Graduation weekend.

Jason helping build the gazebo.

This is where we wash our clothes, when the girls finish work or school, there will be around 20 girls in this little area bathing and washing clothes.

Serving kabobs at the culture fair day.

Produce from the garden with the garden crew.

Carrie teaching first year science.

Jason taking the horse for a spin.

Visiting the neighbors for a little ride on a horse.

Beautiful sunsets!!

Look at the pretty rainbow. We see them fairly often here in rainy season.

With Georgie, the monkey.

Raul, Samuel, and Noel with the monkey on Jason´s shoulder.

Cristina and Dorca helping prepare for the health outreach in Yata.

Last week in Bolivia

Rainy season has arrived and with it has brought tons of little gnats that drive you absolutely crazy. They buzz around your ears and cover your arms and legs. It reminds me of the plagues in Egypt. I am sure they were a lot worse, but this is pretty bad. Praise God they have only recently begun appearing and the rest of the time the bugs were not too bad! This past Sunday we celebrated “Dia de la Raza” or celebration of different cultures. We spent all morning preparing food from our country and decorating our booth. We invited the people from town and around 4pm the people started showing up, even though it supposedly started at 3pm…but we are in Bolivia.  It started with a program showing each country represented here by the different missionaries and their flag, national song, and answering any other questions about the country. We have missionaries from the US, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, South Africa, Bolivia, Belize, and Puerto Rico. We shared the motive for why missionaries come to Bolivia or go anywhere, which comes from the final words of Jesus when He was on this earth. “Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19,20 In the US booth we made vegetable kabobs, vegetarian meatballs and a type of pudding or flan. The kabob idea came from 4th of July and the rest is what we had on hand. Everything went really well and all our visitors really enjoyed it. Our personal favorite foods were the crepes from South Africa and the pumpkin pie from Canada. We had another fun experience this past week when we were returning from town. We were waiting at the poor man’s station, as they call it, for the bus with several other students from the school. There were a lot of people waiting and we were getting nervous we would not fit on the bus, when a truck came by and offered us a ride…which is normal. We got in the bed of the truck, which was a little run down with boards on the side that were a little shaky, but nonetheless we had a ride. As we were going we started to realize it was going to take us forever to get to the school, because the truck was going a lot slower than normal. Half way to the school we started swerving all over the road and then we looked off to the side and we saw the back tire rolling off behind us. We slowly came to a stop dragging the one side of the truck in the dirt. Luckily no one got hurt. We got out and waited to see what we were going to do. The driver did not turn off the truck, but sent his 12 year old son to get the tire and he pulled a jack from the back of the truck. He tried to blame the lost tire on his son and yet seemed very prepared for this type of event. He tried to jack it up as high as it would go, but was still a long ways from fitting the tire back on the truck so he told all the boys to lift the truck up the rest of the way. Yeah right…not possible. So he tried and tried again and every time when he couldn’t get it any higher it would fall back off the jack and hit the ground with a thud. Finally one of our students got creative and brought a rock to put under the truck and then from there they were able to lift the truck a bit more. Finally they got it up high enough for the students to put the tire back on and they took half of the nuts from the front tire to put on the back tire. Not very comforting…The students pretty much did all the work to get the tire back on and while we were doing this the motor stopped and we saw the son pouring water into the engine. We were a little worried the engine would not start, but praise God it started and we were back on the road, praying that the tires would stay on. I will admit I was a bit nervous every time we zigzagged in the road. We ended up making it back to the school entrance without any other troubles and paid our 5 Bolivianos for the trip. I am reminded of the promise in the Bible in Psalms 91:11-12. “God will put His angels in charge of you to protect you wherever you go. They will hold you up with their hands to keep you from hurting your feet on the stones.” My classes have been memorizing this chapter in the Bible and can say all the way through verse 12 by memory. This is a beautiful chapter which speaks of God as our protector. I had another experience of God’s protection in the garden the other day. I was walking the little path from the watermelon patch back to the main garden and another student was following me and all of a sudden she screamed. I looked back to see the problem and she said there was a snake in the path and it scared her. It had slithered away before I saw it, but I realized I could have stepped on it because I was not looking at the path. Praise God again that He was watching over me. This week the kids are taking all their final exams and preparing for graduation. The students are making decisions about when they will leave and where they will go over vacation. Some do not want to go back home and are looking for jobs in the local town. Many students stay after graduation for a week or more to earn money to be able to get home. Another girl, Lizeth, wants to stay to study the Bible more and be more prepared to share with her family when she gets home. Pray for these kids as they make decisions for their future and as they return to their homes. They are going to face lots of persecution in their homes, because their families do not believe the same as them. Pray that they will remain faithful to God and rely on His strength and be able to be witnesses to their families.

Workin hard...

Jason, Rodolfo on the left, and Joel on the right coming back from a day in the chaco.