2 visits and a broken heart

New Years Eve at my house

with some of the youth

2011 brought with it a lot of fellowship and encouragement with friends, both from here and from the States.  New Years Eve we made a meal and played games with youth from the church until almost 3am, stopping only to watch the fireworks all over the city from my rooftop at midnight.  The next day, my dear friend Kristen and I spent the whole day together, catching up on the last 6 months since I saw her while I was in Chicago.  Kristen was in Bolivia a little over a week, mainly to share the gospel with the people of Potosí, a remote and impoverished department in Bolivia.  It was good for my soul to laugh with someone who speaks my language and knows me well.

me and Kristen 

A few days later, I traveled to La Paz on an overnight bus to meet up with one of my oldest college friends, Emily.  We met the first day of college at Whitworth and have been fast friends ever since.  Emily works with the Peace Corps in Micronesia, and showed her incredible love by taking out over a week of her vacation time with her family to spend it with me in Bolivia.  In La Paz, we laid under a pine tree, laughing 'til we cried remembering stories and adventures from our college days.  As good as it was, it made me a little sad, too, remembering what a beautiful community I was a part of at Whitworth, and how much has changed since.

smiling in the Botanical gardens

Monday night soccer!

Somehow all the blessings and richness of my life seems a sharp contrast with the world around me.  I felt grateful when curtains and shower wall were finally installed in my house Wednesday, yet in my daily life, I am surrounded by women and children without a house, without shoes, without money to buy a warm meal.  

In La Paz with Emily, a weathered, stooped Quechua beggar came up to us in the bus terminal, begging for money, saying "¡Mamitay, qoriway, a!" (loose translation: friend, come on, give me!).  When I shook my head no, she pointed to my blanket, shivering in the cold night air, asking why I couldn't give her my blanket.  It felt like being punched in the stomach.  Why not?  Why shouldn't I go cold on the bus ride home so that a homeless beggar woman could be warm for many nights on the street?  I have no answer.  I've come up with no theological or personal conclusions.  All I know is that it hurts something deep within me every time I'm confronted with the stark poverty all around me.

A journal entry from a month ago:

DECEMBER 3RD, 2010-

"Images of poverty are starting to really get to me again.  A homeless man sticking his hand down his throat, retching in the middle of traffic.  Two barefoot little ones, hair knotted and faces smudged, toddling around Plaza Principal, holding their hands up to strangers walking past, not even old enough to know what they're asking for!  Or the sweet voice of a little Quechua girl and her beautiful smile as she dances for me, begging for money.  I cringe at my cowardice or my inability to move towards them and embrace their humanness."

Pray for these desamparados, the abandoned ones, that they would experience the tangible love of the One who created them.  Pray that I would have courage, discernment and overflowing love for the least of these in Bolivia.

"He tends his flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young."  Isaiah 40:11