Bolivia In Review

Well, here is my long overdue update about our trip to Bolivia! Written more or less like a letter.

We arrived late on a Friday, so our first day there was Kids Club day. My goodness, how much has changed! The first year we braved the journey, regular attendance on a Saturday barely topped 300. Now the Vargas’s have almost 600 children come weekly. They play all kinds of games in groups, and they still love to play on the playground that our team built in 2003. For those of us who have gone year after year, many of the kids recognize us. They are so precious.

In terms of work, we had two big goals to achieve this year. We sanded and revarnished all of the tables and benches, the gazebo, the playground, and the climbing wall. This is important because it protects the wood from wear and tear, prevents termites from eating it, and removes and protects against splinters.

Our second task was to prepare the uncultivated parts of their land for future use. We cut down trees and thick thorn bushes, cleared away rocks and logs and grass, and filled giant sinkholes. There were a pair of trees on their new property that were so intertwined that it took several hours, many hands, and some precision machete work to extricate the unwanted one from the other. And one of the sinkholes was so large a young teenager would have had little trouble being swallowed up in it, legs, torso and head! It took over 30 wheelbarrows full of dirt to fill that monster hole. That and several other sink holes riddled a stretch of land where kids approach for Kids Club on Saturdays. The going was treacherous, but now all the sinkholes have been filled and the thorn bushes cleared away.

Us men also had to mix a batch of concrete to pour a porch for the small library in the Vargas’s compound. It’s tough, demanding work, and the pace is frenetic. There are never enough hands for all the different individual tasks. Filling buckets of dirt, rocks, concrete mix, and water, standing by to dump the contents of the buckets in the mixer, filling the buckets once they are emptied, not to mention transporting the unset concrete itself. But it is a lot of fun.

As you can imagine, the addition of our team to the Vargas household adds some strain to the laundry and dish washing routines. We would have a hard time of it except for the dedicated individuals who wash the clothes, do the dishes, and cook all the food. I’ve never cooked for twenty-five people. But it must be rough work.

Our trip wasn’t all work and no play, though. For the first time ever, the mission team went paintballing with some of the Vargas family. Many stories of chivalry and deception were told at the table that evening.

Soccer and volleyball games were almost daily occurrences. It is hard work for us Americans in the thinner atmosphere, but fun nonetheless. On one of the Sundays during our trip, everyone in the Vargas’s small house church stayed for lunch and fellowship. And soccer! It started as a single match between two teams. By the time it ended, we had played the best of three.

The food in Bolivia is absolutely delicious! Not many processed foods like we often eat in the States. For breakfast, the Vargas’s buy fresh bread. I like to have mine with butter, but many opt for the home made peanut butter the Vargas’s make. Would you believe it’s as simple as tossing a bunch of peanuts into a food processor and chopping them until they turn into a thick, creamy paste? I didn’t think so. Lunch is the big meal of the day, and always involves some kind of potato. Did you know that Bolivia has over 300 different kinds of potatoes? I could only think of four that I know of in the States.

As during most years, we had the opportunity to hike up to the Cristo de la Concordia, the tallest statue of Jesus in the world. At over 2000 steps, and with thinner atmosphere on top of it, it is quite the endeavor. But it is fun, and worth it in the end. The statue sits on top of a mountain smack in the middle of Cochabamba and the surrounding suburbs, and the view is spectacular. God’s earth is so beautiful!

The second Kids Club of our trip was very special for us. As part of our trip, our team tries to practice and perform a skit for the kids at least one Saturday when we are there. The skit we prepared was one our team had performed two years ago, performed to the song “Everything” by the group Lifehouse. We performed in the smaller, inner courtyard of the Vargas compound, the Vargas’s only letting maybe 100 kids in at a time. The skit is very physically taxing, and we performed it five times. But it was all worth it. At the end of every performance, Carolina Vargas would ask the kids questions and make sure they understood the message we were trying to communicate, the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ. After our last performance, one little boy ran up to me and recounted the whole thing to me with a “Dude, that was awesome!” demeanor. I believe many seeds were planted on our trip. May God grow them in the years to come.

I'm going to be adding more pictures to my Flickr set over the coming days. Be sure to check back there for more!

~Tommy