10 Things I love about Cochabamba

Scotty and I are leaving for Cochabamba today. Besides being my first home in Bolivia, where Scotty and I met and got engaged, and home to the world's perfect climate, there are several other things I love about Cochabamba that I always look forward to when we go (in no particular order):

10. Did I mention the climate? It is temperate all year round- never very hot, never very cold.

9. Casa Campestre. A small, wooded resort near my old apartment with a beautiful (if cold) pool and enormous, scrumptious lunch buffet- $5 for the day- all inclusive.

8. Mauge- Scotty and my old Spanish teacher. She encouraged our relationship, encouraged our souls, and taught us everything we ever needed to know about speaking Spanish. We always stay at her house when we go and really enjoy her and her family.

7. Cine Center. Coch has this beautiful, new, American-style theatre- complete with food court and cushy theatre chairs- but with Bolivian prices. Now, if they would just play something other than horror flicks...

6. Food! Cochabamba is known for big portions, yummy dishes, and seemingly continuous eating- I think that will mesh nicely with a pregnant woman's needs.

5. SIMers- we always run into or actually plan to hang out with other SIM missionaries that live in Coch that we aren't able to see frequently. There are some quality families in this town.

4. The Cancha- Cochabamba boasts a very large market with a very large used clothes section. Most of the clothes come in from the states and if you dig hard enough and walk around long enough, you will find some great stuff at ridiculously low prices. I'm very hopeful to increase my maternity wardrobe during this trip.

3. The drive over. Bolivia has an incredible, varied topography and the drive from the altiplano- a very high, flat region with huge fields of llamas and distant snowy peaks eventually begins winding through the rocky mountains and descending into the warmer valley of Cochabamba. Although it's about a 5 hour drive, it's a breathtaking ride.

2. Reminiscing with my husband. Coch holds many sweet memories for us and many localations where we pseudo-dated and got to know each other. It never fails that we spend half the time walking around saying "remember when...?"

1. Green! Although the city is still at a fairly high altitude, it boasts many green, grassy parks with flowers and trees dotted throughout. La Paz remains mostly brown throughout the year, and even though it has a few nicely landscaped areas, it doesn't compare to the lushness of Cochabamba.

So, we'll be attending a wedding on Saturday of some friends who will later move up to La Paz and be an adoptive part of our SIM team here and also pick up a rocking chair from a beloved missionary family who will be moving back to Australia after 20 years of service in Bolivia. Mixed in will be much relaxation and enjoying this city that we love so much.

Blessings

We had a couple over for dinner last night that have been attending our small group and are really excited to be learning from other couples how they parent their children and interested in learning how they can change their own techniques to do a better job. This seems to be a standard concern and interest of all the families we know here. This particular couple are fairly young in the faith and over the years have just stopped hanging out with their friends and co-workers because of the terrible, family and marriage-destroying habits they daily practice. It's good to see the way God has worked in this couples lives, despite not being regularly involved in sound, Biblical teaching, but a little sad to hear them admit that they don't have any friends. They have work "companions", but no one they could go to with anything serious or very personal. But, as we chatted last night, we did hear them admit they are really enjoying the process of getting to know other believers through our small group. They came to church for the first time last week and said their kids loved Sunday school and want to come again. That was enough for them to commit to coming weekly, or as often as work responsibilities will allow. It is truly a blessing to be a part of a group like this that is meeting each others needs. or learning to, and walking together on the journey of what it means to live a life devoted and submitted to the Lord. We are so thankful that God has invited us to participate in this great work of His.

Neighborhood store

If you need a coke or eggs or canned milk or bread or toilet paper- there's usually a small, one room store within a block of anywhere where you might be in La Paz. You can't actually enter the store, but look from the gate and ask for whatever it is you might want, and chances are, if you don't see it, it's hidden somewhere. I love that. This morning I woke up and needed eggs to make a dish for our team meeting- I rolled out of bed, put on my shoes, and headed to the neighborhood store. The lady there knows me and looked like she had also recently gotten out of bed- braiding her long, wet hair and looking a little less than fully awake. She counted out 12 nice little brown eggs for me, I handed over my change and walked back to the house, appreciating the perfect blue skies and quietness of the morning in Mallasilla. All in about 5 minutes. I also thanked God for neighborhood stores.

Cheddar and Malphurs

Ok, I feel a little like a "cat lady" posting this picture- but I think our two cats are the most irresistibly cutest cats that ever lived...most of the time. I'm sure once the baby is born, I won't be posting pictures of my cats anymore- don't worry. They snuggle like this every day- how cute is that??

Good day/Bad day

You know how you have those days when nothing seems to work out as you want it to? Scotty and I had one of those days yesterday, for the most part. Going to the market here is usually an exhausting process of driving, looking for parking, lots of walking, searching for one little thing you need in a sea of products (think several Walmarts spread out over dirty, crowded streets full of cars with absolutely no order in where things are), and sometimes never finidng what you need. Well, we decided to make it a market day- realizing that this could possibly be most of what we get done. On the way, we tried to meet up with a guy who is working on some paperwork issues for us to hand over our ID card. After getting bad directions from him and driving around for 20 mins, we finally found the place to meet and he informed us he was with someone else and would be down "right away"...sometimes that means within the half hour, usually not right away. So, as we waited for him in the car, we realized we had forgotten what we needed to turn in to him. In the process, it is nearing lunchtime, I'm hungry, and we haven't even started the shopping spree yet. We finally make it to the market, search high and low for various articles, and find a few others we "needed" that we didn't realize we needed, and then headed to our favorite Cuban restaurant for a late lunch. The rest of the day was full of little frustrations and a few tense interactions between Scotty and me, which always got worked through, but it make for a tiring, long day. Then, everything changed late in the evening. We had set a date to go to a neighbor's house who owns a piece of property we were very interested in buying to talk price and make a deal. He had gone up from what he initially offered us but after much prayer and seeking the wisdom of good friends who have also bought land here, we had come to an agreement between ourselves of what we wanted to offer him. When we got to his house, he started talking about how he'd spoken with his daughter, who has the land in her name, and she felt like the price he had given us was too low. Both of our hearts sunk and as he rambled on, we both prayed fervently for God's grace and guidance in our interactions. We had a long, drawn-out conversation, mostly about things completely unrelated to the property (as he has a tendency to tell stories) and finally came straight out with our price we wanted to pay and our inability to pay any more than that. He seemed relieved to know exactly what we were thinking and almost immediately agreed to accept that price, without counter-offering! God was surely at work here! We left his house with a bag full of lemons and oranges from other land he owns, and happy to have not only a new piece of land (God-willing, after the paperwork goes through), but a new friend too! Then, from the time we left the house this morning, things we weren't even thinking about just started falling into place, the right people to help kept appearing, and the most exciting event of all- the internet company came to our house (unexpectedly) and installed high speed internet in 10 minutes!! I am sitting in my guest bedroom, looking at our present and future land, and writing a blog! I can't explain quite how good this feels. So, we rejoice in the challenges, knowing that God is refining our character and asking us to lean on Him and be patient through the strength His Spirit gives, and we rejoice in the good days, when we know He is being abundantly gracious in making things easier than they have to be.

Fun in the jungle

The fun started on Sunday with the long-awaited move of the Mallasilla Bible Church from the Alfaro's house to Highlands International School- a few blocks down the road. We've been seeing the need for more space for a couple months and we got ourselves in order to find a more permanent home at Highlands. Scotty and I worked to clean up the area on Saturday and set up chairs and equipment. Because of last minute circumstances outside our control over the weekend, we weren't able to coordinate signs to point the way (Highlands is a little hard to find if you've never been there) or some other little details, but much prayer and God's goodness worked all those things out. We saw a high attendence and a general excitement about being in this new place, that although a humble cafeteria by week, really felt like a church on Sunday. We enjoyed lots of worship, a good Word from pastor Edgar, a moving testimony by our friend Dave Fox who has partnered with us from Chicago, along with his church, and communion. After the service we had a celebratory snack and everyone hung around to talk. I think it couldn't have gone better and we hope to continue improving as we go on.

Monday morning we were up early to meet a team from Greg's home church in Dallas. This group consists of youth staff from his church, meaning lots of laughs and fun times- I love youth workers! Our mission was to drive to the mountainous jungle region where there is a Christian camp and work on a few of the unfinished apartments that are being built in the hopes of hosting families and couples in a more comfortable and private enviornment than the normal larger cabins. One apartment had been started a few years ago and was left to be habitated by large wasp nests and bats. The bats had been cleared out (all but one, which scared me and my painting partner a bit as we were wiping bat poop off the walls where he lived), but the wasps had been left for us. Part of the camp time was also leadership strategy training- how to improve our team dynamics as leaders in our various ministries. The wasps proved to be our first challenge. It turned out that the best idea was dip some socks in alcohol, tie them to the end of a long stick, light it, and burn/poke the nests down. I stood far away to watch this one, but couldn't resist watching. It actually worked and we found that the strange thing was that either these were incredibly passive wasps or God was doing a mighty job of protecting all of us. Many of the guys were right up by the nests, even aggrivating them, and never got stung. There were quite a few hunks of nest and wasp scattered over the ground, but they were never aggresive and as we worked, everyone escaped without the slightest fear of a sting. This apartment was a disaster, but the team organized itself, we each stuck to our pre-determined roles, and we were able to clear out a ton of junk, wipe down walls, paint, and screen in some windows in a matter of a couple work periods. And, we had a lot of fun doing it! We also enjoyed the various team-building exercises, led by a Christian leader training group out of Santa Cruz, and were challenged to think about how these practical and Biblical examples could improve the leadership situation we are in personally. We feel like we've already made some good friends and look forward to more time with this team this weekend as we, the Mallasilla Bible Church, join them for a group work project at an orphanage in El Alto.

Cat skeleton that we found when cleaning out the apartment- some were convinced it was a bat.

Wallyball

Wallyball is a much loved sport here in Bolivia. I'm not sure if it's unique to this country but I know that almost everyone here enjoys playing it. Wally is played in an enclosed raquetball court with a volleyball net. The rules are generally the same as volleyball, only 3 hits on each side before it goes over, rotation, serving, etc...all the same. But, the fun extra rule is that it's OK to hit the ball off the walls. If I'm hitting the ball over the net, aiming for the wall of the opposing team can often cause the ball to bounce off and land somewhere where no one is ready to hit it back. It's also good for people like me who aren't particularly gifted in sports and can't always control where the ball is going to go. As long as I hit it, it can bounce off a wall no problem, and someone else can be responsible for getting it over the net. Also, if you can't get to the ball in time with your hands (because it's too low), you are allowed to use your feet to kick it. This is particularly popular in a soccer playing society. I don't like to dive for balls on hard wood floors, so I have successfully and unsuccessfully utilized the kick manouver. We've started getting together every Wednesday night with a few from our small group and other random friends to play Wally. If there are girls on either team, the game stays fairly calm, but when the girls sit out, the game gets pretty competitive. It's a fun time to interact with our Bible study people and meet others as well. Another couple has begun coming, the woman also pregnant. I'm hoping to get to know her better, having pregnancy in common, and would love to see them attending our Bible study as we spend the next month talking about parenting. Two teenagers from a house nearby come every week too and will also pop in off and on to the church on Sundays now. We're hoping to encourage them to become more regular and would like to have their parents over for dinner this week. It's neat to see the different ways God is opening doors for us in the community.

Bribes

There are many things in Bolivia that are controversial for Christians to participate in. One, about 98% of movies for sale are copied versions- they rent them in the video stores, they sell them on the streets. What do we do about this? Two, it is not illegal to copy books, entire books- textbooks, novels, any book you bring in to a photocopy place will copy and bind it for you for a low fee...I must admit that it is really nice when you can't find English books very easily and when your friends have great Christian books you'd love to read or do a group Bible study on and know this is a fast, easy way to do it. But, is it right?? The third, and potentially most tricky problem is cops asking for bribes. We have gotten stopped by cops various times for various things- usually something we didn't know we were doing wrong. Sometimes, the cop will give you a ticket and you have to go somewhere far away and usually hard to get to, or they will ask you to buy them a coke or newspaper instead (bribe!). Scotty and I have talked numerous times about this problem and realize that it's much more difficult and much more expensive to do the right thing, but we want to do it. We were heading into town to see a movie on Friday night- we get about 3 movies worth watching in the theatre each year. On certain days you can not enter a downtown radius if you have a lisence plate that starts with a certain number. We completely forgot about this rule and remembered just as received the whistle and hard tap on our window from the cop standing at the traffic light we were about to pass through. Both of us were instantly annoyed at ourselves for forgetting something that never changes. We pulled over and got the talk from the cop and he told us how much it was going to cost. Then he pulled out his book of tickets that were conveniently (I think he has this book on purpose) out of tickets. "What do you want to do about this?" he asks. This means- "if you give me some money, I'll let you off". We tell him to ask another cop who's wandering around nearby for one of his tickets. He ignores that and shows us again his empty book of tickets- "what can we do about this?". We tell him that either he needs to give us a ticket or let us turn around and drive back out of the restricted area. He bends over to peer in the window and asks me what I think we should do. I tell him the same thing. He nodds that he's going to let us go and then says something about recognizing his good will, a.k.a., paying him for letting us go. Scotty finally tells him that we are Christians and that we don't believe it's right to do that. Before he can even get the whole sentence out, the guy is waving us on to leave. So, we were thankful that he was merciful with us, but it left me thinking about the inevitability of similar things happening again in the future. Sometimes the situation is not so cut and dry, sometimes the cops are not so nice, sometimes you get pulled over for something you know is not wrong because the cop just wants to get some extra money...what do we do?? We are thinking through all these things and wanting to find answers that glorify the Lord and don't compromise our Christian witness. We want to live in a way that is in line with the Holy Spirits direction of our consciences.