End of the year at The Center

playing a fractions fishing game

my kiddos bursting with excitement for the end of the school year

cleaning up my classroom:)

the FINISHED hallway outside my classroom

Here's a little snippet of afternoon recess at The Center.

The Center's first reading competition!

First grade teacher Norma reading a story

playing a rhyming game with 4th grade and flyswatters.

 

2nd grade teacher Laura reading Scripture with a student

prizes for 4th grade students for good behavior and attendance

CHRISTMAS AT THE CENTER

 

waiting to go in for the Christmas program...

...waiting for the program to start...

A Veggie Tales movie about the true meaning of Christmas

Christmas carols in Spanish

A balloon game to pass the time while snack is prepared

Making buñuelos

A traditional Christmas treat

The abundant goodness of Jesus in the form of presents for the kiddos

The Christmas program was the last day of The Center for 2015 and we said goodbye to all the 6th graders.  Hopefully, we will find financial support to pay a 7th grade teacher someday so our 8th graders can continue on with us for one more year.  Ruth, their teacher for several years, said goodbye to them tearfully and some of the 6th graders shed tears as they said goodbye, too.

Bolivian alpaca for Christmas (the artisan products, not the animal!)

Help support a Bolivian missionary and her family by purchasing a handmade alpaca scarf, shawl or blanket.  Reyna has worked with the Aymara Women's ministry in Bolivia for over 2 decades, traveling multiple time a month around Bolivia to isolated communities to encourage believers and to share the gospel with women who haven't heard the good news.

Alejandro, Reyna's wife, is a carpenter and a pastor.  He has great craftsmanship, and has made many things for my house, as well as the outside playground for The Center.  Both he and his wife have struggled for years to make ends meet, as they have always made serving the Lord a priority over making money.

Josías, their 9-year-old son, is my godson and just finished 4th grade.  He loves to help his dad out in the workshop, and especially enjoys trying out the different toys that his dad makes to sell.

The first two shawls are $80 each.  Each shawl is handwoven by Reyna's father, made from hand spun alpaca yarn.  Reyna's father raises alpacas on his land in rural Oruro, a department of Bolivia, and uses the wool he harvests to make the shawls, using only the natural colors of the alpaca.

no design, brown shawl

The following two shawls are $45 each, plus shipping.  They are handwoven llama, not alpaca, hence the lower price.

The scarves are also handwoven and hand-spun with the same process as the shawls.  Each scarf is $35.

If you are interested in any of these items, let me know.  You can contact me via e-mail (kata.stewart@gmail.com).

Do the mountains break my car? A lesson in TRUST.

first day trip into the mountains w/ the car

I think the mountains are out to get my car.  Or maybe my car doesn't appreciate that every time we get it fixed, we almost immediately take it up grueling hills to altitudes above 13,000ft.  Whatever the reason, other than 2 exceptions, I've yet to take the car successfully up into the mountains without coming back down with significant problems.  Sigh.  My most recent trip, I honestly thought we would have to leave the car by the side of the road.

"The accident": getting hit by a dump truck on our first outing in the car

For a long time after purchasing the car, I blamed myself.  We didn't know enough about cars to recognize looming problems when we bought it.  I don't know how to judge a mechanic's character and abilities well enough to pick a good one.  Etc., etc.  Now I've come to realize that part of the problem is just choosing to live in Bolivia!  A good friend of mine has a relatively new car in good shape that has been in and out of mechanic shops the last few months with recurring problems.  Co-workers of mine spent months researching cars and finally chose one nicer and more expensive than ours and not more than a week after buying it, it was in the shop.

washing mountain dust off the car

It feels cliche to me sometimes to talk about how God is teaching me something beautiful through trials or struggles or difficulties.  I can't always relate to others' stories of gratitude for difficult times because to me, the difficult is just that: DIFFICULT.

Christmas Day 2014 mountain exploration

And then I finally got it.  This last trip to the mountains was the final straw that helped me understand what in the world God has been trying to get through my thick skull the last year+.  Last weekend, a friend of mine and I drove up into the mountains for a picnic, to explore and go for a swim in a pool under a waterfall near the road.  As we climbed up higher and higher, the car began to struggle with the altitude, losing power, but we made it all the way up and over a mountain pass (around 13,500ft) without much trouble.

the hills we wound up in the car on the most recent mountain adventure

It was when we turned the car around to go back that the real troubles began.  Driving back up a slight hill back towards the pass, the car suddenly died.  My friend pushed and it started again.  We hit a little dip with big rocks and had to slow down, and it died again.  Push. Start. Push. Start.  After a half a kilometer and lots of expended energy, the car was on a flat and needed to get over a final small uphill to coast down the 5,000ft between us and Cochabamba.  At the top of the hill, a huge party was going on, celebrating a new project in the campo.  Dozens of large trucks, cars and motorcycles lined the road, leaving a narrow gap between both sides for one car to squeeze through.  No way we were making it through, pushing uphill, let alone weaving past all the obstacles, people out in the road and traffic coming up over the hill from the city.

The small hill in front of up seemed an impossible barrier.  My friend went to look for a few sober people among the party goers and I lifted the hood to jiggle a few wires in hopes that I'd magically wiggle the problem out of the engine.  I took a deep breath in, threw up a prayer without much conviction it'd be heard, and turned the key.  The engine roared to life without hesitation, and I crested the hill just as my friend, with 6 or 7 young men in tow, walked up the other side of the hill to help. 

BBQ w/ friend at a local campground

What I thought was altitude affecting the car was actually a much bigger problem.  The car jerked and sputtered whenever I tried to jump start it with momentum, so we ended up coasting most of the way down the 5,000ft into town, trying to anticipate the slight uphills in the road so we could keep our speed up enough to crest the hill.

snow camping

We finally arrived in Tiquipaya (a town next to Cochabamba) around 8pm and discovered that without a downhill, it was next to impossible to drive more than a block or two without the car dying.  I had to keep the motor revved so it wouldn't die, and tried to drive in the right-hand lane with my hazards on so when the engine did suddenly die, I wouldn't block traffic.  To make matters worse, there had been a big event in Tiquipaya that evening and everyone was headed back into Cochabamba, walking in the right-hand lane, so I had to keep the engine revved, avoid pedestrians walking in the dark lane and try to anticipate any stoplights or speed bumps that would interfere with the engine resolutions.  Sheesh.  We reached an intersection about 30 min from home, and the car died, half in, half out of the road and refused to start again.  After half an hour of trying, I was ready to give up.

It was 9pm on a Saturday.  Collin was watching Matias at my house and couldn't come help.  Any mechanic I knew wasn't working.  I had come to the end of myself.  We popped the hood in desperation and started fiddling around.  Within 5 minutes, a man walked over and asked what had happened.  Next thing I knew, he was splicing together wires, testing things out, and within 15 min, the car was working better than it was when we left for the mountains!  It might sound cheesy, but if the man who helped wasn't so tipsy, I would have been firmly convinced he was an angel.  His help was truly providential.

Driving the last half hour home, the motor purring under the hood, I had a sudden realization that maybe all these car breakdowns and challenges have been more than just God's way of cultivating patience.  I think He's been eager for me to see the challenge as an opportunity for Him to work.  When a situation seems impossible, rather than getting frustrated or trying to find a solution all on my own, He wants me to look for Him.  It's not about ending all the car troubles.  It's about using car troubles, and any other seemingly impossible situations, to be excited to see how God moves.

I no longer think it trite or unrealistic when someone gives thanks for a challenge or difficulty.  I get it.  It's all about looking to Him in eager expectancy, excited to see what He will do or how He will provide.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds..." James 1:2

Strike Five

Every time we go camping, it's an adventure.  We've yet to go camping in our car successfully, without some sort of problem.  Of our 5 attempts, each one has ended with some challenge.  Admittedly, one of the challenges was a trip where the tent poles didn't make it in with the tent.  Other than that, we've had accidents with dump trucks, failed brakes at 13,000ft, push starting the car a half mile in snow and starting the car behind a transport truck.  Guess which one this camping trip was...

We pulled up to Yana Qhocha, an alpine lake with a smaller lake above that fed it with a singing waterfall.  As we pulled off the road and drove a short distance through the boggy grass, we caught glimpses of the area we were going to camp in before the mist came swirling back in.  Once we got the tent up, we spent most of the afternoon inside, listening to the wind and the clouds swirl outside, and discovering that my tent is no longer fully waterproof...  Matias was in his element in the tent, roughhousing, driving cars and even lying quietly beside us, looking at a book of poetry as Collin and I read our own books.  We had a quick dinner of hot chicken soup, huddled on the lee side of the car, trying to keep Matias warm and avoid getting sopping wet.  After wolfing down dinner, we crawled into our sleeping bags to get warm.

As we fell asleep, I was entranced by the sound of a lone frog singing.  Yes, singing.  At least that's what it sounded like to me.  Collin thought it sounded like a noise from a horror film, right before something scary jumps out of the mist.  I thought it was one of the most beautiful sounds I'd ever heard.  Granted, my family and friends tell me I tend to be effusive, but it was haunting and alluring.  The best way to describe it is to compare it's sound both to the dripping of water, drop by drop into a puddle and a soft marimba.  What a way to fall asleep; the sound of a crystal clear stream bubbling next to the tent, accompanied by the gentle droplet song of an Andean frog.
We woke up to the above view from our tent door, the edge of the lake looking down on the vast jungle below.  It was the only sunshine of the day,
and the only glimpse we got of the mountains looming over the valley and Yana Qhocha (Black Lake in Quechua) below.

We tried to eat breakfast on top of a plastic sheet before the sun slipped away, but as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again and the mist swirled back in.

As we ate breakfast, we learned how wet it can be in the middle of the clouds.  Matias was a good sport, but by the time he was done with his cold cereal (wishing we'd brought hot oatmeal instead!), he decided he was done with camping.

Determined to show Matias that camping is fun and not always miserable, we decided to pack up and leave, or at least drive out of the clouds to somewhere we could hike in the sun.

Matias sat in the middle of the tent as we took it down around him.  As soon as he was warmly bundled up in his car seat, he felt immediately better and was content to wait while we finished packing up by 8:30am.  It's a good thing he was content to wait, because he had to wait a bit longer than we anticipated... another good 6+ HOURS!!  It was cold and high altitude, but we hadn't had any problems starting the car in recent months, so we didn't anticipate trouble.  But after 2 hours of trying unsuccessfully, we finally realized we had to come up with a Plan B.

Collin put on his running clothes and made a plan to run to the nearest village or car he could find, potentially over 10km away.  If he wasn't back by 3pm, I was supposed to start hiking out with Matias on my own or decide to spend another night in the soggy tent, hoping for some help the following morning.  It was Sunday and there was a wild festival in the nearest town.  Our chances of finding people willing or able to help us were slim.

the lake with the tall tall grass and the squelchy mud

 Matias and I ate PB&J, drove his matchbox cars around the car and huddled under blankets when the cold wind blew the wet clouds through the cracks in the car door.  When we took a bathroom break, Matias discovered a delicate spiderweb, outlined with droplets of dew.  I showed him how to gently tap the web with a twig so the spider came darting out.  We spent the next hour hunting for spiders and their webs, Matias exclaiming with delight every time a spider scuttled onto the web.

A little before the 3pm deadline, Matias and I were walking around the lake, pretending we were going on a bear hunt from the Michael Rosen book.  We were swishy swashying our way through the tall tall grass when we heard what sounded like a semi truck horn blaring through the mist.  I scooped Matias up and we swishy swashyed our way back to the car and then out on the road so they wouldn't miss us.  To my surprise, a HUGE truck rolled up, driven by a 15-year-old girl.  A family of 2 men, 2 women, a teenage boy, two teenage girls and two little boys spilled out of the truck, along with Collin, whooping and hollering in the back.

Our car was far enough off the road that we couldn't winch it back onto the main road.  After fiddling with the motor for awhile, Jhonny, the blue-eyed Quechua leader of the group, agreed to help us push it through the bog and back onto the road.  With 15-year-old Jhessi at the wheel, it took all 10 of us (including the two little boys!) to push the car backwards to the highway, everyone grunting and gasping for air and Matias watching wide-eyed from the sideline.  Once we hooked the car up to the truck, one of the men jumped in to steer and the other stepped onto the running board.  Collin and I sat smushed in the back, hoping the car would eventually jump start.  It took a couple miles and lots of tries before the car finally started, sputtering, faltering and acting like it didn't want to go anywhere.

rolling hills outside Tiraque

After thanking and paying the family who helped us, we finally sputtered into the nearby small town of Tiraque, low on gas, realizing the car was eating gas at twice the normal rate. From a local, we learned the town gas station was out of gasoline and the nearest station was up and over a mountain pass.  As we drove out of Tiraque, the struggling car barely made it in first gear up the mild rolling hills.  The only other way home was back the way we came and a long drive around the mountains to come into Cochabamba at the opposite end of the city.  But we didn't have enough gas to make it.  When we reached the main road over the mountain pass home, we watched car after car fly up the steep road with winding curves and blind corners.  I got out the warning triangles to place on the road if we couldn't go further, got ready to hop out of the car whenever needed, and started praying like crazy that we'd make it over the pass.  Just then, a slow-moving truck began to make its way up the sharp grade, a long train of cars following slowly behind.  We joined the train, going just slow enough that we somehow made it over the pass without incident. On the downhill, we gassed up and made it home exhausted and grateful.

the steep grade home

Collin said we should start a new TV series, Bear Grylls style, where we are dropped off in the middle of nowhere in Bolivia with our car and have to figure out how to fix it and return home, using the locals and our resourcefulness.  As much as I love adventure, I think I've gotten my fill for now.