Day 7

We are reaching the end of our time here in Bolivia, and we know that God has so much left for us...

To reflect on all of the amazing things that we have seen and participated in, I need a little bit of help :) I want you to hear the perspectives of some different team mates. So, to begin where we left off on Saturday, one of our team leaders Cristina Targa shares her experience in Kara- Kara on Saturday evening:

"Through leading a youth night at Kara-Kara, I experienced my favorite blessings here in Bolivia. At the beginning of the youth service, I had the team and the students of Kara-Kara interact in the Birthday game. This is where the group must line up chronologically without communicating vocally but you can communicate nonverbally. Everyone had a great time. We all communicated to accomplish the goal. And at the same time the barriers of language and culture did not stop us. I loved seeing two different groups coming together. I loved seeing both groups interacting and realizing they could work together. Following the birthday game, we did Bible trivia. The groups were separated by girls, guys, and the 12stone team. The girls and guys had a riot! They were all laughing and being highly competitive. Sadly the guys won, but only by a point! 12Stone on the other hand, couldn't handle the trivia questions ; P However, the best part of the night were the testimonies given by Jose, Juliana, and two girls from Kara-Kara. I translated for the all the girls, but one must have caution because one might end up crying. The second girl's testimony touched everyone in the room. At first she was very timid and didnt want to speak, but after several questions, she began to talk and talk. As she was decribing her life, we saw God's redemptive power. She stated, "There are times I want to separate from God, but my dad would call me and insist that I go to church." This is important due to the fact that her dad wouldnt let her go to church in the beginning. When her parents separated, she was able to attend and through time God started to move in her family. God moved in such a powerful way that her dad began to call and insist that she go to church. At this point, I was traslating her story, and I broke into tears. Being able to see that God is redemptive in her life broke my heart. But the tears didnt end there, Juliana gave her testimony after her, and I was blessed to have translated for her, but I didnt want to. :) Juliana's testimony brought about the same brokeness, for seeing God's redemptive power brings about a grateful/broken heart towards God. This was a powerful night for me, and for several others, seeing God impact lives across different cultures. I left in amazement and in awe of God's amazing love."

Sunday

Kara- Kara Morning church service

The next morning we had the opportunity to go to the church service with all the adults, kids, and youth (it was just youth on Sat. night) and while Pastor Mark Eiken brought the message that morning, the rest of us were doing a VBS for the children. The group of kids was split into two groups by ages (1-7) and (8+)

The group that Alys, Kat, Cristina, Heather, and I spent our morning with was the younger ones. They were precious as you can see from the pictures below, however--

They were a HANDFUL. These kids are so used to roaming the streets and running about that they don't know what it means to have structure or discipline. They may have a few family members that they live in a shack with, but they are, for the most part, left to fend for themselves. They were the dirtiest and poorest kids we've encountered. To me, they were the cutest..

Lunch, Shopping, & Jesus statue visit

After church at Kara-Kara we got to have a buffet lunch at a nice restaurant:

Me & Kat giving 10-year old Brodie "cooties" :)

We visited the big Jesus statue and it started raining just as we were leaving!

Palabra de Vida staff meeting

The Palabra de Vida student SUMMER camp (Yeah, it's kind of weird to think that this is summer down here & they are out of school) started on Monday. On Sunday night, however, the entire staff had finally arrived and they wanted to have a prayer meeting and service where they shared 2 worship songs with us and we sang 2 for them. Our pastor, Mark Eiken also brought a really great, encouraging message that was translated by this really funny guy :P Here we are, the new 12 stone traveling choir :) singing "Mighty to Save" by Hillsong:

Monday

We worked very hard on Monday. Yesterday's post shows a few pictures and descriptions on it. We bascially worked our tails off until dinner time- and then for some of us (Jose, Norbert, Juliana, and myself) we had a little bit more energy to exert for the day...

The camp officially started that evening as all of the kids had arrived throughout the day. The welcoming service was a really fun "Cowboy" themed event. There were videos and songs, acting, singing, and dancing!

Well, a few of us were asked on Friday or Saturday night if we would be willing to help out with a cowboy dance for the welcoming service on Monday night. Like I said- Jose, Norbert, me, and Juliana were the chosen dancers and we practiced the dance so many times that we had the song in our dreams and I even woke up with it on my mind!! It was a catchy, but kind of annoying song- and I didn't understand what the lyrics were...so anyways, we performed last night and it was really fun & the kids loved it!

Today (Tuesday)

Today has been a more relaxing day. So, if you have been praying for God to give us rest and energy, we have certainly had a day to receive both. Well, the girls have, atleast. The guys probably want to kill us for having such a light work load, lunch at a pizzeria, and a return visit to shop some more at the market :) But they have had a succesful work day and they eagerly returned back to work after eating the pizzas we brought back for them!

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The camp continues to run smoothly and we are anticipating the news of how many salvations come out of this week. We brought several Spanish Bibles with us and they plan to use them as gifts for the kids that receive Christ!

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We have one more day down here. We will be packing tomorrow afternoon and have to be at the airport at 5pm. We are expected to arrive at 11am in Atlanta. We will be arriving in Miami at 5:30 am and that plane leaves at 9am. SO, if any of you need to reach us about airport logistics (like concerning rides when we get back) then that is when we will be in the states and you will be able to reach us. We are planning to have the same rides come pick us up on Thursday morning around 11am, and our expected arrival time to 12 Stone is between 1 and 2 depending on baggage claim, traffic, and of course flight delays...

I may post one more blog tomorrow before we go, but if not- this is goodbye! I hope you've enjoyed keeping up with our team and our adventures in Bolivia! We can't wait to come home to you and share the extra details and stories!!

Much love & joy,

Kristin

Day 6

So much to catch you guys up on, but we are still running on a really tight schedule and I'm sorry you're not getting much from our end...

To be quite honest...

We are getting an average of 5 1/2 hours of sleep each night and the days run together and never end and 11am feels like it should be 3pm and when you get in bed at night you close your eyes and the next thing you know there are 4 alarms going off in the room beacause what you really took was a nap.

We are all very tired at this point. We are fully aware that the enemy wants to do anything he can to break us down and beat us up. It's tough because it's not only the physical work load that is tiring, there is emotional and mental opression that has risen for each of us in different ways.

We have seen many great moments, however, I find it to be a difficut task and heavy responsibility to communicate how the trip is going for every single member, because we are all experiencing and seeing things differently. We have certainly grown as a unit, but from my perspective I can comment on these couple of things:

• The guys are working very hard on any and everything outdoors related (yard work, hauling more rocks, cleaning the soccer and volleyball field/court.) They are bonding well and deal with their tiredness with light jokes and laughter. They have worked so unbelievably hard

• The girls have helped a lot in the ktchen with preparing each healthy meal, the clean up process aferwards, and any other around the house kind of jobs (Cleaning the bathrooms :)
  

Although we DID get some help from this nice guy:

Pastor Mark Eiken having a little bit too much fun :)

We have another busy busy day tomorrow, but I am compiling a few responses tonight from different team members that capture their individual perspectives and experiences with different events from the past few days and I will have a big long blog for you people tomorrow :) Please continue to pray for our health, minds, spirits, group unity, protection, & hearts of service.

More tomorrow!

Much love & joy,

Kristin

DAY 4

Wow. Has it only been 4 days? We feel like we've been here for a month! Each day feels 3-days long. We are on the go from pre-sunrise till post-sunset! I'm sure all our brother/sister teams are doing the same, but man, is it kicking our butts. We sleep like rocks each night, and we work, love, and laugh like crazy each day, all day long.

By the way, this is Kat Richards "signing in" on behalf of Ms. Melin

This is going to be a mighty quick update (or at least that's the aim). Kristin and I are currently cutting into our shower time... wow! We are such troopers :-)

Today, we broke off into 2 teams. I, unknowingly, volunteered for a pretty hefty 6AM chore. Yep. By 6AM the 6 of us (Jose, Alys, Melissa, Brodie, Cristina, and myself) were hauled an hour away to pick potatoes & onions- barehanded. The catch was this- a very generous woman of the Cochabamba community had opened her field to us and said that whatever we could pick we could have for free! Love definitely abounds here. The potatoes & onions will be used in the meals of our upcoming camp where 700+ children will be arriving shortly and our hard, hard work will contribute to their ever-delicious meals. But trust me, it was no easy task! Although we were encompassed by beautiful mountains and a breathtaking view of Cochabama below, we made some time to have fun near the end of our fiasco.

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While away, the other 1/2 of our team held down the fort back at camp while doing more manual labor like fixing a massive fence, leveling the soccer field, cleaning up the cafeteria, and much more. The workload just never ends.

It's awesome, though, because our trip is very different from what I had anticipated. Yes, we have spent a great deal of time in orphanages & doing some killer VBS, but for the most part we have been doing the scrub work around here. Faithfulness in the small things. The annual 700+ kids camp is fast approaching and we are here to serve the missionaries who will be pouring themselves out. We are here to clean up the grounds. We are here to prepare meals. We are here to cut vegetables. We are doing all the non-glamorous work... and that is OK! It has been a change of pace, and a perspective broadener for sure.

But more on this later.

Okay, well I've got to go.

Will write more soon!

To all who are back home in the states, we love you!

To our brothers & sisters on missions also, we think of you often!
Can't wait to swap stories.

~Kat

New Year's Eve & New Year's Day: Bolivian Style


Happy New Year!!! Or as we have heard it for the past two days "Feliz ano nuevo!"

This has certainly been a memorable start to the year 2010. Since I last wrote yesterday afternoon (Thursday the 31st), we have had a fun celebration with new amigos to bring in the new year and we have worked REALLY hard today...


All of the hard work we (ladies) put into the kitchen yesterday afternoon paid off when we got to enjoy a HUGE New Year's Eve feast with the 30 + missionaries on base and our team:

I tasted the BEST meat I've ever had in my entire life! They cooked whole chickens and filet mignon and two different types of sausages on an open grill for hours. The other dishes included salad, a huge fruit salad (with fresh fruit- mmm :) pasta, rice, homead desserts, cooked fresh veggies, and many other delicious things!

The meal took all day to prepare and it was finally ready at 9pm!! Here are us girls waiting for the much anticipated meal:

Brodie (the 10 year old son of the Purgason's that are with us) made friends with the missionaries' kids. He spent most of yesterday playing with them (Wii video games from what we heard). His Mom, Melissa, got on to him telling him that this is a mission trip, not Brodie Vacation time :)

So, here he is today making up for the play time:



We were told that today (Friday) would be the only day that we would get to sleep in and have some down time. We were going to be having a huge New Year's lunch with the Kowalske's at 2pm, so we all stayed up pretty late last night enjoying New Year's Eve together.


Well, we slept in and at about 10am we got an urgent knock on our door. There stood Aaron (the Helping Hand's volunteer that is our guide during the trip) and his 10 year old daughter, Mackenzie who got to come along. Mackenzie looks at all of under our covers and says, "Hey, we have to go do work."

We were all confused..and not to mention, half asleep. She said, "We're hauling rocks and we're already late!"

The 6 of us chicas looked at eachother and half laughed/ half cried. We all got ready in like 7 minutes flat- which is quite the accomplishment with 6 girls using one bathroom. We slapped on some sunscreen seeing that this was going to be the sunniest day we have encountered here so far, and we ran out the door.

The rock hauling went a little something like this:

We needed big rocks, flat rocks, ones that took 4 men... we drove up the mountain and loaded up the truck with SEVERAL. They use them for building walls down here, so even though it was physically demanding and we'll all be sore tomorrow, it was worth it to drop them off at the location where they're building the wall and know that we made it possible for them!

As you might be able to observe in the last picture...we had an injury. That would be Pastor Mark Eiken who came with our team to Bolivia. His finger got pinched between two rocks when he was moving some around and the tip of his finger was split open!! He was taken to a clinic and is totally fine, but it was the drama highlight of the day :) Moms, don't be scared. We ARE safe here. This was a minor incident, and won't happen again! We are blessed to have our leader, Jose that is in nursing school and two doctors (The Kowalske's) on base, so don't worry!


After the rock work out, we got to eat our big New Year's lunch! The food was cooked by Brenda Kowalske who is from Georgia so she knows how to make a Southern home-cooked meal :) I told her that her food looked almsot exactly like my mom's Thanksgiving meal! (Because we had turkey and all the fixings and caseroles) And might I add that she even made some sweet tea! It was so comforting and made us all feel right at home!


After lunch we went right back to work. Manual labor seemed to be the theme of the day. We pulled weeds, mowed grass, distributed gravel, cleaned a volleyball court, and cleaned up the entire yard around the playground and gardens. The kid's camp starts on Monday and there is much preparation to be done. We helped to make it look better outside:

We've been working hard all day and tomorrow is packed with even more activities and projects! Please continue to pray for our health, rest, group unity and spiritual growth. Pray that God would make His presence know among us and that would we would engage with His speaking voice. Pray that He would awaken our hearts to His power within us.

Here are a couple of pictures from the past two days that we were able to upload:

The bus that met us at the airport in Cochabamba. The man to the far left is Dr. Richard Kowalske, the owner of all the land we're staying and working on.


The beautiful place we're staying :)


From the orphanages: