Day 54 - Dinner and Lunch with Friends

Dinner and Lunch with Friends

Over the last seven weeks that I have been here, friends that I made decades ago have blessed me with a good meal.  I wrote about how long a meal can take when you are out with friends here.  At home, an hour you are done.  Here, two or three hours. 

Today I had lunch with the Tim and Ceci.  They were in South America Mission with me in the 80s.  Ceci and I discovered on the day we met that we are twins (though a few days apart).  We shared so many memories!  It was good to be around Americans who love Bolivia so much.  And they encouraged me about knowing God’s will.  Rarely is it hearing a voice; usually it is stepping out in what gifts God has given you.

Last night I went to the movies with my Bolivian pastor’s family.  Percy is Bolivian and doesn’t have a lot of English.  I tried to speak more Spanish and not depend on Debbie, his wife and the valedictorian of the SCCLC my last year here in the 80s.  We saw Ben Hur.  BTW, they serve sweet popcorn here.  It is kinda like cracker jacks.  This is the second meal with them and their kids, one of whom I’ll be teaching in a few days.

Sandra and her sister, Andrea, have taken me out for lunch three times since I’ve arrived, for Mexican, Chinese, and American burgers.  They have been very helpful guiding me to stores to buy things I needed and making sure I have everything I need.

Carlos and his boys had me over for lunch one Sunday for a good pot roast, though Mateo, the 2^nd grader, only ate ham and corn pizza.  Then we played chess and card games for a few hours.

The Mitsumoris, missionaries from Japan to the Japanese community here in Bolivia, invited me over for Sushi when I first arrived.  I was nervous because I can be allergic to fish.  I am beginning to think it is how fresh the fish is and how it is prepared.  I had zero allergic reaction.  I forgot how gentle and godly Mr. and Mrs. Mitsumori are.

One evening there was a comfortable and homey dinner with Jimena and her husband, who is from Mexico.  She has a boy in college and two very little ones.  Over a dinner of home-made spaghetti, we talked mostly about politics.

I am probably forgetting someone – my 58-year-old mind.  Mostly I just wanted to say thank you to all these people and especially to thank God for putting these people in my life and returning them to my life recently.

Day 53 _ Orange Juice

Orange Juice

On a warm tropical morning, there is nothing better than fresh squeezed orange juice.  I thought I would show you how it is done here in Santa Cruz.

I remember getting a nice orange juice from a lady outside the Capilla Jesus Nazareno, Chapel of Jesus the Nazarene.  So I walked over there today.  While she made me an orange juice and I took pictures, I asked how she is doing.  “Life is hard,” she said. Mostly her problems centered on how people treat her poorly.  I left a little extra from my $0.50 orange juice.  It was just a few cents more, but I thought she would cry.

So here is how she makes it.  First, she has a little hand operated machine that peals the orange.  All her oranges had just been peeled, so I have no pictures of the oranges getting peeled.  Then she cuts about four oranges in half.  One at a time, she puts a half in the press and squeezes out the delicious goodness.  You can smell it!

The finished product is delicious, fresh squeezed orange juice for about $0.50.

I could go to the market and buy a bottle of OJ, but the experience is so much richer.

Day 50 - More Work Visa!

Follow-up on My Visa

I told you a month ago that I would write again about my visa as soon as anything happened.  Well, suddenly it happened like a downpour.

Last Friday at lunch, Tabitha called me.  She was the girl working at another mission that was dragged around town with me to take care of Interpol on my last visa day.  She was wondering what was happening with her visa so she called the lawyer.  He told her they were waiting on a paper to be taken care of at the Palacio de Justicia (Hall of Justice).  The lawyer told her my paper had been taken care of.  So she called me to ask about the paper.  I had no idea what she was talking about.

Friday and Saturday I called Dr. Z., the immigration lawyer, and got no answer.  Since the lawyer’s office is close, about 8 blocks away, I walked there Friday afternoon and he wasn’t open.  I went again Saturday morning and he wasn’t opened.  On Monday, I called his office between meetings of in-service and talked with him.  He told me I was missing that paper too, but should have received it; but I know I didn’t.

I left school around 1:00 today, so I could come home and take a short nap.  I assumed I would be running all over town this afternoon.  At 2:45 I walked over to Dr. Z’s office.  He showed me the paper I was supposed to have gotten stamped and signed.  I said I never received it from him and explained that this was the same that Tabitha was missing.  He called his wife on the phone and they had a discussion about it deciding something went wrong on their part.  I agreed to come back the following morning.

Tuesday I went to Dr. Z’s office at 8:30 skipping the morning part of in-service.  From our conversation yesterday, I thought this would take me until after lunch.  I was wrong.

The paper that Dr. Z showed me on Monday, he and his wife took care of before I arrived.  Dr. Z’s wife took photocopies of my passport and then took me across the street to Migración.  As is usual at many places, we stood in line for 20 minutes.  This was to get our ticket.  The problem is that people break in line or don’t understand how the line works.  So you do the right thing and wait, but someone else does not.  I know the culture is different, but that just seems wrong to me.

Once you have the ticket you wait for your ticket to be called.  The seats are narrower than those in airplanes.  Someone as big as me is crowded.  My friend Alma is the perfect size for those seats, but if you are bigger than her, which most of the world is, you are crowded.  Again people broke in line.  But it wasn’t long until we were waited on.  I got my passport stamped.  Dr. and Mrs. Z. said that was it until they called my school for the next part.  I asked more than once and they assured me that was it.  I pray that it is.

And that was it for the day.  It seemed a big emergency turned into something small.  So I walked back home, took a quick bite of food and headed off to school.

Just so you understand, you are not allowed to take pictures in banks and government buildings, so you won’t be seeing pictures of these places from me.  I don’t want to break the law while I am here.  So instead I took pictures of the trees and statues near the Migracion Building.

Day 49 - Staying Faithful, No Matter What

Staying Faithful, No Matter What

Sunday in church and Monday morning during staff devotions I was thinking about sharing this. I am not sure how to explain what I am thinking and not sure how it will come across, but here goes.

I was wondering how does one approach a dry spell in a Christian walk?  What do we do when are not growing spiritually or even feel like we have declined in our spiritual walks?  Most of us can remember when we were that wide-eyed, innocent young Christian to whom nothing seemed impossible with God. 

But sometimes our Bible reading seems empty.  We read because we are supposed to.  We know how to pray, or so it seems.  We have the right words to say, but maybe we feel like nobody is listening.  We can recall moments when we knew without a doubt that God had spoken to us, but that was a long time ago.  When we are in a worship time, we see some that have joy flooding their whole being, and we long to feel that again.  We even listen to preaching and don’t feel conviction.  Often times we are there, but not really a part of the Christian community surrounding us.

Sunday I was a part of a beautiful worship service and Pastor Percy preached a good sermon from the Book of Revelation; but I started thinking of a sermon Pastor G. preached back in the early 80s about what you do when you go through that dry spell.  Many people have given up when they go through a dry spell. What should our response be?

Psalm 84 says, “What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord…When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs.  The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings.  They will continue to grow stronger and each of them will appear before God.”

If you are in the desert, that Valley of Weeping, and feel lost, stop and dig a well.  Here is what I mean by dig a well.  Continue to pray, even if you feel nothing.  Go through the motions during worship and listen to the sermons.  Read your Bible, even if you get nothing out of it.  Make a decision to stick with God.  Stay faithful, no matter what.  I must emphasize, even if you feel nothing.

God is faithful.  He won’t leave you in the Valley, but maybe, have you ever considered this, maybe He has you in that Valley for someone you will encounter in the future.  Maybe God is letting you go through this, so He can use you to guide someone out of the Valley.  This is what I mean by digging the well.  You are in the desert, but dig that well of prayer, Bible reading, worship, and learning, so one day you can go back there and give refreshment to someone lost in the Valley like you were.

We sang this song in devotions Monday.  It seemed to fit so well with what I wanted to say, and it almost always brings me to tears.

Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not.  As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!  Morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed Thy hand hath provided.  Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide; strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

I know my momma knows this by heart

Day 48 - The Bolivians at the SCCLC

The Bolivians at the SCCLC

I am feeling very welcome at the Christian Learning Center, SCCLC.  I have people that are taking care of me and treating me like family.  So I thought I would write a blog of just saying thank you.  I said before, I am not mentioning complete names; I don’t want to go to each person and ask if I can mention them in my blog.  Some people will know who these are and others will not.

First I have to mention the guys who treated me like family when I was here in the 80s.  Carlos is still here, married to Sandra, and their two kids are in the school.  Carlo’s mom, Aida, whose has since gone to be with the Lord, treated me like I was a family member, regularly inviting me to dinner and once when I came back to visit, asking me to stay in their home.  Carlos is the middle child.  The older son, Mario, lives in the States, and the girl, Marisol, lives in La Paz.  They still treat me like family.

Debbie was a missionary kid when I taught her in the 80s.  Today she is married to a Bolivian pastor, Percy.  They have three kids, the oldest in college, and the younger two at the SCCLC in high school.  Debbie is an American by birth, but has spent so much of her life here, is married to a Bolivian, and is the pastor’s wife of a Bolivian church of around 400, that she is as about Bolivian as it gets.  Debbie has been continually taking care of me, as well as giving me room to be independent here.  And I love her church.

Yaskará is the school secretary.  Daily she asks how I am doing in English and expects me to respond in Spanish.  If my Spanish has errors, she corrects it.  Any time I ask her a question, she stops what she is doing and gives me her undivided attention, even if that means taking me across campus.

Jhonny, yes that is how he spells it, works in the school office in finances.  I get a good Bolivian handshake from him every day.  What is a Bolivian handshake? Part is what you expect, right hand grasping right hand. The left hand that grips the right shoulder.  He goes to Debbie’s church so I see him on Sunday’s too.  He and his wife lost a baby in March, but he is never without a smile.

Rolby is the gate guard on duty during the day.  Some mornings I arrive before him, but not that often.  Usually I take a taxi from the school and he can call one for me on a walky-talky.  Like these others I am mentioning here, he is a Christian.  I have been invited to his church as well as a few others, though I think I will stick with Berea.

Martha shares a classroom with me and teaches Spanish.  If you can imagine the difficulty sharing a classroom with another teacher, she seems to make it easy.  She is always with a smile and helpful suggestions on how we can make it work.  She has a 12^th grade boy I will be teaching this year.  One day she brought me homemade tacos – yummy!  And she has invited me to go with her and some friends to Samaipata this weekend. 

Fernando and Mariela are one of the nicest couples I have ever met.  Both are gentle and soft-spoken.  Mariela teaches Spanish and, with Martha, plans many of the acto civicos for the school.  The acto civicos are like governmentally established days where schools are to honor the nation, kinda like Veterans’ Day or Memorial Day.  Fernando is in charge of technology at the SCCLC.  I have been surprised that the SCCLC is as advanced as Nash Intermediate is technologically.

Today I got to know the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers.  Andrea is a beautiful young lady that I discovered knows many of the Bolivians I know.  She told a hilarious story about the year she lived in the States, not knowing how self-service gas stations work.  They are still full service here in Bolivia. She has a bit of a run-in with the pump and found herself covered in gasoline.  She and her husband pastor a church.  Joyce is a pastor’s daughter.  In the 80s I attended Pastor Raul’s church.  I discovered today she is a friend of his family, since her father was a member of the same church organization.  I was hoping to visit his church one day, but discovered Pastor Raul died two years ago.  He was one of the few men I called Pastor.

There are others I am just getting to know, like Matilde,who gave me a cup of cold water today when she saw I was getting too hot.  Remember what Jesus taught about giving a cup of water in his name?  There is Daniel who will be teaching 6^th grade and Ingrid and Elizabeth who work in the office.  Macario is in charge of maintenance.  And I can see a few faces in my mind, but I don’t have the names to go with the faces yet.

I will end with the gardener, Felix.  He is a little old man about half my height.  Seriously, I doubt he is over 5 feet.  Every day he is meticulously caring for the beautiful plants in the garden, and by garden I mean the school, because it is a beautiful little garden.  When I shake hands he grasps my right hand in both his hands, smiles, and tells me something about his garden.  When I get to Heaven I want to work in gardening and it would be an honor to work next to Felix.

Day 47 - Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Afternoon

After I got home from doing basically nothing Saturday morning, I sat down for a nice lunch of leftover chicken and a fresh sonso bought from Teconté.  Sonso is a very Bolivian dish.  I don’t know if it has made its way to other countries or is Latin American, but I only know it from Bolivia.

Picture from Waykunachef

Sonso is a mixture of pureed yucca with a country cheese.  It can be baked in the oven or wrapped around a stick and cooked over an open fire.  It is one of those amazingly simple, but delicious, dishes that once you discover it you crave it.  In researching it, I found out that people have written love songs to it.  Yes, it is that good.

I had a lot to do around the house, and a lot of lesson plans to complete.  I decided the best way was to mix it up.  Do a little of one then more of the other.  That way I wouldn’t get tired and decide to take an all afternoon nap. 

Before I left for my rounds this morning I put my jeans on to wash.  Like I said in my last blog, today is windy.  The winds that come after a surazo are not gentle spring breezes, but strong enough to blow a picture off the wall or the sheets off the bed.  I’m not kidding.  Both have happened at my house.  With these fierce winds, I knew I could hang my jeans in the window and they’d be dry in a few hours.  I hung them up to dry at noon.  Now at 3:30 they are dry.  That won’t happen once the rainy season begins. 

I spent about an hour working out a few things I could do in all three of my classes, 9^th, 10^th, and 12^th grades of literature.  I will probably do the first day of each class pretty much the same.  I have both a poem I want to introduce, “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, and an essay about themselves.  The essay is so I can get to know them a bit better.

I finally shut my windows around 4:00 because I felt like I was in a wind tunnel and everything was blowing.  It is around 90 degrees outside and most of the week should be around 90 also.  Yes, it is winter, but I am in the tropics.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon making lesson plans for my 10^th grade class.  We will begin the year reading Fahrenheit 451.  The class is speech and composition, so I need to include both in any unit I will be teaching.  I also worked on Shakespeare.  At the SCCLC, we teach Shakespeare every year from grades 7 to 12.  Since this is my first year at the school, there will be a few things I will teach to all of my classes.  I get to teach Romeo and Juliet to grade 9 and Hamlet to grade 12.  Without a doubt, these are my two favorite Shakespeare plays.

During the afternoon, I talked to my friend and former student, Josh, who is creating my book cover.  The progress looks awesome.  I can’t wait to see my finished work.

I ended my day making some pasta for dinner with leftover chicken.

I hope your Saturday was great.

Day 46 - Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning

Today I woke up around 6:45. It was windy.  We had a cold front this week, called surazos in Bolivia, but it was a mild one.  This week the mornings were cold, in the upper 50s, and by the afternoons it was in the 80s.  This surazo cleared the skies of all the smoke covering the city.  The smoke is caused by farmers burning their fields; many still use the slash and burn method here.  After a surazos there is usually a lot of wind from the opposite direction.  It was hard to get out of bed this morning.  I love being wrapped in a blanket, the breeze coming in the window, and reading my bible.

But I needed to go to Dr. Zabala’s office.  Yesterday I got a call from Tabitha, the girl I was carried around the city with when we were getting some work done on our visas.  She had called Dr. Zabala’s office to ask about the progress of the visa, which I had been thinking about doing.  She was told there was a paper we had to complete that they gave us.  They told her I had completed my paper.  She didn’t know what paper they were talking about so called to ask me.  I knew of no paper either.  I went by his office on Friday and called.  He wasn’t at his office when I went by, and nobody answered when I called.  So I went back this morning after trying to call.

First I stopped by the Starbucks for breakfast.  I can get a cheaper breakfast, but it is nice to splurge once in a while.  Besides, it only cost about $5.  For those who want to know, it is basically the same as in the states, coffees, teas, and pastries.  The restaurant is clean and upbeat.  It is one of the nicest places in my neighborhood.

Well, Dr. Zabala was not at his office, nor were any of the neighboring offices, nor was the immigration building open.  I also realized that immigration makes that street busy.  It was so empty today that I was able to cross the street to the rotunda and take a good picture of the statue.  It was early so I stopped by the Fidalga, my grocery store, and walked a little further to Teconté, my favorite bakery.

Well, Teconté just grew even further in my esteem this morning.  They have awesome baked goods like sonso, baked yucca with cheese; cuñapé, baked cheese rolls; a baked rice bread wrapped in banana leaves; and slowly I am discovering more, like the bread with cheese baked inside.  But today, I noticed the owner taking time away from her customers to give an old man, who I have seen begging outside her store, a cup of coffee and a breakfast roll.  She was not giving him the food in disposable cups or plates, but in the regular dishes she serves her customers. 

Proverbs 19:17 says, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and He will reward them for what they have done.”  Say a prayer that the owners of this establishment will come to know the Lord, or if they already do, that He will bless them.

Walking home I noticed two ladies I have seen several times in the last few days.  They are from one of the highland tribes, but I can’t tell which.  Every time I see them, they are on the corner of Las Americas and Iralá, begging as the cars go by.  Once in a while a driver gives them a 1 or .50 Bs, so I don’t think they make more than $10 a day, if that.  I have really wanted their picture, because they look so distinctive, something you don’t see in the States.  I offered one of the ladies 10 Bs. to take her picture.  That is around $2.  It took a few minutes for her to understand because she does not speak Spanish.  She called the other lady over and they soon understood I wanted their picture.  As I was leaving the second lady asked for 10 Bs. too.  It was worth it to get their picture.  If they had asked for more, I probably would have given it.  I don’t feel I gave enough, so I will look for them again in the next few days.

Then I was off to my apartment for lunch, house cleaning, and lesson plans.