Hi everyone!  This is just a quick note to let you know that I’m still alive and safely back in Bolivia after what was possibly the worst series of connections in the history of air travel.  I’m sure you don’t care, but I feel the need to share.  Let’s see…leave house for the airport at 4:30 AM.  Get checked in by grumpy Air Canada lady (granted it was 5 AM and we’re all grumpy at the time of the morning…but still, she was being paid to be there).  Fly to Toronto.  Sit in Toronto for 4 hours.  Fly to Washington.  Sit in Washington for 5 hours.  Fly to Miami.  Sit in airport for 8 hours.  Technically I didn’t sit much.  I got there too late and had to leave too early to get a hotel.  So mostly I walked around because I was too scared to sit in case I fell asleep and missed my 5 AM flight.  Seriously.  5 AM. ..  Fly to San Salvador.  Yea, I didn’t know where that was either.  Surprisingly it’s in El Salvador.  Which makes sense, I guess.  Sit in the airport for 3 hours.  Fly to Lima, Peru.  Sit in airport for 9 hours.  Waste time and money shopping in the one shop in the airport (but I don’t care…I like what I bought).  Fly to Santa Cruz and arrive at 2 AM.  Collect my luggage and make it too my bed by just after 3 AM.  Get up in 4 hours to go back to the airport to pick up two Saskatoon girls who are visiting and helping out for a month.  They left Saskatoon 24 hours after me and arrived in Santa Cruz only 4 hours after I did.  All in all it was a 47 hour trip…

Before I get a million e-mails asking me why in the world I booked such an…entertaining…series of flights, let me just say.  Plata!  Or money, if you don’t speak Spanish.  It was all about saving a buck.

I arrived back to find out that for the most part, things were fine.  The house was still standing (it’s cement…what could really happen?!) and the boys were still well fed and happy.  Mostly.  One of the guys (Franz) was actually pretty sick.  Like walking dead sick.  He’d been to four different doctors and no one was completely sure what was happening.  Two said Tuberculosis, one said maybe lung cancer and one wasn’t sure.  The problem was that he was showing negative on the TB test.  But they decided to treat him for TB.  I wasn’t very happy with that at first (we’ve had a few of our kids get badly misdiagnosed on occasion) but since then we’ve seen him respond very well to the medication.  So now the hope is that the rest of us haven’t been exposed.  We belatedly marked plates and silverware for him to use (the “virus plates” as the boys call them), but hopefully we’ve seen the last of this.

Then one of the other guys (Jesus) came to me with a strange lump on the side of his jaw that’s been bothering him.  It’s kind of a weird one too.  So…off to the hospital once again.  The doctor gave us a list of tests that we needed to get (which aren’t done at the hospital but rather a series of clinics) so that took up the rest of the week.  We finally made it back to see her on Friday, but were told that she’s only in the office in the morning (we didn’t make it back until the afternoon).  So we’ll find out what’s going on, on Monday.  But feel free to pray about that one.

Sadly, the three guys who were studying for the entrance exam for the public university, all failed the exam.  I felt better though, when I found out that most of the students that wrote it fail…along with one of the guys out at the boy’s home.  He was the smartest kid in the school out there…so that put it in a better frame of reference for me.  We’ve found other options for the guys, so it’ll be okay.  For one of the guys (Rudy), it’s actually much better.  We ended up registering him in a great Catholic university that’s entirely focused on what he wants to study (communication).  It’s an amazing place!  After meeting with one of their people, I wanted to study there…  It’s a little bit more money than I wanted to spend, but it’s going to be an amazing opportunity for him.  It’s probably the best school of it’s kind in Santa Cruz.  So…  The other two guys (Franz and Sandro) are going to be going to a good university as well.  So it’ll be fine.  It’s just that the public university was free and the other ones aren’t.  That’s a bit of a challenge, but we’ll work it out.

A couple of other prayer requests…please pray for David.  He’s facing some personal things that are causing him some stress.  He’s trying to make good decisions, but for sure it’s a difficult situation.  Also for Sandro and Juan.  Again, some personal things. 

Feel free to pray for me as well.  I love the guys, and I’m happy to see them.  But it’s always a bit of a struggle to readapt to being here.  I’ve had to be the heavy a few times, re-instating some of the rules that were maybe not completely followed in my absence.  Pray that the guys will understand that, and…I don’t know…fall in line?  =)  That’s as good a way of putting it as any.

One fun thing is that August is definitely birthday month for us!  Of the eight of us in the house, six of us have birthdays this month.  Four this week!  So we went to a movie one night…I made pizza another, and tomorrow we’re having cake and opening a few gifts I bought for the guys.  I really want birthdays to be special, since most of these guys have never really celebrated their birthdays, even at the Home.  There were too many guys there for them to celebrate every kid’s birthday.  Sometimes a birthday would pass without anyone (sometimes even the kid himself) realizing.  So I’m trying to do that differently.

One other quick note.  We have another vote tomorrow…one of a series of votes that have plagued Bolivia this past year.  This one is a confidence vote on all elected leaders in the country…the governors of all of the departments (provinces) as well as the President.  Things could look very different in Bolivia on Monday.  Once again there will be the threat of violence and as a safety measure, no one is allowed to drive and the city is mostly shut down.  We won’t be leaving the house until we have a better idea of what’s happening.  So please pray for Bolivia, for it’s people…and for us.   

So once again, my quick note isn’t so quick.  Sorry about that.  I’ll try to get more regular with my updates and blogging, so that I don’t have quite so much to write each time.  I haven’t written much at the blog lately (www.kenswitzer.blog.com) but I will soon.  I’m trying to adjust a few things to make it a little more user friendly (mostly that it’ll load a bit more quickly).  I’ll keep you updated on that too.

Thanks again for praying and for thinking of us down here.  It was great to see those of you I saw in Canada, and for the rest…I promise we’ll grab a coffee next time I’m back.  It’ll be a bit more of a leisurely trip.  This one was fun but a bit of a rush.

Have a great August everyone! 

Ken