The week in review

This past week has been a pretty busy one, getting ready for our big move to Mallasilla on Monday. We started out the week on Sunday with another Thanksgiving meal, this one with our SIM family here in La Paz. Everyone contributed to this dinner, making it much less work than the one we put on for the avanzada team. We had a couple, Roxana and Javier, from our SIM team over for pancakes and games on Wednesday morning. We usually meet weekly with the whole SIM team, but they were the only ones who were available this week, so we enjoyed the opportunity to get to know them better and practice our Spanish and hospitality all morning. Tuesday we woke up early to make it downtown in order to wait in line for 3 1/2 hours to pick up some important documents for our car. Thankfully, we had another teammate and our friend Dani, who works for SIM and is on our church-plant team, waiting with us to help make the time less painful than it could have been if we were waiting alone for that long. As we made it to the (1) window that was functioning for a few hundred people, our dance of joy was stopped short when we were told we needed a smaller photocopy of Scotty's passport. We were allowed to the front of the line when we returned with this reduced copy, and then were delivered the news that we hadn't paid taxes on the car this year (being out of the country and all), and that we would need to return after lunch to wait in line again. By this point, we were so tired of standing and so hungry, that we gratefully left with thoughts of a large, Bolivian lunch on our minds. After being recharged by food, we returned with hopes of completing necessary transactions, and only had to wait half an hour or so before wrapping it all up. I think that morning was a reminder of the need to be patient and react "con calma" to unexpected situations that arise -because they will continue to happen quite frequently in this country.

We have also been frequenting the markets daily, comparison shopping for many appliances and other odds and ends that we need for the new house. Unfortunately, we were without camera when a small man of about 65 strapped our massive, Samsung refrigerator to his back and walked it to the truck we had hired to deliver it to our new apartment. There are some things you just have to see to believe, and that is one of them. On our way up to El Alto to order couches this morning, we passed by an attempt to recreate a McDonalds restaurant...notice the elegant terrace seating above. We drove by again at lunch, but apparently, McMoni's is not open for business at this time. A little farther down the road is a driving school, boasting the name "Indianapolis Academy of Driving". It's obvious when we're on the road that most of the drivers received their licenses from this school (or more likely, never got a licence). We're enjoying these last few days in our home, breathing in the breathtaking sunsets we see from our kitchen windows and making plans to eat in our favorite neighborhood steak restaurant before we say good-bye. As much as we enjoy this place, we know it is God's provision for us to have an open door in Mallasilla, being residents there and becoming part of the community.