Thursday

Buenas tardes, mi amigos! I am posting this in the afternoon so that hopefully I will go to bed earlier tonight.

Today Dad woke me up at 7:30 (our alarm went off at 7:40) and we had breakfast by eight. Daniel felt better and went and worked with us today but Jason stayed behind with his sickness. Had about 50 kids at the morning VBS, they did the cross craft. Had lunch-chicken, rice with ham and vegetables, tomatoes, mango, cookies. Finished the concrete floor today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sooooo excited. Tomorrow we start brick-laying. At the afternoon VBS we had 106 kids. We made a heart craft to remind us of Jesus' death. Cory popped his shoulder out and had to rest. He tried to work with one hand but it wasn't working out so well. Providentially, he did it right before lunch so he had to rest for awhile. Today was the most humid it had been-we all feel hot and sticky. We left around four-thirty and right now, we are taking our showers. At 6:30 Pastor Denny (sp?) will pick us up to go have dinner at his house. We wrote our church name y Leo (a Bolivian man) y Marvin (19-year-old) y a verse in Mateo (Matthew) but we didn't all sign it because they are going to put tile over it. The building is going to be two-story with the bottom story being Sunday School rooms y the top floor being the pastor's house. Right now they are living in Sunday School rooms behind the church. Last night some Bolivians stayed up until two o'clock putting tiles on the floor in the sanctuary. The first night we were there the floor was a little more than halfway tiled and the rest was concrete (which, when we ran on it, kicked up A LOT of dust). The next day they had put six more tiles and Tuesday had completed that row (maybe 13 tiles). Last night they put in another row. The tiles are about twice the size of a pillow...roughly the size of a pillow. They cost 17 US dollars each. The church sells produce and whatever profit they get goes to buy the tiles. The VBS kids weren't as well behaved this morning. They weren't as good in the afternoon either, but I expected 50 kids to be better than 106. Danielle y Roxy are amazing.

Pardon. (sorry) I know I am hopping around from one thing to another, but I just need to get all my thoughts and memory out before I forget. I don't ever want to forget a single detail of this.

Funny story: Tuesday Abby drank gasoline. She didn't want me to tell but now I can. It's funny because there's no danger. She didn't swallow it. Extra gasoline was being stored in water bottles. We needed the gasoline to run the cement mixer. (We are borrowing an electric one right now because the gasoline one is giving us too much trouble.) So she poured some gasoline into her water bottle and tried to drink it. It fell out of her mouth. She poured another sip. It fell out as well (and people don't believe in God or angels). Then she tasted it. And started throwing up. Lynn came outside (we were all starting work) and told us that Abby just drank gasoline. Of course, we all thought that she was kidding. Needless to say, we no longer are storing gasoline in water bottles and Abby now smells every water bottle she drinks.

Tuesday

Well, this morning we got up, ate at the "l'hotel" restaurant and met in the lobby at 8:30. We have a deal that started on Saturday that the last person down has to do twenty push-ups and it has continued. I was the last one down tonight. Anyway. Another thing is that Ed was gone today-he was in La Paz.

So we got picked up and taken to church. We started grading, I think they call it, leveling out the dirt. And then they got the concrete mixer going and over the course of the whole day, we completed the second half of the first section, the whole second section, and a fourth of the third section. We are expecting a lot of progress tomorrow because we were becoming efficient. We had two children's programs today: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. In the morning one we had 30 kids and in the afternoon we estimate that we had forty. In the morning, we winged it. Daniella, Pastor Hugo's wife, sang head-and-shoulders-knees-and-toes and if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it. Then Daniella introduced Mom, Kailey, Lynn, and I and we all said a little something with Lynn translating. And then (we hadn't had time to prepare) Mom and I (with Lynn translating) made up a puppet show between a "Pastor Walter" puppet and a little girl "Lucilla" puppet. It was lame. It was about the good shepherd and how God is our shepherd. "Pastor", I think. Then we passed out coloring pages of Salmo 23 and two crayolas per child. They colored and when they were done, Mom and Lynn had the children stand up when the words that were on their picture were called out. We did this at the "Cancha" which is the basketball court. There is a plug across the street so the people from church (Louis y (and) Marvin y some other boy that I can't remember helped bring all this) set up an extension cord and mic, CD player, y speakers for the program. And took it back in between the programs. Anyway, after the coloring pages, they returned the crayons (I think they call them "crayolas") and got a snack. It's called "cereal" I think but it looks like green packing peanuts. Like the styrofoam ones. It tastes like plain cereal. In the afternoon we had so many kids that we didn't have enough cereal so Daniella gave them orange juice or something instead. The afternoon was much more professional. We had the Spanish puppet shows on CD so we played that and Daniella y some other Bolivian lady did the puppets (they could understand the English :D). Louis y Kailey y "yo" (me) held up a white sheet so that we had a puppet "stage." But the wind was so strong that the sheet would puff out one way so that you could see the outline of the puppet-movers and then the other way so that it was rather difficult to hold. In the afternoon program, there were only about three kids at 3:00 so by 3:30, Daniella y Mama went to the school (on the other side of a dividing wall between the school y the cancha) and Daniella talked to the teachers (mystro) and brought kids out all lined up. These kids were so good and so attentive. They stayed on the bleachers and paid attention and participated and they were of all ages. Gah, I am so tired writing this. Our Wifi at the hotel is not working currently so this will probably get posted tomorrow night but at least I'll have it written down.

Okay. So after VBS we worked, we stopped, we waited for transportation, we played volleyball y talked, we loaded in the cars, took half-hour break for showers, went to Chuy's for dinner, except John Mark. He watched TV. Ordered chicken. It's a fast-food place with basically only fried chicken. I had rice y sprite y fanta y pollo (chicken) y banana y french fries. Then we walked back to the hotel and Daniel y Willie stayed while the rest of us walked a couple blocks to the ice cream place. Which had a long line. So we turned around and walked about halfway back to a restaurant with ice cream. I got maracuya, a fruit ice cream like passion fruit or mango. We ordered, got them, and walked back to the hotel and had our meeting. Jason gave a very nice devotional about Christ's younger life being relevant. Then we went to our rooms.

hadey

Her name is pronounced "Hadey" and she is adorable. We met her at the church today. The missionary, Ed, said that there were about 230 or 250 churches in Bolivia, 18 of which are in Santa Cruz.

Something interesting about the streets down here is that they name streets after dates. For instance, the hotel is on "21 de Mayo" (21 of May) and a few blocks over is the 21 of September. One of the drivers from church last night said that one date was the independance of Bolivia, one is of Santa Cruz's founding, one is a religious celebration...etc.

Another view of the bus

Getting picked up from the airport at Santa Cruz, inside the bus, getting picked up by church people. Wow, I was just thinking that you guys that are following are probably getting so many notifications that it's a pain-sorry but it's just so much easier to post via email and more than one picture is too big. :( In this picture are (left-to-right) Daniel, Cory, Daniel :), Marrienna, Carla, and the driver.

inside the bus

I'm in the front, Kailey's is behind me, Dustin is behind her, Jason is next to her, and Willie is behind Jason.

First post

Hello, all. I'm hoping and praying that there is WiFi down where I am in Bolivia so that I can send updates onto this blog. So check back and comment! To start off, here is a map of Bolivia. We are going to fly from LA Friday morning to Miami then from Miami to La Paz (the highest airport in the world and the capitol of Bolivia) then from there to Santa Cruz, where we will do a children's program and build the pastor a house. We will go to the pastor's church (La Luz Divina Church) on both Sundays. (We will be there for ten days.) After which we will be tourists in Peru for three days, flying from Santa Cruz to Cuzco and then traveling by train to see Machu Picchu (see picture in the post above this) and then to Lima and fly from Lima to Miami and from Miami to LA. Interesting fact: Bolivia is east of Florida but because of Daylight Savings, only three hours ahead of CA time. And Santa Cruz's elevation is about the same as LA's.