Sunday night we celebrated three more of the guys’ birthdays. We’ve had a run of birthdays over the past couple of months. August definitely wins as birthday month (six birthdays) closely followed by October (two more). So only two more excuses to party this year before we start over again next August. =) Although, those of you who know me understand I hardly need an excuse to have a party. I don’t imagine we’ll need to wait too long before I can come up with an excuse…

Anyhow, here are a few pics of the festivities…

Singing “Happy Birthday”!

Jesus pretending to smash his own head into the cake (making someone take a bite of the cake without using their hands and then pushing the face into the cake is a bit of a tradition here…).

The guys still laughing about Jesus’ joke…it went on for awhile.

Isabel trying to make the guys be friends for a picture…

Still trying, but getting closer.  Is it just me or does Jesus (in yellow) look like he’s in a bit of pain…

Ah, friends…  =)

Blowing out the candle.  We could only find one.  But it was cool…

Openning presents…

Cutting the cake…one of my favourites so far.

Jesus making the same head smashing into cake joke again.  After all, it worked prety good the first time…

So that was our Birthday celebration.  It was pretty fun.  One of the guys told me earlier that he had never celebrated his birthday before.  He was sceptical as to why one needed all the hoopla (he mostly just wanted his presents).  I won’t tell you who it was, but looking at these pictures…I’d say that he had a good time.   =)
 

This is just a quick list of random thoughts that might interest you…maybe…

The level of political rhetoric went up a notch again this week. Once again it’s difficult to say what that means exactly. There tends to be a lot of talk here (and emotional talk at that) but mostly nothing comes of it. We just maintain a wait and see mentality. Like I’ve said before, life continues pretty much normally here. Except for serious fuel shortages, not much is different. But the words “civil war” were mentioned for the first time (or at least I heard them for the first time) at a leadership level.

Speaking of fuel shortages, I was in line for diesel yesterday and was close to an emotional meltdown moment. No one would respect the line! You have to respect the line people, or all we have is chaos! I was getting pretty irate when Isabel called me and told me her friend just called from the gas station where she worked and they had diesel. AND there were only three cars lined up. I left my line with a screech of tires and the smell of burning rubber (in my head that’s how I left the line…but the reality is, I drive a diesel and the best I could come up with was a slow and steady increase in speed as I took off….). Ten minutes later I drove back past the people in the line and tried to look smug. Hopefully they understood.

David’s (one of the guys in the home) little girl was pretty sick this weekend. Please pray for him and for the family. Things are better today, but he was pretty worried I think.

We’re celebrating birthdays tonight. One of our pastors and his wife and some other people are coming over for supper and cake. I’ve mentioned before that August was birthday month for us. Unfortunately two of the birthdays fell in the week after my accident and we never got around to partying. Then Jesus’ birthday was last week…so I figured I’d better get on this. It’s been a wet, cold, rainy weekend, so a bit of a celebration is probably a good thing.

New truck comes Tuesday. So I’ve been told. I have nothing else to say about that.

We have a new volunteer at the house. My first international one. He’s from Germany and is here until January. He’s going to work a couple of days a week with us. I’m not sure what he’s going to do yet exactly (he speaks Spanish but pretty slowly. Considering he also speaks German and English, I guess that’s okay…). =) Anyhow, we’re all excited. He’s tall by the way. He makes me feel short. I’m pretty sure Sandro won’t come up past his waist. Anyone remember the “Friendly Giant”? “Look up, look wwaaayyyy up…”

And finally…I ran into the guy (not literally) who ran into me (literally) at lunch today. It was a funny moment. Especially after our last encounter. I don’t think either of us remembered where we new the other guy from at first. But the realization sunk in as we walked away from each other and we both looked back at the other guy at the exact same moment. It was entertaining…if not a bit awkward. He didn’t mention his $200…

Thanks for reading everyone! Have a great Sunday afternoon!
 

This has been an interesting week…

At this point feel free to replace the word “interesting” with “lame”, “grumpy”, “frustrating” and/or any other synonym you can come up with that signifies an annoyance with life.

First on the list…there’s no diesel. Or if there is, there’s also a ten block, three hour wait. I do not have the time or patience. Okay, to be truthful, I actually probably do have the time, but I definitely don’t have the patience. The lack of diesel also means no buses running. Which then results in Ken getting pre 8 AM in the morning phone calls (anyone who writes to tell me that’s not early gets a shot to the head when I get back to Canada) from the guys begging for rides to school.

Next…my new truck isn’t ready and probably won’t be ready anytime this decade. Ignore my previous claims of faith and good spirits in the last post. The problem is the guy who’s fixing the plastic bumper cover. He did a lame job the first time and he did a lame job the second time. Later today we’ll see how the third attempt turned out. I’ve driven across the city (see above point re: no diesel) every morning for the past week to deal with this. It’s a toss up as to who’s more tired of seeing the other person…

As a side note, the battery in my new truck isn’t holding a charge for some reason (it’s brand new) which means switching batteries from my other truck, every time we need to start the new truck. Also annoying.

I know that complaining about the weather is a bit silly. After all, it’s not minus forty. But still, it’s either been hot, windy and dusty…or cold, windy and rainy. And at this exact moment I can’t decide which makes me more grumpy. I’ll have to get back to you.

The rain knocked out power to parts of the city yesterday, which resulted in most of the traffic lights not working. I’m not sure if the resulting chaos falls into the annoying or entertaining categories. Probably a little bit of both. If the specific life-threatening situation didn’t involve me…it was mostly entertaining.

Okay, there’ve been a few other “interesting” moments this week, but I’m mostly feeling better after complaining, so I can probably just let that stuff go. =) There have also been some good things happening that I need to mention.

I had the chance to talk with a few of the guys in the past couple of days about some more serious “life” issues/questions. They were good conversations that I think challenged all of us. One of the boys in particular was feeling a lot of stress and, what I would consider, spiritual attack in his life. To the degree that he felt the problems and suffering his family has been struggling with, were all his fault. Basically a “punishment” from God for his sins. Of course, that sparked a few comments from me. In the end, we prayed together and from what he expressed, he felt a lot more peace afterwards. An encouraging side note to this is that he went home to see his family the next day (they live an hour or so out of the city) and found that the situation with them had greatly improved.

This is a guy who had a strong faith in the past, but is finding himself struggling a lot lately with doubt and questions. Which is not a big stress for me really. It’s been a good opportunity to see God at work. I went out on a limb a couple of times with him, about trusting what God wants to do in his life. Then we prayed about it, and low and behold…God came through every time. =)  I was reading an interesting debate online today, between a prominent Christian author and Chris Hitchings, the atheist. I just kept thinking, “Dude…you need to come down here…” Not that I never struggle with doubt or questions. But there’s something to be said for living daily in a situation where prayer becomes a necessity. And then praying and seeing your prayers answered in a very specific and timely manner. And before anyone goes down the road of “Ken, Supermissionary”, let me just state that I wish I turned to prayer a lot more quickly than I do sometimes. You’d think I’d know better by now…

Please continue to pray for the guys. I see them have a lot of ups and downs…and like I said earlier, some days it feels like a lot of plate spinning. But at the same time I can see God working in very deliberate ways in their lives. I can see steps being taken, however hesitantly. That’s encouraging! But for sure there’s a lot of spiritual warfare that’s never easy. The guys don’t always talk much about that part of their lives unless there’s an opportunity for me to bring it up. They often don’t even recognize what’s happening. Like the fellow I was talking about, they just accept lies as truth and struggle to live their lives.

As well, please continue to pray for Bolivia. We took some good steps forward last week in the political arena, only to see that progress tossed aside and the situation worsen. My life continues normally (it’s funny what can become “normal”…), and for the most part I don’t even notice that anything is wrong. But certainly there’s a sense now that more trouble might be on the horizon.

On a final note, I have to give kudos to my girlfriend Isabel (I’m laughing to myself a bit, ‘cause I know she’ll have to look that word up).  For sure she’s been the highlight to this week. She’s stood up to belligerent autobody workers on my behalf (and convinced them sweetly that she wouldn’t want to have to call the police to retrieve the money we paid for shoddy work. She can say that…her brother-in-law is a cop. And the autobody guy believed her so…). She’s sat patiently, keeping me company, as we waited long periods of time for various people to help us resolve this bumper problem. She’s currently calling around to her “contacts” searching for diesel for me.  In general she’s just been there every time I’ve needed help…which is a lot. And she’s been very sympathetic which makes me feel better. I’m such a guy.  So a big thanks to her!

So anyhow, the week hasn’t been a total loss or anything. In fact, it’s been mostly okay. Once I get the new truck on the road and sell the old truck (so I’m not paying for owning two trucks!)…things will feel better and a bit less stressful.

Thanks for coming to the blog and reading and praying for us. I (and the guys) appreciate it! Check back soon…I’m going to write more about what’s happening politically for us. I’m also going to tell the story of how I met Isabel sometime soon. I might even throw in a picture or two. Some people have been asking and I think my brothers want to know for sure that she actually exists. Yes, yes…it’s a surprise for all of us.

Anyhow, if that doesn’t stir up some blog traffic, nothing will… =)

Have a great day!
 

I checked out the progress being made on repairing my new truck today. It’s getting close. I’m thinking I should have it by the weekend. Of course, every Monday when Marcee and I have lunch she asks me the same question, “When are you going to get your truck?” and I reply, “I should have it by the weekend.”, it causes her to smile knowingly and role her eyes at me.

I don’t care. I have faith. I’ll just keep saying it and eventually it’ll be true.

“I should have it by the weekend!”

But the purpose of this post isn’t to talk about my new truck. It’s to pay tribute to my current and soon to be old truck. I’ve complained often about the old girl, but I realized the other day that she’s served me well these past two years. And, in my opinion, she still looks good! I have to say that I still love the look of these Hilux’s. Good job Toyota…

Rather than fill this page with all my driving stories, which I’ve told before, I thought I’d let some pictures speak for me…

There you go…the story of my truck.  As a bookend to this episode in my life, the guy who rearended me a month ago, called me last week.  In the accident his licsence plate fell off his truck and I threw it in the back of mine…and then forgot to give it to him.  So he was asking if we could meet so he could have it back.  I said sure and we arrange a place. 

I arrived to find him waiting with another truckload of his closest friends who managed to quickly form a circle around us.  My circle of closest friends (four of the guys) were obliviously waiting for me in my truck listening to the radio.  I need new friends.  This fellow went on to “suggest” that since we were both “good people” and the accident was not either of our faults (but was the fault of the drunk guy walking across the road), I should pay for half of the damages to his truck.  I played the polite Canadian and didn’t say much.  I’m pretty sure everyone was kind of waiting for a fight.  I could smell alcohol on more than a few of them.  I did mention once that I managed to stop and not hit the drunk guy and if he’d been watching a bit more carefully, he might have been able to stop as well.  He disagreed.  One of his friends who was standing next to me just kept saying in broken English, “I’d pay him if I were you.  I’d pay him.  I’d pay him if I were you.  I’d pay him.”  Yes, well…you’re not me and if you want to pay some drunk idiot money that he doesn’t deserve…well, feel free….

Like I said, I just continued to be the nice, polite Canadian I am, and didn’t argue.  No one was quite sure how to respond to that.  I told him that I would have to think about it and that, of course, I didn’t have the money on me right now.  I suggested that he call  me in a couple of days and we could talk some more.

God was good and he fell for it.  Like I’m ever going to answer the phone if I see his number come up.  Ha.  I calmly drove away and left him and his friends contemplating what they were going to do now.  He doesn’t know where I live and soon I won’t even have that same truck.  So good luck finding me.  I think he must have sobered up and realized that…he hasn’t called back.

So long my faithful Toyota Hilux.  It’s been fun.  First thing I do with the new truck is head for my trusty insurance company and insure that baby to the max…