Life in Santa Cruz

We arrived early Thursday morning at the airport without getting much sleep on the plane. Praise God! Customs let us go right through without even checking our bags after Carrie told them we were volunteer teachers! The car ride to the radio station was insane. Driving here is a completely different experience. Cars are flying everywhere and lines on the road are optional. Up to three people ride motorcycles at a time with one helmet usually strapped on the handlebars. Cars and people are everywhere and everyone is honking at everyone else. The city looks very poor and there is trash everywhere. Street vending is the only option for work for most people here. The couple we are staying with, Ximena and Eleazar, said somewhere between 50 and 70% of Bolivians are street vendors. We have done a couple things for our visa, but still have to get blood drawn and police records on Monday and then we will be able to go to the school while Ximena, our legal rep, continues to work on our visas. We are eating very well...lots of fruit, toast, oatmeal, rice, beans, pizza, lasagna, we even got Italian ice last night with some people from the local church(which is extremely nice). The church looks like a cathedral and has 500 members! Today we both woke up with hurting stomachs but other than that we have been fine. There is no internet at the radio station because they did not have the money to pay the bill so we are using it at Ximena´s parents house. We are going to watch the World Cup here today so that is very exciting. The shower is cold for Jason everyday but Carrie says for her it is warm. We just figured out how to turn the water on in the bathroom when it doesn´t come out of the faucet or the toilet doesn´t flush. We still don´t know if we are supposed to be putting toilet paper down the toilet, haha. We have worship every morning that includes songs, prayer, and reading a chapter in the Bible. We pray every morning when we get in the car, whenever we go anywhere and of course before meals. The tv station has worship twice a day. God is definately the center of their lives. Even if we are late for something worship is not cut short and no one looks at the time. We sing every line of the hymns here. The youth at the church here have their own church and they have a program starting at 4pm Sabbath afternoon for the youth. Last night they had Bible trivia that Carrie participated in and they had three people dressed as angels with smoke bombs walk through the church giving the 3 angel´s messages. Very dramatic! They had some type of object lesson with this liquid that you could punch and it would turn hard that I was invited up front to try. The lesson was that if we try and attack people with our message they will resist but if we become their friend and associate with them they will be more likely to listen to us. There are dogs everywhere here that are very skinny and not treated very well, rocks thrown at them, etc. We have seen a nice horse park, with jumps and everything, near where we are staying and some horses live next door that Carrie tried to get near but they ran away. The horses just wander wherever they want even if it is through the middle of a busy street. Our house is in the rich part of town and pretty fancy for Bolivia. We are learning lots about the culture and are excited about getting to the school hopefully next Tuesday. God has been blessing us and we praise him for his protection!!