by myself by the end of the month. Ha…I will let you know how that goes.
The next ministry is El Jordan…a ministry that helps families coming off the streets. The moms learn to cook and make items to sell so they can support their families. We get to watch their children while they do this and yesterday I changed about 7 diapers. I haven’t done that in many years! We will also do some construction on their newish building and help them clean.
Top Left: Me and baby Carlito at El Jordan. He was the sweetest. Top Right: Molly, Josue, Ben and me cleaning an apartment in El Jordan. Bottom: Josue reading to some very intersted children. The white child is some Canadian missionaries' son.
Lastly we will get to work with YWAM to go and build relationships with kids from the streets. I think we start that next week. We will be working with all of these ministries a couple times a week. I am excited about the variety!
I am entering this month with great expectancy for God to move. I want Him to reveal more of my identity in Him and He already has so much. Thank you for coming alongside me in this journey…I could not do it without you! Here are a few more pictures from our first few days in Bolivia:
Me and Josue cooking our fisrt family meal! Made sauce from tomatoes, oil and garlic. It was delicious and super fun.
So, it is soooo hot and humid here in Santa Cruz. T is Kursti trying to cool off. hahaha
This is our sweet living conditions for the month: we have 3 bedrooms and one bathroom with a hot shower! This will be a big chunk from our budget so we have to save some money on our food this month. It IS actually very possible to live on $1 per day per person here!
