A day in the life of Ken the missionary…

Ten minutes after realizing that the reason I’m freezing cold is that I’ve kicked off one blanket and the other is turned sideways so my feet are hanging out…Juan come crashing into my room telling me that we’re late for his doctor’s appointment. So at the ridiculous hour of 6:30 we’re off to the clinic. It’s freezing cold out.

Juan does his thing in a cup…and we’re back home for devotions by 8:30.

While we’re waiting for the last couple of guys to join us, Sandro asks me if I want some hot chocolate. Since it’s still freezing cold, I say yes…even though I have a fleeting thought of “I didn’t think we had any hot chocolate mix…”

The hot chocolate is actually pretty good…although it seems a bit thicker than normal.

After devotions I go into the kitchen to find the guys making more hot chocolate…using a President’s Choice brownie mix my sister’s brought me from Canada two years ago.

Oh…during our prayer time I opened my eyes (some of the guys pray for a really long time) and I look down to see a piece of rice on the floor. Not unusual, the way guys eat. No wait…it’s moving. That is unusual. I imagine that it’s an ant carrying the rice to his little house. So I kick at the rice to see the ant. Nope…no ant. The rice is walking. Well…obviously it’s not a piece of rice but some new, bizarre bug I haven’t seen before. Oh look, there’s more…and they all seem to be waddling towards my feet.

Okay…yea, I’ve seen this movie! Some weird alien life form that’s going to burrow into my toes and take over my brain. Oh listen…the alien bugs make a funny popping noise when you step on them. Wow, there’s a lot of them. Shoot…I think it’s my turn to pray…or is Rudy just pausing…I have no idea…

Over breakfast I argue with Juan and Rudy about how amazing peanut butter is. They think I’m crazy. How can 100 million North Americans be wrong I say. So they try it…and like it. I realize what I’ve done, grab back my peanut butter jar and tell them I’m not sharing and they can’t have any more. Peanut butter is expensive here.

I organize the guys to do their chores and sit down to figure out my financial receipts. The wind is blowing so strongly through the crack where my window doesn’t close right, that it’s blowing the receipts onto the floor. Did I mention it’s freezing? I’m still wearing the longjohns, pajama pants, sweatshirt and fleece jacket I slept in. Except I pulled on a pair of jeans over the longjohns and pajama pants to go to the doctor’s office with Juan. It’s not all that comfortable but at least I’m a bit warmer.

I spend the next half hour duct taping all the cracks closed on my window.

Ah…lunch. Rice. I have nothing more to say about that. Wait, yes I do. I’ve eaten rice twice a day, seven days a week for the past three years. If every rice plant in the world died tomorrow I would dance my happy dance.

I spend the afternoon trying to motivate the guys to study since they have an important exam on Sunday. I cajole, threaten and bribe them…yes, my parents taught me well. Of course it didn’t really work with me, so why should it work with these guys. After a while I don’t care any more and I go play a video game.

The guys all leave for their evening classes. Ah, peace and quiet. I always thought my mom missed us when we left for school. Now I’m not so sure…

I’m still freezing, so I decide I should take a bath. I’m not really one for baths, but my new bathroom has a bathtub which I’ve never used yet…so why not. It’d be nice to be warm. There aren’t any taps for the tub, just the shower. Showers here have electric heaters on the shower heads (or showers of death as we like to call them) and to get hot water you have to turn down the speed of the shower. The slower the water…the hotter the water.

So I wait for over an hour for the tub to fill with nice hot water. I’m actually starting to anticipate my hot bath. This tub isn’t plastic…it’s porcelain. Which I thought was a good thing. Until I settled in and realized that the porcelain was still freezing cold. My nice hot bath lasted a good three minutes before the tub made the water cold and it was time to get out. But I will say that it was a relaxing three minutes. It’s a very comfortable tub.

I’m cooking supper for the guys, so I decide to make my favourite standby…goulash. I put the water on to boil for the noodles and figure I’ll put a movie on to watch while I wait. This is a DVD that I bought back in December because I heard it was a good movie…but then I never got around to watching it. Then in February I remembered that it was a good movie and forgot that I bought it in December and bought it again. Now in May I’m finally sitting down to see it. I watch the first two minutes and realize that I’d watched it in October when I was home in Canada. I didn’t like it that much.

I go to check on the water…it’s not boiling. I come back ten minutes later…it’s still not boiling. This goes on for over an hour. Finally I figure there’s something wrong with the water (I’m not kidding) and so I dump it out…wash the pot again and put more water on to boil. Half an hour later it’s still not boiling. It’s then that I realize that, even though the burner is on high, there’s only a little flicker of a flame coming out under the pot.

Ah…we’re out of gas. So I make Jimmy go to the corner store to buy more. Yes again, my parents taught me well. It’s what teenagers are for.

The guys arrive home and they like the goulash! They don’t always like my Canadian cooking. But tonight’s a hit. So that’s nice. Although they want to know what the name of it is in Spanish. They mock me when I don’t know. It’s goulash…I don’t even know what that is in English.

I lectured David for tracking mud into the house and then another kid for not turning off the bathroom light when he was finished. And yay, it’s official. I’m a parent.

Now it’s 12:30 at night and the house is quiet. Franz cleaned the stove tonight without having to be asked, because at breakfast I talked about not being lazy and waiting to be told to do something that needs to be done. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

And yep…in seven hours I’ll be up to do it all over again. Except without the weird alien bugs.

I hope.

A day in the life of Ken the missionary.

Just thought I’d let you all know that David is doing well.  My mom was wondering if this would be kind of traumatic for him.  But it doesn’t seem to be really.  He’s more worried over his hair than he seems to be over the fact that someone hit him with a gun.  But these guys have all lived on the streets in the past, so while this isn’t exactly a normal occurance, it’s not unheard of either.

My mom also laughed at my comment the night it happened, that, “…the economy being what it is in Bolivia these days, fortunately the guys who attacked him couldn’t afford bullets…”  I thought it was funny.  But that’s what we Switzer’s do in momments of stress.  We make jokes.

                                         

Anyhow…thanks to all of you who’ve been praying for David.  He said to say thanks when I told him people in Canada were praying.  I think he liked the idea.

Have a good one folks…and feel free to at least smile over the fate of David’s hair.

 

Last night around 9:30 Sandro came barreling into my room and frantically told me…well, he frantically told me a bunch of stuff, most of which I didn’t actually understand. But I got the gist that something had happened to David’s head. That seemed important enough for us to hop in the truck and go to the bus stop where he was waiting for us. As we drove, I got a bit more information. It seemed that someone had attacked David as he was walking to catch his bus after school (he studies at night).

When we got to the corner where David was waiting, I saw him holding his jersey (his favourite Bolivia futbol jersey sad to say) to his head and it was covered in blood. We took off for the hospital, which fortunately wasn’t too far away. I was able to go into the emergency room with David and watch while the doctors examined his head. The cut wasn’t that wide, but I was surprised by how deep it was. I was sad for David, but I kind of enjoyed watching the whole examine the cut thing. Later I wanted to watch them suture him up, but sadly they kicked me out.

Anyhow, I was given the list of medicine and whatnots that the doctor needed, and Sandro and I were off to the pharmacy to buy everything. Hospitals here don’t have much in the way of medicine or bandages…that’s the responsibility of the family or friends of the victim to buy. So if you ever need to go to the hospital, it’s important to have someone with you who can run and get whatever you need. It took us three tries at three different pharmacies to find everything. The last pharmacy was a pretty good distance away and we were hoofin’ it pretty fast. Poor Sandro…he’s the shortest of the bunch, and his legs had were working double time to keep up. I’ve got these big, long gringo legs and can move fairly quickly when the urge hits me. I’m sure we were pretty entertaining to anyone watching.

Back at the hospital, I handed over our bad of medicine and bandages, and things started getting more complicated. Poor David was laying there with his head partially shaved as the doctores cleaned the cut. I felt pretty bad for him…which really wasn’t necessary as it turns out. He was so drugged up that he didn’t feel a thing. He was happy as anything laying there.

I, on the other hand, was not so happy. I was given a lengthy lecture of what I was supposed to do now…only about half of which I actually understood (I’m not exactly up on my medical/hospital terminology in Spanish). But I got enough of it to understand where I was supposed to go. So I went there and hoped they knew what I was supposed to do next. Those people told me a bunch of other things and sent me on my way again. That was pretty much how the rest of the night went.

As it turned out, I had to arrange for x-rays and pay for things and talk to the police and give David’s medical history (and explain each time that yes, I am his father more or less and no he doesn’t have any other family and yes, it is interesting that I’m a white guy and I’m taking care of him…) and then go pay for more things. I just kind of stumbled from place to place in a bit of a daze hoping that the next person I talked to would know what I was supposed to be doing. It worked.

While we waited for the x-ray guy to finish with another family, I got the whole story from David. While he was walking to where he catches the bus, talking on his cell phone, two guys hopped out of a car and tried to steal his phone and backpack. He pushed the guy who was in front of him and started to run away. When he took off, the other guy managed to crack him over the back of his head with the butt of his pistol. But David kept running, and managed to get away (and also held onto his phone and backpack, which he was proud of. I told him he was my hero and that made him laugh). 

This could have been so much worse. Obviously we’re very thankful for God’s protection. This just shows once again, the importance of prayer. So thank you for praying for us! David’s pretty sore, but he’s doing well. He’s enjoying sitting in front of the TV this morning and being lazy. He get’s to do whatever he wants…at least for today. He probably won’t be as happy when we have to shave the rest of his head to match the hole he’s got right now. We have his head x-rays propped up where we can all see them. I told him that I’ve had my doubts in the past, but now he’s got actual proof that he does, in fact, have a brain. Oh, come on…that’s funny. We all laughed (including David). =)

Thanks again for praying! The last picture is of David with the knife that he says he’s going to carry from now on… =)

Saturday afternoon there was a knock on the gate. One of the guys came and told me that there were two neighbourhood ladies who wanted to talk to me. And he thought maybe they were drunk…

So I gingerly went to the gate to see what was up. I wouldn’t say these ladies were drunk exactly…but you could sure smell the alcohol on them from a few feet away. The issue seemed to be that the older lady was concerned about her youngest daughter. She was falling behind in school and seemed to be having problems learning to read. The lady called the little girl over to meet me. She’s a sweet little thing, probably around eight. Very outgoing and friendly…and with a big smile for us. I was never quite sure what this lady thought I could do for her daughter. She just kept explaining over and over (and over) again the situation…that the little girl was having problems learning to read. Somehow sending her to the gringo who can barely speak Spanish much less read it, seemed like a good idea.

All I could think of was to say that my friend (Corina) has a centre and they work with children. Maybe she could help. I told her I would talk to my friend and on Monday we could talk more then. After saying that a few times, it seemed to sink in and we were all good. As a side note, while the mom seemed very concerned with her little girl, the other lady (probably in her early twenties) seemed more concerned with Sandro, who was standing there keeping me company. There were lots of smiles and eyes and whatnot. Poor Sandro had no idea what to do. That kind of entertained me too…

So that’s where we left the situation, that we’d talk more Monday.  That is until first thing Sunday morning when Sandro came to tell me that the ladies were back and he thought they wanted to go to church with us. Hmm… I’m never going to be one to tell someone they can’t go to church…but I was sure hoping these ladies were a little more sober than the day before.

As it turned out, they weren’t planning on going to church with us…they were just going to send the little girl, along with her twelve year old cousin to watch over her.

I guess I should be honored that they have such trust in me. I am a gringo after all…and we’re all trustworthy. The lady wasn’t even sure if I was catholic or evangelical or what…she just thought a little church would do her daughter good.

But God can use anything and everything. The little girl seemed to have a good time and her cousin (who didn’t seem that thrilled at first with the situation) had a good time too I think. We’ll see if they show up at our gate next Sunday again.

So now for church we’re the eight guys from the home…two or three more guys who don’t live with us but come to church sometimes…two girlfriends…one girlfriend’s little brother…one baby…me…and two little neighbourhood girls…

Life just keeps getting more interesting.

We celebrated our first birthday here at the new house this past Sunday. It was great. Most of these guys have never really had a birthday party before. They do try to celebrate birthdays at the home, but there really are too many guys to do it very well. They just pick one day and celebrate all the birthdays from that month. So usually you share your birthday celebration with a dozen other guys. Lots of times no one else even notices when it’s the actual day of their birthday (sometimes even the guys themselves forget).

Celebrating birthdays is something I want to do here. It’s a good opportunity to encourage the guys and have some fun. So on Sunday we made pizza and opened presents…and I bought an amazing chocolate cake. As another side note, cakes here are…well, not always what I think they should be. They look amazing for sure…and they’re not terrible or anything. Bolivians just don’t like sweet deserts very much. But there’s a German restaurant here that bakes cakes and deserts…it’s a happy place let me tell you. So I bought a cake there that was so rich we could hardly choke it down. =) It was awesome!

There was a funny “lost in translation” moment though. I’m not sure of the tradition here, but I put 20 candles on the cake for the kid to blow out. I was trying to explain the whole, “how many candles are left after you blow are how many girlfriends you have” thing. Except that this guy has a girlfriend, so I said that he needed to make sure he had one candle left. So he proceeded to carefully blow out each candle until there was only one left. Not exactly what I was going for, but whatever.

Please pray for the guys and me this week. Although there have been some good moments, overall it feels a bit rough. Especially today. I’m having ongoing problems with one of the guys. When things go his way, he’s one of the easiest guys to get along with. But the moment he thinks he’s right and you’re not, he just does what he wants and then lies about it to try and cover. I’ve busted him a couple of times and it seems that today might be another one. I’m just waiting to get a bit more info. It could be that it’s time for him to leave. I want to give the guys as many opportunities as I can, but there comes a point when that’s no longer possible. I have a responsibility to the other guys too. If everyone gets to do whatever they want without trying to change or grow… Well, we’ll have some problems for sure. At any rate, I could use your prayers. I definitely need wisdom here.

But I want to end off on something encouraging. One of the fellows has been bringing his girlfriend to church with him. They have a newborn baby and I’m pretty sure they’ll end up getting married at some point. So I’d sure like to see her make a commitment to Christ…for both their sakes. My church has been great with them. It’s one of the reasons I love that place. Many churches here would have had a problem with them, or at the least wouldn’t have necessarily been very accepting. My church family has just accepted them and loved them. People want to see the baby and Veronica has been invited to more coffees and functions than she possible could attend. She seems to be enjoying being with us, but please pray for her. She comes from a Catholic background, which sometimes makes it difficult for people here to understand their need for a personal relationship with Christ.

As a funny side note…a few weeks ago I talked about what it was like to suddenly be “Dad” to eight teenage guys. One of my friends asked me that, if these guys are my “sons” and two of them have kids of their own…what does that make me? Grandpa?

Hmm…let’s just nip that kind of talk in the bud right now shall we….

Last night at supper, the guys were asking me when we were going to buy fish. It seems that this is the season for fish. And it’s true that some lady keeps driving through our neighborhood with a loudspeaker strapped to the roof of her car trying to entice us with the Spanish version of, “Fish! Fish! Get your fish here!” Sadly (for her) buying fish out of the trunk of a car doesn’t appeal that much to me. Although to be fair…it does seem to appeal to the guys.

So back to our conversation. The guys were all excited about the prospect of eating fish this week. As my mouth started watering a bit at the idea of a good fish fry, someone exclaimed“We can make fish soup!” to the happy agreement of everyone else around the table.

Are you kidding me? They fry absolutely everything we eat, and the one thing they should be frying…they want to make into soup. So I promptly made my feelings known on the subject…which started a lively debate about how good (or bad, depending on your perspective) fish soup was. These guys are never as funny as when we’re discussing food. I’ve never seen a group as animated as they can be when they’re trying to convince you about how good (or again, bad) a certain food is. They’ll practically act out eating the entire meal, complete with facial expressions, hand gestures and everything. It’s quite entertaining. And they can’t comprehend that somehow, you might not possibly agree with their opinions.

Finally one of the guys suggested a compromise. He said that we can fry the body and then cut off the head for the soup. I turned to the kid beside me and told him to remind me that I was going to be busy the day they cooked the soup. That made everyone laugh except for the guy who was the biggest proponent of the fish soup idea. He just gave me the somewhat disgusted “You dumb gringo, you know nothing!” look that I’ve become so accustomed to here. It’s true that I may not know much…but I do know that I’m not going to eat fish head soup anytime soon.

That day seems like a perfectly good Burger King day to me…

Just a brief update on the truck situation.  My insurance company is fighting me on paying for some things because I didn’t call the police after the accident.  No matter that I was in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain and trying to figure out what to do.  I guess it’s comforting on some level, to know that insurance companies everywhere are the same….

In my favour however, is the fact that I’m dating a girl with a sister who is an accomplished lawyer (and who knows the manager of the insurance company I deal with) and who has a brother-in-law who is fairly high up in the police department…

So I’m feeling mostly relaxed. 

In related news, I bought a new truck yesterday.  I’ll write more about that soon, but suffice to say that I’ve been looking for something larger and a bit newer.  Isabel’s friend brings trucks in from the States, and he got me a great deal on a Toyota Tundra.  But since it’s coming in from the States, I won’t take possesion until July.

So ironically, I now own two trucks and have nothing to drive…

Okay, everyone…put up your hand if you’ve ever lost a tire off your vehicle while driving through the mountains. Heck, put it up if you’ve ever lost a tire off your vehicle period. Now keep it up, if it’s happened to you twice…

Yea, that’s what I thought. I’m like the kid in the back row waving his hand in the air saying, “Pick me! Pick me!” Believe what you want, but these things are not my fault.

Last week Edly asked if I would drive her up to the children’s home we have in a town called Postrevalle. It’s a home where younger siblings can live together. It’s a beautiful place…but very remote. It’s always an adventure driving there, the road is…a challenge. But at least this time it wasn’t raining… This trip was fairly uneventful until the last stretch before home. Just outside of a town called Samaipata (still in the mountains) there was suddenly a loud band, and the steering wheel spun out of my hand. I managed to keep control (more or less) and pull the truck over, but then I lost control for the last couple of feet or so and we kind of crashed into the bush at the side of the road.

It was kind of reminiscent of last time when I was driving back from La Paz with my sisters and lost a back tire. Only this time it was the front driver’s side wheel that came off. But just like last time, I hopped out of the truck…cranking the handle on my little flashlight to charge it up as I ran and chased after my fleeing tire. At least this time it didn’t go over the cliff…

After we checked that everyone was fine (one of the boys from the home was with us, along with a lady who used to work at the home in Postrevalle), Edly and I caught a ride back up to Samaipata to call Miguel to get a tow truck. The tow truck had to come from Santa Cruz (a good 3 or 4 hours away), so we knew we were in for a wait. Plus it was drizzling and foggy, and that road isn’t great at the best of times (sometimes entire lanes have collapsed into the ravine next to the highway, from rain damage, and traffic has to take turns in the remaining lane).

Sure enough, the tow truck didn’t arrive until 2 AM. By then Edly and the other lady had caught a ride back to the home, and it was just Diego and I waiting. The ladies waited with us until around midnight, when a taxi driver who was on his way to Santa Cruz happened to stop. He quoted them a reasonable price (unlike the other taxis we talked to who obviously didn’t want to make the trip). One thing I noticed was that people really didn’t want to stop or give the ladies a ride. I commented on this, and Edly asked me if it would be different in Canada. I was like, “Are you kidding?! Especially where I live! By now we’d have half a dozen farmers gathered around the tire, discussing what the best way to get us back on the road would be. Then a tractor would show up to drag us to the nearest town….we’d be the topic of conversation for the next week…”

And another thing that was different. When the tow truck did eventually show up, Diego and I road in my truck while we were being towed. Correct me if I’m wrong…but isn’t that slightly illegal in Canada? It was kind of a strange feeling, being behind the wheel, but not having any control of where we were going. But…after awhile I was too tired to care. So we just reclined our seats and tried to sleep. I figured if we went over the edge, there was very little I could do about it. Not that I managed to sleep much though. Diego on the other hand, was quite relaxed and snored his way home for the next four hours.

I eventually got home at around 8:30 AM Sunday morning. Just enough time to explain to the guys what happened and then shower and get ready for church. It was an important Sunday that I didn’t want to miss. Jesus was coming to church with his girlfriend and their little boy. It was Veronica’s first time, so I wanted to make sure I was there. It went well too, by the way…I think she enjoyed it. We all went out for lunch afterwards and had a good time. Their little guy (Jesus Sebastian) is a chunker though. =) It was fun holding him and playing with him. He’s a happy little guy.

Anyhow…so now it’s off to my insurance company and see how long I’m going to be without a truck for. That’s grumpy. It’s only been one day and I’m already annoyed. Life is just very time consuming when you’re taking micros (busses) everywhere… But I’m very thankful to God for His protection and safety. There were twenty places or more on that trip where, if this had happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this to you. So, all in all…a little inconvenience isn’t the end of the world. ..

Once again…thanks for praying! =)

This past Sunday the Department of Santa Cruz (departments are basically like our provinces in Canada) voted wether or not they wanted autonomy from the national government of Bolivia. 85% said that they did. That result was never really in question. Every third car here has an “Autonomia!” or “SI!” sticker on it. Autonomy rallies consistently shut down the city (most businesses just close) and bring out hundreds of thousands of people (last year nearly a million people out of a city of only 1.3 million). 

This means the leadership of Santa Cruz is now moving ahead with establishing a legislature, taking control of funds that normally are collected and distributed by La Paz (our capital) and building a police force (separate from the National Police)…among other things. Three more departments will hold the same vote over the coming weeks, and the outcome is pretty much guaranteed to be the same. 

We weren’t sure what to expect going into the vote. There were reports of groups planning to come down from La Paz and Cochabamba (the highland areas) to try to disrupt the vote. They vowed to burn the boxes the votes were being collected in, and generally to try to intimidate those voting and cause disruption. In what was maybe one of the more entertaining moments in the past week (at least in my eyes) there was a report from La Paz where a reporter was interviewing a group of men that were vowing (ranting) that the vote in Santa Cruz would lead to civil war if they had anything to say about it. This is not new here. What was new, was the submachine gun the leader was waving around as a “symbol of their solidarity”. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing a guy waving a machine gun around on the streets of La Paz. Then the video cut back to the reporter and then a few seconds later back to the “leader”….who now laying on the ground with three cops sitting on top of him. I’m not sure what he expected exactly…waving an illegal gun around on national television. But I guess that civil war was a little short lived.

So then came Sunday. We hunkered down in the house to ride out whatever happened. Most missions here were warning that violence was guaranteed. I’d made sure we were well stocked for food and I had some extra cash on hand. In the end, there was some fighting in outlying areas of the city and in some of the towns nearby, but for the most part it was a sunny, peaceful day. We even went to a movie that night (Ironman…great movie) when everything reopened and we were allowed to drive again (everything shuts down on voting days, including public transportation and driving until after 6:30 PM).

So what this means now for Santa Cruz and Bolivia is anyone’s guess. It’d difficult to imagine that the leadership here will be able to move ahead with everything they’re planning. And they are waiting for the other lowland departments to vote as well. For sure this will give them some bargaining power when it comes to negotiating with our President. No matter what Evo (our President) believes about this vote, the reality is, his country is deeply divided and over half his population is not willing to continue with the status quo.

Another decision of the government here recently, that’s hit home a little more personally, was to nationalize the oil industry. What that means is that the oil companies where Isabel (my girlfriend) and her sister work are more or less being taken over by the government…and that means that they will likely both lose their jobs in the coming weeks. Some of the oil companies have National Police officers posted at the doors refusing to let anyone remove anything from the offices. It’s still up in the air, what exactly is going to happen, but it doesn’t look very good right now.

So please pray for Bolivia and for it’s leadership. I have to admit that I often find the decisions of the President here…confusing to say the least. I do believe that he has a heart to help the poor here, and to alleviate the suffering that so many people experience here everyday. But it’s hard to see how his decisions will benefit the country and from there, the people of Bolivia. He seems to be very short sighted in much of what he’s trying to do. President Chavez of Venezuela is Evo’s mentor and guide to all things presidential, and if Venezuela is any example of what the future of Bolivia looks like…we’re in for some difficult days.

Thanks for reading and for taking the time to pray. I’ll keep you updated on what happens.