If anyone cares, I’m sitting in the Santa Cruz airport at 1:43 AM waiting for my flight which is three hours late.  But it’s all good…there’s free wireless here.  And there’s not in Miami.  So might as well sit here.  My friend Amy is here, and we had a funny moment when we realized that we could get online.  It was a definite gringo “Oh my word there’s internet!” moment. 

So anyhow…baring any other issues, I should arrive in Saskatoon at 9:20 PM tomorrow (Thursday) night.  It was tough saying goodbye to everyone tonight.  But it’ll be nice to have a break.  I’ll write more soon, but if you could pray for the guys right now.  There are some things happening that I’m a bit concerned about.  I ended up having three or four pretty significant conversations over the past couple fo days.  Of course the guys would all pick the day before I leave for a month to open up about their lives.  But God is good and will continue the work He’s doing in them.  And the volunteers I have covering the home for me are amazing…so it’ll be fine.  I was teasing the guys that they’re going to have so much fun with the people that are going to be helping out that they won’t want me to come back.  =)  They were nice and said that would never happen.  =)  Guess we’ll see….

We’re about to start boarding I think and I need to go to the bathroom….

Oh and any spelling mistakes are not my fault.  I having a hard time focusing on the screen.

It’s crazy, but two weeks from today I’ll be sitting in sunny Saskatchewan enjoying a Tim Horton’s Ice Cap. And before any of you feels the need to correct me and tell me how cold or whatever it’s been this year…I’m aware. But my faith will sustain me and I’m quite sure that by the time I arrive, summer will have begun with a vengeance.

If I didn’t have so much to do, I’d feel a bit more excited. I have someone to take care of the house in my absence, but I’m thinking I need to organize things a bit better. I can fly by the seat of my pants in any given moment, and fake like I know what’s going on like no one else. But it hardly seems fair to ask a novice to do the same.

So I need to organize chore lists and financial budgets and schedules and whatever else occurs in the middle of the night when I wake up thinking about this. I’ve started leaving a paper and pen by the bed for these late night revelations. I can’t really explain it, but if I wait until the next day to make my list of what needs to happen, I can’t actually think of anything and I just end up drawing doodley things on my paper. Eventually I go back to playing Solitaire on my computer.

As a side note, today was a fun day in the house. It’s the day of the teacher, so most of the guys didn’t have classes. That meant that, for once, we were all home at the same time. So we had devotions together this morning and all hung out (and did chores…can’t forget the chores). David and I went to the clinic to get his stitches out, and then Tiqua joined us for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon at the house. Tonight we’re going to go to a movie, I think, with Isabel. So yea, it was a good day.

Oh….a warning. The guys spent most of the afternoon making bracelets that I’m going to sell when I get home to Canada. It’s a little business we’ve started, to provide them with a bit of spending money. So be prepared. Ken’s bringing stuff to sell. =)

Well, there’s not much else to say today. It’s not like there aren’t things happening, but I guess life is just mellowing into normality here. My sister was complaining about some “big” spider in her bathroom the other day. It was an inch across, she said. Ha…our baby spiders would eat that spider for lunch. Yesterday a taxi missed me by mere inches and I didn’t even flinch. In fact, I barely noticed. I thought about it later and wondered for a moment, what would it take these days to actually get my adrenaline going…

Anyhow, as always, thanks for praying. Just because I don’t notice the near-death experiences anymore, doesn’t mean they’re not happening…

See you in a week and five days.

PS…  Remember when the guys and I took that little neighbor girl and her cousin to church a couple of weeks ago?  Well, she went to children’s church and to help her feel a bit more comfortable, I went with her.  They were making little paperbag puppets that day as a craft.  I was trying to be helpful, so I tried to cut out hands for her puppet, out of foam.  To the right are my first two attempts.  I was embarrassed enough to just stuff them into my pocket before anyone could see them.  Especially considering there were fathers there making great hands and shoes (with laces) and everything for their kid’s puppet.  I’m a lame father.

Afterwards, being a good Canadian, I just made mittens for her puppet.  Being a good Bolivian, and possibly never having seen mittens. she cut out fingers.  At any rate her puppet had hands.  It also had a cotton ball for hair.  Only one cotton ball mind you.  Not sure why I was worried about the hands… 

I had lunch yesterday, with an old friend. He was one of the first guys I became friends with back in 2001. My friend Corina had taken me out to Miguel’s (the boy’s home) to visit. The staff lady who was running the home in Miguel’s absence (he was in the States for three weeks) was completely overwhelmed by the task of running the home singlehandedly, and asked if I would be willing to sleep in the dorm with the boys that night. Some of the older boys were bringing drugs into the dorm, and she needed someone to make sure everything was okay.

Not knowing what I was getting into (as I sit here writing this seven years later…still in Bolivia…still working with those same guys…), I said sure, no problem. But I needed a few things from the city, so Carlos was given permission to go back into Santa Cruz with Corina and I. Then he could bring me back out to the home afterwards.

After picking up a few items from my room, Carlos and I were on our way. We stopped downtown by the bus terminal for what was probably my first of hundreds of chicken dinners. The conversation was…sparse. There’s only so much you can say with five words of Spanish. But we still had fun. I probably made a fairly pathetic figure, I imagine. I’d only been in the country for a few days…I couldn’t speak the language…I never really knew what was going on. But in the end, that worked in my favour. Years later, Carlos told me that he’d been planning to ditch me and go back to the streets that night. But then he looked at me and thought that if he left me, I’d never find my way home…so he stayed. =)

Carlos and I built a strong friendship from that first night on. He became one of my closest friends at the home. Sadly his life caught up to him eventually. He always seemed to be one of the stronger boys at the home. He’s a gifted musician, and often he led the boys in worship. Many times you could find him off by himself playing and singing. When I did the missions trip to Cochabamba with the guys, he was one of the leaders.

But like so many of the guys, under that seemingly strong exterior was a life of hidden sin and spiritual battles. Some of that sin came to the surface about a year after I moved back to Bolivia, and Carlos had to suffer the consequences. Not long after that, he left the home.

He managed to rent a room for a little while, and stay off the streets. But then a series of difficult events took place…his father died, which Carlos took very hard…and then his younger brother moved back to the streets. Eventually Carlos joined him.

Carlos and I try to get together for lunch or coffee every few weeks or so. Over Christmas he had tuberculosis, so he and I ended up spending lots of time together at the hospital as we got him the medication he needed. Usually when I see him, he makes the effort to clean up and look presentable.

Maybe that’s why yesterday hit me so hard. He looked terrible. His clothes were dirty and he obviously hadn’t showered or cleaned up in a while. That’s not the Carlos I know. He was still funny and entertaining. He always makes me laugh.

But as I drove home I realized that his life is just passing him by. All the guys in the new home are guys he used to hang out with. They were his group. Now they’re working and preparing to study in university. They’re moving on in their lives, to the things God has for them. And Carlos is still where he was ten years ago. Sleeping on a park bench. Likely stealing to survive from day to day. He’s twenty two years old. When does this change? When does he realize what’s happening? Or is this his future?

Of course it’s not easy and the story is more complicated than what I can write here. We’ve talked many times about what’s happening with him and he understands. But there are reasons he doesn’t want to leave the streets…or feels that he can’t, at any rate. It’s only through prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit that his life and circumstances will ever change.

So please pray for Carlos. He’s an amazing kid who deserves better than this. He’s a son of God and needs to understand that. I still believe and pray that someday he’ll be able to experience the life and future that God has for him…that he’ll be able to use his gifts and abilities for God’s glory. And that he’ll receive the healing that he desperately needs and, I think, wants.

We had our dedication for the new home last night (Sunday). It was a lot of fun. We invited the people who’d helped us get started or who’d had an impact on the ministry. In all, there were around thirty people there. For some of them, it was the first time they’d had the opportunity to see the house or even meet the guys. That was a cool thing for me…having the guys understand that there’s a community of people both here in Bolivia and in Canada, who are praying for them and supporting them. That they’re a part of a larger family who believes in them.

Marcee (my co-worker with International Teams) and my friend Corina (who’s known some of these guys for many years) both shared words of encouragement for the guys, and then we had a time of prayer. I shared a few things too, about the journey that God has taken me on to get to this point. It’s amazing to see such tangible evidence of God’s blessing. To think that only a few years ago, this was just a thought in my head…and now God has brought it to fruition.

Thanks to all of you as well! For your prayers and financial support. None of this would be possible without your partnership and trust. So THANKS! =)

A few random thoughts and observations…

I cooked. It was fine. I did the whole Canadian summer BBQ thing (except I have no BBQ and so we just cooked the hamburgers in the oven). I made a lettuce salad and for some reason the guys thought it was the best salad they’d ever had. Maybe because it only had a handful of onions as compared to the 50-50 split of onions to lettuce that the guys use. We also did broccoli, cauliflower, green peppers, etc. with ranch dressing dip. Jesus’s girlfriend and sister were helping us get ready and so I asked them to cut everything. They could NOT understand why I wanted them to chop up raw vegetables to eat. I just told them it was a gringo thing and once again reinforced the “Gringos are weird!” thinking here.

My glass cake pan broke in two while cooking the hamburgers. I just bought it in February.

I bought three times too much food so the guys are happy that we have five more bags of potato chips to eat.

Everyone was impressed with how clean the boy’s rooms were. I’d like to take credit, but really I’m a bit of a slob..at least when it comes to my bedroom. The rest of the house is a different story. Which is exactly opposite to the guys…it keeps life interesting. But their clean rooms are all their doing. Someday I’m going to post pictures of David’s sock/underwear drawer. It’s a thing of beauty.

I think the guys were moved by the whole experience too. They were a bit shy at first…I had to kick Jimmy and David downstairs to visit people…but after awhile they got into it. And this morning when I got up, everyone was cleaning without having to be told. There was a mountain of dishes…and there was David was contentedly washing them. It was a happy moment. It probably won’t last.

So there you go. I guess we’re official now. Although I still don’t have a name for the place which is important down here. When people ask, I just keep telling them I’ll figure that out eventually. Maybe for the first aniversary….

Some pictures…

                                       

    
                                       

                                       

                                        

                                        

                                              

                                       

So there you go.  Sorry most of these pictures are of us either cooking or eating.  During the prayer time I was…well, I was praying.  So picture taking was a little difficult.  I could have snapped a self-portrait when I was sharing, but that seemed a little self-indulgent. 

Thanks again for praying!