So Ken kind of forgot to pay the power bill this month, and we got cut off this morning. Well, it wasn’t so much that I forgot as it was I was a little short of cash. With the new truck and paying for a bunch of unexpected things, the power bill kind of fell to the bottom of the pile. I figured I had a bit more time. As it turned out…not so much.

But it’s fine. I was able to pay the bill this afternoon, and they assured us that the power will be back on in an hour or so. Guess we’ll see….

The guys were kind of giving me a hard time, so I just told them it was all a part of the adventure of living with Hermano Ken. That made them laugh. Besides, I’m not sure I minded all that much. With no TV or music blasting, the house was a little more peaceful than normal. It was kind of nice.

I so sound like my parents right now. Good grief.

Thanks for praying for us this weekend. It feels like things have improved a lot. There was a lot more laughing and joking around yesterday, so that was good to see. I could definitely feel the difference in myself as well. I was able to handle the fact that some lady backed into me on Saturday night and someone else stole the mirrors off my truck Sunday morning…with mostly calmness and a minimal amount of anger or frustration.

Yep…the honeymoon period is over with the new truck. It was nice while it lasted. I made it a week and a half…not bad really. The funniest part was after the lady backed into me and then asked me what I was doing.

Um…not moving. I’m kind of big and hard to miss (the truck…not me personally. Well…okay me personally too…but I was referring to the truck.). Fortunately she didn’t do that much damage…only a couple of small scratches near the right tail light. I’m more grumpy about the mirrors. While we were in church, a guy and a girl drove up on a motorbike (someone in church saw them, but didn’t know who’s truck it was). The girl jumped off, ripped the glass out of my side mirrors and away they went.

You might be asking why they stole the mirrors? Everything has a price here and those mirrors are actually fairly valuable. Tomorrow one of the guys and I are going to go search the local market where you can buy everything and see if we can find some new ones. Or even maybe the ones that were taken off my truck in the first place. One of my friends had the back window stolen out of his car. He found it in the market and bought it back.

On the way home we saw another Toyota Tundra like mine and someone suggested we could just “borrow” their mirrors. That made me laugh. It could be like a game…Tundra owners constantly taking mirrors from other Tundra owners. Maybe we could even make up t-shirts or something…

A couple of other prayer requests before I go. A couple of the guys are dealing with family issues that are pretty tough. One of the guys’ father drinks a lot. Sunday morning at church I asked him how his evening went (he spent Saturday night out at his house) and he just made a so-so movement with his hand. There’s more to the story that I can’t really get into, but suffice to say it’s a difficult situation.

One of the other guys is having problems as well, with his family. It’s not surprising I guess. There were reasons these guys ended up on the streets in the first place. But if you could pray for them, that’d be great.

One final request. One of the guys is thinking about leaving the home after this school year ends in December. We talked about it the other day, and I feel pretty strongly it’s not the right decision. There’s a whole story that goes along with this, but ultimately (and he agrees with this) it’s because he really can’t believe that God has a future for him…or that he even deserves that future if He does. That’s what’s killing me. So please pray for him as well. He says he hasn’t made up his mind yet, so I’m praying that God will work in him to help him understand how destructive this way of thinking will be for him.

So…that’s Monday here in Bolivia. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) laughing along with the craziness that is my life here. And more importantly, thanks for praying! I really can sense when people at home are praying for us here. It makes a difference.