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.