Change of pace

Well, all our visitors have come and gone and we are looking forward to getting back in the swing of "normal" life (whatever that is!). My best friend, Allysen, just left yesterday after a 2 week stay, and we were able to do some really fun excursions with her. The first was a day trip out to the country with a Bolivian family we are getting to know better that will join our church plant soon. They have 2 fun boys and love the outdoors and camping. They took us on a bumpy truck drive through mountains and mostly dry river beds toward the base of Mount Illimani. The villages around us were full of farms- veggies, fruits, and flowers. They took a bag of clothes for the residents and in exchange received what was in season (not much in the winter)- walnuts, lettuce, greens, lemons, and some fruit I can't remember the name of. I bought 2 pounds of walnuts for $2.50- score! Let me know if anyone has any good walnut recipes... We loved hiking around, playing frisbee, picnicking, and generally enjoying the warmer weather of a lower region and becoming better friends with this family. Later that week, Ally, Scotty, and I headed to the mountainous jungle region called Coroico. There's a small town there that caters to the backpacker-type tourist and is warm all year round. This was sheer bliss for me, who tends to shrivel up and become a bit cranky during long spells of cold. We hiked again, swam in the pool (I could only manage to stick my legs in, as the water was icy!), ate, and rested together. I didn't want to leave! Actually, Ally and I returned for another 2 nights before she left, instead of heading up to Lake Titicaca, which is also beautiful, but freezing. The idea of more pool time was a much bigger draw. Check out the view from our hostel balcony:

It was great having visitors, but we are excitedly looking ahead to the next couple of months, preparing to open the church doors. Scotty has some opportunities to teach at the neighborhood Bible study, preach at our mother church, lead some sessions at an upcoming church plant retreat, and help our new pastor specify some vision statement and doctrinal stuff. Where does that leave me? This is a question I've been asking myself and praying a lot about lately. My role as wife and woman often looks very different from Scotty's obvious leadership roles. We have both been challenged lately in the area of discipleship and being much more involved in intimate, intentional discipling relationships. I want to be more hospitable and get to know some of the women and young people in the neighborhood, as well as work hard on my ESI coursework, which starts up again tomorrow. A lot of these ideas are a bit vague or dependent on time to build relationships and so I often feel like I'm not doing what I should be. But God's grace is great and I know He will use me for His purposes and my role is obedience and faith. All of this along with a baby coming sometimes makes me a little anxious! But, as we are wisely instructed in the Word, my response should not be anxiety, but presenting all these things to our soverign Lord.

Retreat

It's been a while since our church plant team has gotten together. These seem to be the months when people are travelling, so we've postponed several meetings on Sundays and now have a request from the elders that we return to Sunday mornings at our mother church until we are sent out to open the doors of the plant in October. Yesterday was a holiday, meaning the best time to try to get the whole team together to go through a load of stuff we have been wanting to talk about for months. One of those things was the acceptance of the elders and the man we were praying for to give pastoral leadership to join the team. This was exciting news for all of us and he and his family joined us at lunch and stayed through the rest of the afternoon to start getting a feel for where we are as a group. We chatted about prospective opening dates- early October, and all the practical work that will need to be done to prepare us for that time- forming worship groups, Sunday school groups, financial groups, etc... There are so many details to starting a church! We also finished up the study Scotty has been leading on the attributes of God. It was a rich time, as it always is, to meditate and talk about God's amazing attributes that cause us to worship Him and understand His ways more and more. My best friend Ally has come for a visit and she was gracious enough to lead the kids time for the whole day, even though she doesn't speak much Spanish- kids have many ways of communicating! We finally feel like there is more of a camaraderie forming between the members of the team and we are excited for all that we have ahead of us in the next couple of months.

Winter Wonderland

We've had a few days of fluke weather this winter. Normally, there is very little or no precipitation during the dry winter months in Bolivia. The past 4 days or so, God has chosen to shake things up a bit. As our friends, the Hursts, were driving back from the conference in Cochabamba on Sunday, they crawled along in a 4 hour blizzard! Since arriving home from Cochabamba, the weather has remained overcast with showers, meaning snow for the higher altitudes. It almost never snows in the city, but as we passed through El Alto on our way to Lake Titicaca yesterday, we saw the left-overs of the snow that had fallen several days ago. I've never seen snow there before- it was beautiful! El Alto is typically a somewhat depressing city to drive through, the signs of poverty and hopelessness impossible to ignore. But, with a layer of shiny, if fairly dirty, white snow covering the rooftops and ground- it almost looked enchanting! We laughted at the funny snowmen/snowanimals/snowfamilies that we passed on our way out of town and marvelled at the snow-dusted Cordillera Real mountains that lined the horizon. As much as I yearn for warm weather these days, I must say that God is a master of creation and beauty and be thankful for His hand in creating this scene for us.

Enjoying a delicious dinner with our good friends

If you're wondering why I haven't written in a while- I will explain. Last Saturday night Scotty and I excitedly awaited the arrival of two very good friends from Charlotte, Laura and Andrew. Andrew took on the position of a fill-in preacher at the local international church for 3 weeks while they await a new pastor later in the year. We so enjoyed getting to know this couple during our year in Charlotte and have been enjoying their presence and encouragement with us in Bolivia. I was especially impressed when we showed up to the international church last week and instead of Andrew only preaching, as they prepared him in advance to do, they asked him if he was ready with a few songs and to give the Lord's supper...he had to run and create the entire service because none of the normal leadership was around! He rolled with it extremely gracefully and led us all in a beautiful time of worship as if he'd done it a hundred times before. The first week of their stay, we had planned on taking Laura and Andrew to Cochabamba for our annual SIM conference. Our La Paz SIM team, minus children The morning we were planning on driving to the conference, we received a call from one of our teammates who informed us there were blockades halfway through the journey that would not be passable...we would have to fly. But, there were also no flights that day, so we'd have to be a day late for the conference and go the next day. We managed to get out of the house by 5:15 in the morning to make it to the airport in time for our short flight to Coch and arrived at conference just in time for the first morning session. I so enjoyed meeting a bunch of SIM missionaries whose names I've heard, but I've never met in person. One of the most impactful times for me was hearing the stories of fellow missionaries who have been serving in Bolivia for 15, 25, or 35 years! They came young, had children, raised their children, and some are even grandparents of kids who are still in Bolivia. I was inspired to see the commitment and love that these families had for this country, for the Lord, and for taking part in God's raising up of Christian leadership in the church. It's good to be a part of a family that is deeply rooted in this culture because that is what Scotty and I also aspire to do. We left conference early, again because of a lack of flights back, and look forward to another week of touring and hanging out with our friends. The day they leave is Bolivian Independence Day and we have an all day church planting retreat that day to discuss and work through many issues that have been left hanging for the last month or so. We are getting excited about the possibility of opening the church doors in a matter of months and have much work to do in order to be prepared for that. Scotty and I invited Edgar, the man who will be our temporary pastor, and his family over for lunch a week or so ago and enjoyed getting to know them better and expressed our joy at the prospect of them joining on and helping lead us into outreach in this community. God has big plans!