Back from Chapare

Well, I’m sitting in the empty hacienda. All the girls have gone home for Christmas and only one of them (my amiga Jen!) is returning for sure. There is another girl (that will remain unnamed for now!) that Jen and I are trying to convince to come back as well. But we also want it to be God led, so we will just keep praying! Something that you all can be praying for is that God will send more interns for the New Year because as of now, there is only going to be a small number of us for a little while. I became really good friends will all the girls, so saying goodbye was really hard. They are all amazing and God is really at the forefront of all their lives and it was a blessing to be able to get to know them all! Pray for the ones who will not be coming back and are now starting a new chapter in their lives.

Left: Kristen, Katie T, Me, Adrian, Bethany, Katie S, Jen is on the right and was taking the previous Pic.

Yesterday (which was Sunday) I returned from the Chapare (Jungle) after a two week stint there. I’m trying to think where to start in telling you about my experiences there because there is just too much to tell you everything! Before I start, I guess I will share that one of my prayers before and during my time there was for brokenness; that God would fill me with more of Him and less of me. As hard and painful as that can be sometimes, God has been faithful in growing me and working in a lot of different areas in my life. My reliance and faith in him has definitely grown and he was with me every step of the trip. Yeah so, I’ll try to a mix of few experiences and a little bit of what the Chapare is like.

I got there on a Friday, late afternoon with Romberto(One of Mike Timmer’s builders who lives in Chapare with his family) and Freddy(one of Romberto’s workers). Negro is the second helper, and yes, ‘Negro’ really is his name! Anyways, when I first got there we made a quick stop at the jobsite where the new orphanage is being built. Romberto showed me around and gave me a chance to see where they were in the building process. Now keep in mind that my Spanish vocab is still very limited at this point. Romberto was asking me some questions about myself, one of them being my age. I told him I was twenty-one, which in Spanish is “vente y uno”. The next thing he said was that we would now be going to ‘Vente uno’. It didn’t make any sense to me and I thought I had just misunderstood him. We then got on his 125hp Pegasus motorcycle and continued down the road. I asked him again in broken Spanish where we were going and he again said ‘Vente uno’. I was already a little nervous just being in a new place, by myself, where I didn’t speak the lingo real well, and for some reason the only thing that I could think of was that ‘Vente uno’ must be a special place for people who where 21! (I know its kinda stupid, but I really thought that.) I was freaking out in my head at this point and did not want to go this ‘Vente uno’ place. There was a house on the orphanage property which is where I thought Romberto lived and I really wanted to stay with him since he was the only person I really knew. Well, it ended up that a lot of the villages in that area just have numbers for their names. Villa catorce (village 14) is the name of the village/town that the jobsite is in and ‘Vente uno’, is the name of the village that Romberto lives in with his family. I felt pretty silly after that! Later that evening though, God gave me an encouraging experience. We had just finished dinner and I was sitting in the living room when there was a soft knock on the front door. Romberto’s son Miguel, opened the door and three small, familiar faces walked in. On my laptop, I have a desktop background pic from a year and a half ago of my first trip to Bolivia. The three kids that walked in were all in that picture sitting next to me on a church bench that we had done some work in!! It was just kinda cool.

That weekend I went to four different church services at two different churches and I had to go up in front to tell the church who I was, where I lived, and what I was doing there in their community. Both of these churches are supporters in one way or another. One thing we try to do is build relationships with local, healthy churches so that once the orphanages get kids in them, the churches will be part of the kids’ lives. During some of the services, I found myself judging how they did church and how things were run. I don’t think I was right to do this and God had something in mind to help change my mind. Later in the week I went to a mid-week Bible study with Romberto that was held at the previous pastors’ house. At first I found myself critiquing them, but then caught myself. When I started to think about it more seriously, I realized that this church was a lot like the early church in Acts. There is a lot of prayer, public speaking about the Word, singing, (which I keep having to remind myself is for the Lord and not me!) and eating together. It was really cool to see. Random fact- The Greek word for this is Koinonia which means to fellowship or share. That is one of the few vocab words I remember from Mr. Blundell’s class!

Alright, I don’t want to make you guys board and I’m realizing that there is way to much to fit into one post, so I’m going to make another post later. Just real quick, I have a couple river stories, so I’ll fit one in here. It’s not really a story, but that doesn’t matter… In the Chapare it gets ridiculously hot sometimes, (actually its wicked hot all the time there!) so during lunch break, Freddy, Negro, and I like to go hang out in the nearby river. We are not the only ones though. Usually about half the town is down there at the same time as us which makes going to the river a rated “R” experience because a lot them like to go in naked! Usually it is only the younger children and older women who are fairly over weight, but it’s still kind of awkward! haha

Ok, well I will post some more Chipare adventures in a couple days.