Day 100 - Keeping In Touch with Home

Keeping in Touch with Home

I don't normally post on Saturdays, but because this is day 100, I thought it would be ok.  Can you believe I have been here 100 days?

Have I mentioned before that this is my second time to live in Santa Cruz, Bolivia?  Well, in the 1980s, I joined the Assemblies of God to work here as a teacher.  Because of obscure rules they had I was restricted to two years.  South America Mission (SAM) was quick to invite me to join them.  I stayed another three years with SAM mission.  Though I am not a SAM missionary now, they will always be a part of  me.

Communication was very different in the 80s compared today.  It was limited to phone and letters.  The Internet did not exist back then.

If I wanted to make a call back home, I had to call the operator in La Paz.  I would give her the number; it was always a woman and I think the same one each time.  She would tell me to wait by the phone until she put the call through.  That might take ten minutes, but more likely four hours.  I would get a call back and ask the person on the other side to call me.  It was too expensive to call from Bolivia and much cheaper from the US.  A few minutes later, I would get a call back and we could talk for a just a few minutes because it was also expensive to call from the States, just cheaper than Bolivia.

The other method of communication was letters.  Often I sat home at night writing letters to family and friends.  I also sent out a mission newsletter about once a month to those who financially supported me, and to family, even if they did not.  I would get letters from home too, though sometimes not with a lot of frequency.  During my second year here, there was a postal strike.  I doubt any of my letters got home.  One day in February I sat down with a pile of letters from home.  I put them in order from oldest to most recent and spent a Saturday afternoon reading news from home.  Even with letters nobody told me my sister-in-law Jackie was going to have a baby.  I found out about three weeks before Katie was born.

The year 2016 is very different from 1989.  The Internet rules.  Everybody has Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, or whatever is the latest means of communication.  I post pictures on Instagram or a blog on Facebook and I get almost instantaneous responses from family and friends.  I know what my little nieces and nephews are doing almost every day because their moms post a lot.  I know what my friends from Nash or Bristol Baptist are doing because of their posts.  I am up-to-date on the contentious election of 2016 and see the funny stories and videos everyone else sees.

My mom was worried that she would lose contact with me.  Yet we chat on Facebook Messenger half a dozen times a day.  I even know what she is eating.  That is how up-to-date we are in this age. 

I know some people complain about social media.  To me, it is my connection with home.  I think it is a great thing in this crazy modern world.  So keep sending pics of your new haircut or your cousin’s baby.  I don’t mind the pictures of your cow, dog, horse, or cat.  I love all the back to school pictures.  I love the funny stories and memes.  Keep up the contact.

Love you