Machetes

Before I came to Bolivia, people would ask me what I was going to be doing at Familia Feliz. I honestly had no idea so I’d tell them that I was most likely going to be a teacher, a house dean, a cook (Pretty sure nothing will be edible when it’s my week to cook. The whole cooking over an open fire is a new concept) and maybe even cut the grass with a machete. The last part I always said jokingly but when school finished Monday afternoon and all the students gathered to start work assignments, guess who tramped out to the citrus field with a machete to cut down grass? I carried my machete proudly but it was pretty evident from the start that I had no clue what I was doing. No matter how hard I hit the roots with my machete, it would not cut. Maribel, one of my girls who is small for being seven years old, started cutting weeds right away and put me to shame. After I struggled for a bit, she noticed and tugged on my skirt saying, “No, teacher.” She then proceeded to show me how to cut the grass, which honestly looked the same as how I’d been trying to cut, but she was actually being successful. Two hours later, two more students had tried to teach me how to use a machete and it still wasn’t working. I used a hoe for most of two hours but would occasionally try to figure out the whole machete situation again. One of the other sm’s, Josh, assured me that I’d get the hang of using a machete by the end of the week. By the second day, I had a handle on it and was able to actually cut the grass. It wasn’t perfect but I had the rest of the week to practice.

It’s crazy to think that I’ve only been here for two and a half week. For the one week of school that I have had, this is what a normal school day looks like at Familia Feliz.

5:00am – I wake up and wake up my 13 girls to have their morning worship. It’s definitely a struggle getting up so early and sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m the adult and that I need to get the students up, not the other way around.

5:30 – Depending on the day, we will either all have worship in our living room or we will take a walk to the church and have morning worship there with everyone.

6:00 – staff worship.

6:30 – All the girls in my house have to shower and do their morning chores for the day and prepare for school.

7:30 – Breakfast. This depends on who’s cooking. A couple days ago we ate at 7:50, which started our school day off late.

8:00 – Class. From this time until lunch, I teach.  My first class is a group of 9^th graders and I teach them English. I also teach Bible class to 8^th grade and my final morning class is English to 11^th grade (We have grades k-11).

12:30 – Lunch. Again, it varies on when it can be cooked.

1:30 – Agriculture class. I was asked to help teach this class to grades 1-4 with another teacher. My dad would be so proud of me since he use to be a farmer. As it turns out, agriculture class is just hauling buckets of water from the house to the citrus orchards and watering all the tress. Sorry Dad.

2:15 – P.E. This is for the same class grades 1-4. The two classes kind of run into each other. So far, the students have been just playing soccer and volleyball but starting next week, we’re actually going to have a planned P.E. where we have games to play.

3pm – Job assignments. The jobs vary but they either involve cleaning, cooking or macheting.

5:30 – Supper!

6:20 – Study hall. This time is a blessed time for all the volunteers. This is when all of the students gather in the cafeteria and do their homework and supposedly study. Two volunteers have to be down there to answer questions but the rest of us are free to relax and take a break from the kids. We each rotate with watching the kids each week. So far I’ve used my free time to work on my lesson plans for the next day or write my blogs to upload when I go into town on Sundays and have Internet.

8pm – Worship. This could either be in the church with all of Familia Feliz or in my own house with my girls depending on the day.

9pm – Lights off and bedtime for the girls. I go around to each door with Kimberly and we wish each one of our thirteen girls goodnight, give tons of hugs and kisses then return to our room.

9:30 or 10 – My bedtime! Usually I stay up a little extra making sure the girls are in bed then I talk to Kimberly about my day and work on lesson plans for the next day.

And that’s the routine schedule that I’ve fallen into this week. As far as I know, that’s what it will be every week but I’m guessing there will be some changes.

  

 

Did I just become an adult?

I think my first Sabbath here is when I became an adult. I got to sleep in until 7am on Sabbath morning and after Sabbath school, church and lunch was finished, I took a nap. That’s something my parents use to do on Sabbaths when I was younger and something I always thought adults did every Sabbath afternoon. (Either that or a Sabbath walk) And you know what, I enjoyed every minute of that nap. I’ve accepted the part of adulthood where sleep means everything.
Sabbath evening, I came downstairs for supper and realized that my mom had been trying to prepare me for that moment for so many years. We had popcorn for supper and we will have popcorn for supper every Sabbath night. Popcorn’s not bad, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never liked eating it that much just because it doesn’t have that great a taste and it always gets stuck in your teeth. Well, we had popcorn and they must have put magic in their popcorn or I was just really hungry and willing to eat anything because I ate a whole bowl of that stuff. Ok, maybe not a bad Sabbath supper tradition after all.
Then all 76 children stayed in the cafeteria room and watched the movie God’s Not Dead. It looked like a pretty good movie but I wasn’t paying too much attention because the kids sitting around me kept on asking how old I was. I tried to say “Tengo noventa-nueve años”, meaning, I’m 99 years old but once I get past forty with counting in Spanish, I’m a little lost so instead I said “Tengo noventa nieve años” and that’s how I told all the children that I am 90 snow years old. That made them all giggle. 

After spending two days in Santa Cruz trying to figure out visa stuff, Kimberly and I finally went to a different airport to be taken to Rurenabaque, the small town next to Familia Feliz. There wasn’t any screening for our bags and I was able to bring a full water bottle with me on the plane. However, once we got out of the airport and onto the tarmac, one of the airport security guys had us lay out our suitcases then brought a K-9 dog over to smell our bags. I’m guessing they were looking for drugs but since we didn’t have any besides a pack of Dayquil and Tylenol, they let us go. Kimberly and I followed the pilot behind several small planes until we arrived at the smallest plane I had ever seen. It seated four but since we had so much luggage and four boxes of fans that our director had bought, there were three seats with luggage up to the ceiling. I was a little shorter than the plane which says something for how small it was since I’m kind of super short.
I sat in the back surrounded by boxes, with my backpack on my lap, Kim sat in front with the pilot, we prayed together (Trust me, I was praying most of the way there anyway), and then we took off. The pilot had said there would be quite a bit of turbulence because the wind was so strong but what’s a little turbulence, right? Let me tell you, this turbulence was nothing like I’d ever experienced before. If you’ve ever been on the roller coaster ride Thunder Mountain at Disney land, it was a lot like that. We made all sorts of twists, turns and dips until I decided that it had been a good experience so far but that it was probably going to end with the engine dying and us plummeting to the earth. Thankfully, that’s not how it ended. Once we got above the clouds, we evened out and flew like a normal airplane would. The ride was so smooth, the pilot even had time to eat lunch and read a book as we flew. (I’m guessing we were on autopilot. Is that a thing?) All to say that God brought us safely to Rurre so that we could finally get to Familia Feliz.

During student missions class, so many people told me to go without any expectations. That’s super hard to do, turns out but I was able to at least not have any expectations about the location or what the place looks like. There are inside showers and that makes me very happy. I was placed in La Casa de Frutas, which translates as the fruit house. That name in itself cracks me up. There’s the vegetable house, the dried fruit house, the bean house, the flower house and Miguel’s house. My house is above the kitchen and cafeteria which I am one thousand times grateful for because that means there’s less chance of a snake coming into my house. As of right now (Although it could change) I have Kimberly living with me in one room. We’re both house moms together but it’s fantastic because she’s already fluent in Spanish so if I’m really struggling to understand what one of my thirteen girls is trying to say (Which happens all the time since their accents are very different from Spain accents), I can get Kimberly to help me out. So yes, thirteen girls are in my house. Currently, I only know five of their names. Hopefully I’ll learn them all fast but they’re very different and hard for me to remember.
Another interesting thing about our house is that if you go to use the bathroom, you can’t leave the bathroom unless you use the kitchen knife that’s laying in the bathroom sink, stick it in the hole in the door where the door handle should be and twist it so that the door pops open. I learned that the hard way after I was stuck in the bathroom for three minutes my first night trying to figure out how to open a locked door that doesn’t have a door handle.

Tomorrow I'll start teaching school. I'm not 100% sure what I'll be teaching yet but it'll be an adventure for sure. 

I still feel a little disoriented but I've been told by the other three Sm's who have been here a month that I'll get use to the run of things in a couple weeks. 

I've arrived!

I'm here! I'm in Bolivia! It was a long trip (about 24 hours total) and I'm glad to be on the ground again.
Things I've noticed about Boliva so far in my 7 hours here:
1) drivers are insane here! I've been in 3 taxi's already and all I could do was hold on as we swerved around the round abouts  (I love round abouts!) and swung through traffic without seatbelts. It was quite exhilarating. It looks very unsafe but I actually feel completely safe.
2) I have a lot of Spanish to pick up. Luckily my director knows both English and Spanish fluently so  I'll be able to learn a lot.
3) I met up with Kimberly, one of the student missionaries, in the Miami airport and I like her already. We're both a little tired from traveling and don't really know what we're doing yet. Is this real life? Are we actually living in a foreign country for a year? It's exciting for sure. I can't wait to meet the other student missionaries that are already at Familia Feliz.
4) we're getting 4 more children at our school who are being taken from their homes because of abuse that is happening at home. The youngest is 4 years old. It was so sad to hear about some of the things the children at the school have gone through that no person, let alone a child, should have to go through. With these four children, our grand total will be 76 kids at Familia Feliz! That's a lot of children. I can't wait to meet each one and get to know them better.

Seven hours isn't that long to be here and I still don't know a lot about my next 10 months or what I'll be doing but I'm now more excited than scared about my time here. God's got me and with Him I have nothing to worry about as long as I remember that.

He said go

Summer camp has just come to a close and the beginning of my 10 months in Bolivia is just about to begin (in 12 days to be exact). 

Why am I doing this? My college, Southern, is super big into student missions. We have student mission vespers, there is a missions Bible group and club you can join and the idea of missions has always been around me my past three years there. I started praying about being a student missionary my freshman year of college but never felt impressed to go beyond praying about it. 

Last summer, the majority of my camp friends were returning student missionaries and after talking to one of them about her experience serving in the islands, I decided to start praying about the possibility of student missions again. There were never any huge signs that God gave to prompt me towards serving Him this year but I decided that if it was what God wanted, I would apply to be a missionary and if God didn't have that in His plan then He would stop me in my tracks. There have been obstacles, but God has worked things out and here I am - about to go to South America. 

Familia Feliz is an orphanage that I will be serving at this year. From the little amount of information that I know about it, I will be a house mom, a teacher, probably a cook (Hopefully I'll be able to eventually make edible food and not burn everything), possibly cut the grass with a machete and anything and everything else in between - whatever needs to be done. 

So here I am, 12 days before my departure and strongly dependent on God for my fund raising and His guidance because I have no clue what I am getting myself into. I am nervous, clueless but really excited for this journey that God is preparing me for. 

Warning: My blog posts will most likely be very random and sometimes I am too sassy for my own good, but that's just me and I'd love for you to follow along with me on this crazy journey that I'm about to start.