I was behind a taxi driver the other day, who had a big sign in the back window which proclaimed “GOD IS MY DRIVER!” in big letters. After following this fellow for a couple of kilometres, I felt the urge to have a conversation with God. In His infinite wisdom and knowledge, somehow God hadn’t grasped the concept of lane changes and signal lights. Ah well… Most days the fact that I’m sharing the road with 1000 estupido idiotas (hey, you just learned your first Spanish!) doesn’t really bother me that much. But there are days. Today was such a day. I’m sorry, but someone turning right from the left lane (in front of four lanes of traffic) just annoys me. My horn only works sporadically, which is probably God’s way of saving me from having to seek forgiveness from random people. Then to make a great day even better, I was driving past the transit police with Edly, when one of the officers waved me over. He told me I had three outstanding parking tickets and had to go pay them or he would arrest me. This was a bit of a surprise for me. We had to park and go into the transit office where another fellow dug through a huge pile of old ticket booklets and sure enough, pulled out three tickets….from 2005….when I didn’t actually live in Bolivia. When I tried to explain this to
him, he just looked at me and said, “When you bought the truck, you bought the problems.” Okay then…

As a side note, I think I bribed my first police officer the other day. When the girls and I were up in Cochabamba, I accidentally got on the wrong street where only busses headed for the market are supposed to drive. A police officer waved me down and said that I couldn’t be on that street. I wasn’t sure what to do about it since the street was full of people and busses and vendors and animals… He told me to just back up. I was like, “Really? How?” Then he proceeded to make everyone pull over and get out of the way while this stupid gringo backed up for half a block to the intersection. It was one of my prouder moments…. Anyhow, then he told me that he was going to have to write me a ticket. I didn’t want to have to figure out where to pay it and such, so I innocently asked if I could just pay him. He hesitated a moment and then closed his ticket book and sombrely said, “Yes…yes you can.”

I want to take a moment to introduce you to a couple of the guys here, Yimi (Jimmy) and Daniel. Yimi is a great kid. I’ve actually given him permission to marry one of my sisters (I’m thinking Natasha). He’s the goalie for our futbol team and has one of the gentlest and kindest spirits I’ve seen down here. I hardly ever see him angry or really frustrated.

You can imagine my surprise when he showed up one morning, after spending the night with his family, with a broken hand. I asked Edly what happened, and she said that he had gotten so angry with his father that he had punched a wall. I had a hard time imagining that, knowing Yimi. But as it turns out, his family drinks…a lot. I always wondered why Yimi was living with us, since his parents live just up the road. But when his dad and mom start drinking, they start fighting. And from what I understand, they can really fight…and then they take it out on Yimi.

I took Yimi aside a bit later and talked to him about that night. The conversation started out being about what happened (Yimi said that he had already forgiven his dad, because his dad wasn’t really a bad guy), and eventually moved on to our relationships with God. I’m learning that I really can’t make assumptions about these guys. Somehow I had thought Yimi was a pretty strong Christian kid (based on his personality I guess), but as it turned out, he’d only been a Christian for about a year and really didn’t understand much about the decision he’d made. He thought that because there was still sin in his life, somehow his decision hadn’t been good enough. He was still trying to make a “complete” decision. It didn’t seem to me that grace really entered into the picture at all. So we decided to start meeting together regularly and work through some basic “this is what it means to be a Christians” stuff. I could hardly believe how much it meant to him to just sit and have a conversation like that. The fact that someone took the time to ask him what had happened was a huge thing for him.

The other fellow is Daniel. Daniel’s another kid who’s a bit quiet until you get to know him. He’s got a great sense of humour and loves to help out. He just up and washed my truck one day without anyone even asking him to….and trust me, it wasn’t exactly clean. =)

Last night I was dropping one of the guys off at the home before I went back into town for the night. Daniel was standing by himself by the gate, so I invited him to sit in the truck with me to visit for a bit. I asked him how he was doing, and he said not very good. So I asked him why. He just simply said that his family doesn’t want to know him. The boys had an opportunity to go and visit family for a couple of days, but Daniel’s family didn’t want him to bother coming.

Over and over I hear stories like these. Gifted, compassionate, talented guys…who’s families want nothing to do with them. Or worse, beat them into submission. You have to wonder what that does to a kid, and their ideas of who God is and what it is to be loved unconditionally. They really have no idea what that means.

Some days here are pretty tough…you just wonder if you’re ever going to make any headway. You can see God working, but for every one step forward someone makes, someone else takes 17 steps back. But of course there are good days too. God is bringing healing, but it’s definitely going to take some time to undo the years of abuse that most of these guys have experienced.

Before I go, some prayer requests. Please pray for Yimi and Daniel, and the other guys, that they would receive healing and understand the grace and love that God has for them.

We’ve been struggling with some discipline/obedience issues (guys sneaking out at night…drug use…stealing). Miguel finally dropped them boom on a group of guys and laid down the law (as a side note, one of their punishments was to “let down their hair”…shave their heads. This has been a great source of entertainment to me. The tables have turned shall we say…). The guys have responded well, but we really need God to work and change hearts in this. There is too much “surface Christianity” here…the guys act in ways that they know are acceptable, but their hearts aren’t really affected.

As well, tomorrow (Sunday) we are having elections for which political parties will be helping to rewrite our constitution here. It’s a pretty big deal. Our current President (while doing some good things) has a fairly strange anti-God/anti-church agenda (among other disturbing things). Please pray that the people here will have wisdom as they vote. Many of the highland people are uneducated and uniformed of what’s happening politically. The simply vote for the President because he’s “one of them”…a highlander.

And finally, personally I feel like I’ve been coming under some fairly strong spiritual attacks lately. It’s been a bit overwhelming at times. So if you could pray for protection and peace for me…that would be great.

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, but with my sisters here and teams…it’s been a bit busy. We haven’t been able to call out of the home either lately (we uh….didn’t pay the phone bill), so I can’t get online with my computer. I have to drive out to the airport where I can use their free high speed wireless. I don’t mind (there’s a Subway here) but it’s a bit time consuming, so I don’t get a chance all that often. Hopefully sometime in the next few months I should be able to get a phone line at my house (it’s…complicated.). Thanks to all who have been keeping in contact and again, my apologies if I haven’t written back. I really appreciate the mail though. And I am trying to catch up! =)

Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends. I bought cakes and fireworks for the boys for tonight…we’re going to have a good time. Sugar and explosions…two of my favourite things combined in one holiday. It doesn’t get much better….

Thanks again for praying!

Hasta luego,

Ken