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: