Las Yungas

We were blessed to be able to discover new parts of Bolivia during our holiday season. Our family took a Christmas trip to the Yungas. The Yungas is a jungle region about 2 1/2 hours down the mountain from the capital city of La Paz. This section of Bolivia is the perimeter region of the Amazon jungle. It is lush, tropical and very green. The climate is completely different than what we have been experiencing in Sucre. As expected, it is hot, humid, and there are all kinds of different insects and animals.

We stayed at a resort call Rio Selva (The River Jungle). Below are some of our pictures. We had a wonderful time together!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?

Despite the 80 degree temps here in Sucre, this last week actually started to feel a bit like Christmas. Artificial Christmas trees started popping up in the market around the first of December. (Unlike in the US where the stores are full of Christmas decor in October!) Since everything seems so different this year for us, we decided that buying a Christmas tree would be a must! So, shopping we went, and we are very happy with the tree that we found. Ella was especially excited to pick out a tree and of course wanted to help decorate it! Here are some pictures:

As you can see by the smile, Ella was thrilled to be decorating the tree.

John was on a mission to find the perfect topper for the tree.

Tada! The finished product!

Here is a picture of our living room, all ready for Christmas!

Another favorite of Ella's during Christmas time...getting to play with her nativity set!

This week we also participated in the Christmas Party at the FH office. It was really nice to be apart of it. They had a scheduled program, including singing performances, traditional dancing, and a scavenger hunt. We had a wonderful meal together and then all the staff were presented with the traditional employee basket. It is a tradition here in Bolivia that employers give a basket of food to each employee. Our basket included Christmas cookies, small breads and cakes, candy and a bottle of wine! Below is a snap shot of the tradition dance some of the staff did for the party:

Finally, last night we got together with several other missionaries and went over to Derek and Claire's house to surprise them with a little Christmas Caroling. Afterwards we had everyone over to our house for hot apple cider and some Christmas goodies. We had a wonderful evening!

We are looking forward to taking a break from language school and spending some time as a family next week. We will be traveling to a more tropical area of Bolivia for a little Christmas vacation before John starts officially working with FH in January. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Market Fresh!

When they say it's fresh.....they mean it's fresh!

(Yes folks, the mama chicken left her mark on this one. And although we have gotten used to a lot of different things since moving to Bolivia, we decided to not eat this particular egg!)

A hard day.

When John arrived at our language school this morning we learned some terrible news. One of our professors and good friends Marcello, died in a motorcycle accident last night. We had just celebrated his birthday the day before. Marcello was married and had 2 kids.

This was shocking news to us, and we have been spending the day talking about the moments we have shared with Marcello over the past 4 months. It has been such a humbling reminder of how fragile our lives really are here on this earth. This world is not our home. Yet so many do not have a relationship with God and will sadly, never experience the peace of the heavenly home. We hold such a valuable truth that the world needs to hear!

Please remember his family and everyone at the language school in your prayers during this difficult time.

The 2009 Bolivarians

For the past 2 weeks our family has had the privilege of enjoying the 2009 Bolivarians Olympic Games. Every 3 years the continent of South America hosts the Olympic games named after famous liberator Simon Boliviar. All the countries that compete are the countries that were at one time liberated by Boliviar. Incredibly, this addition of the games was hosted in our very own Sucre!!! It’s the first time in 40 years the games have been in Bolivia and the first time ever in Sucre. This has been an extremely important event for the country, and a great opportunity to showcase the culture, beauty, and promise that characterizes Bolivia. In fact, some say the only bigger event to happen in Bolivia over the past 50 or more years was when the Pope visited in the 1980’s! With that said hoards of people and thousands of athletes (several that competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics) have invaded Sucre over the past 2 weeks and made our tranquil little city quite active and busy. Since we live near the center of town we have been in close proximity to several of the competitions. In fact, a week ago on our way to church we were detoured by the cycling event, which had shut down main roads in downtown, and finished at the Plaza near our house. Overall Bolivia is not known for its athletes (outside of racquetball believe it or not) so we didn’t have a whole lot to cheer for but it was fun to be apart of the festivities and excitement.

The opening ceremonies were quite interesting, as the total process took somewhere around 5 hours. Though we could see the stadium and fireworks from our front room window we decided to just watch the event on TV and avoid the crowd. Here is a short video clip of the ceremonies.

The Bolivarians included most of the normal events you would think of: basketball, soccer, cycling, volleyball, swimming, track and field, gymnastics, baseball, boxing; and a few others that are popular in this part of the world: indoor soccer, table tennis, and billiards. Outside of soccer one of the most popular sports in Bolivia is Volleyball. Since we live near the indoor arena we decided two separate nights to try to watch indoor volleyball. We also thought it would be something that Ella would enjoy. However, I think everyone else in Sucre also had the same idea. We became 3, of hundreds of people trying to jockey our way into the small arena to watch Bolivia and top seeded Peru square off in Men’s team volleyball. It was quite humorous because people became almost fanatical about trying to get in. Pushing, shoving, and rattling gate doors with displeasure when the police attempted to limit the crowd entering the building. It reminded me of Black Friday stampedes for dancing Elmo’s and Cabbage Patch dolls. So, needless so say we did not make it into volleyball. We did however manage with little resistance to watch the track and field events. As you will notice in the pictures below track and field is not a popular sport in South America. The stadium was basically empty. But we had fun!

The Olympic flame at Estadio Patria

Men's 1500.

You have to admire any athlete that is able to compete at a high level, running at an altitude of 9,000 feet.

Men's Long Jump

Women's 100m prelims

Ella was a little scared of the multi colored hair but she was excited to get a picture with Erika Benilda Chavez Quintero of Ecuador the Women's 400m champion.

Micah Update - a turn in the wrong direction!

If you are reading this please take a moment to say a quick prayer for baby Micah and his family. Last night Derek and Claire got a call from the hospital saying he started bleeding internally, we believe possibly from his lungs. This was heartbreaking news as just yesterday afternoon, Micah was doing so well, with his infection totally cleared. Please pray for healing for little Micah and strength for Derek and Claire as they have been have been through a roller coaster of emotions in the last 24 hours.

Thanksgiving in Bolivia

We had a wonderful time celebrating our first holiday here in Bolivia. I imagine that many of you realize that Bolivia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, so Thursday certainly did not feel like a holiday to us, as we spent the day in language school, just like every other day. It was hard to be away from family and friends, knowing that everyone was getting together and spending the weekend with family. But we were determined to make the weekend special, even if it was going to be different than normal! So I (Jennie) was dead set on trying to make a pumpkin pie. This was a tall order for several reasons. 1) I had never made a pumpkin pie before. 2) They don't have canned pumpkin here. 3) They don't have real pumpkins either! But after talking with other missionaries, I was told that there is a large squash type vegetable, that with the right spices, could work to make a pumpkin pie. So, with a little help from the internet, I figured out how to make a pumpkin pie from this. (See below)

I am very thankful for the family and friends that sent pumpkin pie spice from the States! Our teachers were intrigued by the description and thought of pumpkin pie so I took one pie to the language school for the teachers to try. Pumpkin pie is is a pretty difficult taste to describe, so I thought the best thing was for them to try it. Luckliy, they all thought it was delicious! (By the way, I didn't tell them that it was my first!)

On Saturday we got together with Derek, Claire, Noelia, Linda (Claire's Mom) and Jan, our pastors wife. Jan and her husband Phil have been missionaries here in Bolivia for over 30 years. Jan graciously hosted us, and cooked up a 6 pound chicken. (Turkeys are pretty tough to come by.) We all brought over our favorite Thanksgiving dishes and had a really nice time. By now it was really starting to feel like Thanksgiving!

Jan, carving up the chicken.

Finally, on Sunday we invited two of our Spanish teachers, Patricia and her sister Maria Elena and their children over to try some of our traditional Thanksgiving day foods. It was really fun to watch them as they tried all the new things. We had a great evening together!

Patricia, Carla, Jennie, Ella, Maria Elena, Neithan

The kids were fast friends

John did things with his face that Carla had never seen before!

At first the kids were a little timid, but by the end of the night it was high-fives all around!

Micah Update #2

Micah has made a great improvement in the last 24 hours. He is no longer on the respirator! Derek and Claire have had a chance to update their blog with a lot more detail. Here is a link to their blog.

http://derekandclaire.blogspot.com/

Thanks everyone for praying!

Happy Thanksgiving

Ella wanted to share a special Thanksgiving greeting to our friends and family.

For those of you who have not yet become fluent in child gibberish here is the interpretation of Ella's song.

Johnny Apple-seed

"Oh the Lord is good to me and so I thank the Lord,

For giving me the things I need, the sun, the rain, and the apple-seed,

The Lord is good to me, Amen, Amen... Amen, Amen, Amen.... AAAAAAAmen."

We are thankful today for the many blessings that have been lavished upon our family. The Lord has truly "been good to us." Thank you for the encouragement, love, and joy that you bring to our lives. We pray that you have a wonderful holiday and are reminded today of the incredible blessings that surround you. We wish we could celebrate with you. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Micah update #1

The latest news on Micah has been positive so we are thankful for that! The latest blood tests on Micah show that the infection seems to be getting better. So the antibiotics are working. Micah is also starting to breath over his vent every once in a while, but the plan is to keep him on the respirator until his infection is better. So it seems like some progress is being made, little by little.

The difficult thing is that Derek and Claire really have very little contact with Micah. The visiting hours in the NICU are only 12-2pm and 5-7 pm. Right now there are a lot of babies in the NICU so Derek and Claire are not even allowed into the room. They can only look at Micah from a window outside the NICU. You can imagine how hard this had been for them! When I spoke with Claire yesterday she said that the comments and e-mails you have sent have been so encouraging for them. So please keep the encouraging words and prayers coming.

Prayers for Baby Micah

Many of you know from previous posts that we are so blessed to have another American family here in Sucre with us, who also works for FH. This weekend, Derek, Claire and Noelia were blessed when Claire gave birth to a baby boy, Micah. The birth was a bit of a surprise as little Micah came a few weeks early, but not early enough to be considered a premie.

However, after Micah was born, it was evident by his blueish tint that he was not able to breath well enough on his own to get enough oxygen. He was rushed across the street to a larger hospital that has a NICU and put in an incubator with an oxygen hood. (The only NICU in town.) They also found out that Micah has some kind of infection, what kind they are not sure of yet. Micah seemed to be improving, until Saturday, when he started to go down hill quickly. He is currently on a respirator and more stable than he was on Saturday. But he is still fighting an infection which seems to be preventing him from gaining enough strength to breath on his own.

Please take a moment as you read this blog to lift little Micah and his family up in prayer. They would all greatly appreciate it. I will forward on to the family any comments, words of encouragement, or Bible verses you may have for them.

I will try to update his progress on our blog as I know more.

Thanks for your prayers!

Language School

We are plugging away at language school. It is hard to believe that we have been at it for almost 3 full months! The language has most definitely been the hardest thing in our process of adjusting to our life here in Bolivia. Not only does it complicate all matters when it comes to normal daily activities, but the language learning process has at times been discouraging and draining. It seems like the more you learn about the language, the more you realize how far you really are at being able to speak correctly. We are currently going through a period in our learning, where grammatically we are progressing, but verbally we are taking a step back. Mostly because we know more now, and it's difficult when you are trying to not only get your point across to someone, but you are also trying to choose your words so you speak correctly!

We are fortunate in that the program that John will be working with for FH will not be starting until Jan 15th. That means we will have time to take an extra month of language school than we had originally thought! This is a great blessing for us, even though there is a part of us that would just like to be done with the classes and homework! We do recognize that it is a great opportunity and valuable for our ministry.

I don't want to make language school sound like a total drag! We do get to do some pretty fun activities and meet some interesting people. We have gotten to meet people from all around the world, other missionaries and a LOT of students and young folks who are traveling around South America for fun. Because our school is for language study and cultural study we have had the opportunity to see some of the cultural museums around town, taste some of the Bolivian food, and visit other historical areas in Sucre.

Last week I (Jennie) got to visit the one and only "castle" in Bolivia. Back in the 1800's there was a very wealthy couple who lived in Sucre. They decided to adopt poor children in the area and give them a good education. Overall they ended up adopting over 50 children. They build a "castle", each room having influence from different countries - mostly different European designs. There is even a small replica of Big Ben. Eventually they were given the title "Prince and Princess of Bolivia" even though they held no political power.

Here are some of the pictures from that day:

Entrance to the Castle

Tower for star watching. When you are climbing up to the top, it seems ALOT higher. My legs were not quite the same for a few days afterwards.

View of the gardens from the tower.

A Little Bolivian Music to start off your week!

I have finally figured out a way to post videos on our slow server here in Bolivia!

Thought I would start with this video. We were eating at a pretty touristy place a few weekends ago and to our surprise were in for some live music.

As you can see, Ella and her friend Alana are their newest groupies!

Sorry about the quality of the video. This was the best I could get it!

World Weekend!

This coming weekend, our sending church, Hope Church in Mason, OH, is celebrating World Weekend. Every year the church picks a weekend to lavish love on their local and global missionaries and mission partners. The weekend is filled with wonderful meals, time to share struggles and triumphs with other missionaries, time to share with members of the church about our ministry, and time to just be rejuvenated before returning back to "the field."

If you live in the area we highly encourage you to take advantage of the many opportunities to meet the missionaries and different organizations that Hope Church supports. I think I can speak for everyone that will be there, it is a tremendous encouragement for these missionaries to see face to face the warriors that are behind them and to know that even though at times they may feel alone and forgotten in their work, indeed they are not!

We are bummed that we will not be able to attend this year, as we have just arrived here in Bolivia and are still in language training. However, we are happy to announce that we will be skyping in the service on Sunday evening for a few minutes to share how things are going for us. We look forward to "seeing" you there!

Feliz Cumpleanos!

This weekend Ella was invited to her first Bolivian birthday party. It was quite the cultural event, so we thought we would share all about it.

The first birthday is a huge event here in Bolivia. The parents typically go all out, throwing a huge party for friends and family. Our landlords live in the apartment next to us and their granddaughter turned one last week. Thursday night they came over with an invitation for Ella to come to the party. Ella was SO excited, and we were too! We had heard about these birthday parties and were really interested to get to experience one.

Our landlords are a married couple, probably in their 40's. The husband, Marco, is Swiss and is married to a Bolivian woman (Ruth). We were thankful that Marco warned us about the time on the invitation. Bolivians are not known for their punctuality. Because of this, whenever Bolivians invite people for parties or set meetings etc., they always put a time much earlier than the actual start time. So, when we looked at the invitation, and confirmed that the party started at 9am, Marco quickly said, "Oh, but you are Americans so we can tell you that the party will actually start around 10:30 am." Good to know! So we showed up a bit after 10:30 am and were the 3rd family there. People continued to roll in as late as 11:45 pm!

The party was really great! The first two hours, a clown was the main source of entertainment. We think that he was pretty funny, but he spoke so fast we couldn't understand a word he said. We are getting very good at smiling and nodding our heads in agreement. Ella was also quite scared of him, but eventually participated from afar. Around hour 3 we all gathered around the cakes and the speeches began. Both parents spoke followed by all 4 grandparents. Next were the great grandparents and a few other aunts and uncles as well. Next came the breaking of the pinata, handing out gifts and then eating the cake. Despite the fact that we were the only foreigners there, we actually had a really nice time, Ella had a blast, and we learned a little more about the culture here in Bolivia. Below are some of the pictures from the day.

Ella went shopping with Mommy and was excited to give the birthday girl her present.

Dancing with the clown...Ella made sure she kept her distance from the clown!

Ella and the Birthday girl!

The family getting ready to start their speeches.

Pinata Time

Group Picture

Ella showing off her party prize

Ella's favorite part about the party...her new blue glasses.

Lima Vision Conference Part 2

Last week I (John) had the privilege of attending a Biblical Worldview conference in Lima Peru. The conference was sponsored by two separate organizations that have very close ties to Food for the Hungry. Disciple Nations Alliance led by Darrow Miller, and World Harvest lead by Bob Moffitt were the two host organizations. Both Darrow and Bob have previously worked for FH in some capacity and have developed a great deal of the content and ministry strategies for the organization. The conference tackled many important issues that Mission organizations and churches face today but the focus was on the transforming power of the gospel to not only break the spiritual bonds of sin and death but to free whole societies from deception and poverty. The three dominating worldviews today are animism, secularism, and biblical theism. Most people living today find themselves embracing one of those three perspectives on life. It is also to be noted that most people have no idea what they believe but their culture has morphed their thinking without them knowing it. Animism is the view that sees reality as essentially spiritual. The physical world is maya illusion. It is animated spirits. This would be the religions that hold to the belief, generally speaking, that everything is a god. The earth, rain, water, sky etc. (Very popular here in Bolivia as the Catholic church over the years has become very syncretistic with the native Inca religions.) Secularism sees reality as ultimately physical. By definition this model denies the existence of a spiritual or transcendent reality. This materialistic worldview is free from absolutes and man is now able to decide what is right and wrong, true and false. Many Americans unknowingly accept this very atheistic perspective. Finally, Biblical Theism holds that because God exists an objective reality exists that is known and has been established by God. Reality is ultimately personal because it has been established by the ultimate person. This worldview, based on the truth of scripture, allows communication between the physical and spiritual realms. Through means such as general revelation, the Bible, and the living word himself, Yeshua, man has personal communication with the living God. It is important to understand these basic elements because your worldview is the way in which you view how the world works. Thus, it ultimately drives the life decisions and perspectives you will take. Starting from this foundation the conference built upon the issue of poverty and how the worldview plays an integral part in how a person sees the issue of poverty. The Bible speaks a great deal toward the issue of poverty and throughout the weekend we looked at the different causes of poverty and the way in which God’s people and the church are called to deal with it. Building off the premise that the root of poverty is a lack of Biblical worldview the speakers truly challenged us to renew our minds and begin to crack the deception of our secularistic culture and begin seeing the world through the lenses of scripture. These men offered some powerful insights into the heart of God and the role in which the church plays in discipling the Nation. God is not only interested in individuals but also in nations. I encourage you to read the book “Discipling Nations” by Darrow Miller. The book will further your thinking and challenge you to see the issue of poverty from a new theistic perspective. It's a great read and truly a foundational element in the ministry of FH. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and made some great connections for future ministry.

For those who wonder what Lima is like, it’s big, polluted, and busy. The transportation system is absolutely crazy and I felt like “frogger” every time I tried to cross the lanes of traffic. Thanks Jennie for watching Ella and letting me go, it was a great weekend but I am glad to be home!

Our group from Bolivia. Yes, they only speak Spanish

They hide some pretty weird things in soup

John Standing at Washington Park in Lima

Bob Moffitt, John, and Darrow Miller

Conference participants.

Lima Vision Conference Part 1

Last week I (John) had an opportunity to travel to Lima Peru for a Biblical World Vision conference with a group of 6 other Bolivians. It was a tremendous experience and I returned home with several good stories. Before I share about the conference itself let me first share about my experience at the airport. I was scheduled to leave the Sucre airport at 5:20pm on Tuesday evening. The flight was a direct flight from Sucre to Santa Cruz (Bolivia) where I would then spend the night and catch a very early morning 6:50am direct flight from Santa Cruz to Lima Peru. Jennie, Ella and I decided to relax for the morning before I left for the airport at 3:00pm by going to a local place to enjoy some fresh squeezed juice. While we were there I received an anxious phone call from FH saying that my flight had been rescheduled and would be leaving in 1 hour. I raced out of the restaurant (leaving my full glass of pineapple juice) ran 5 blocks up hill, grabbed my bags and hailed a taxi to the airport. When I got to the airport I soon found out that the flight had been totally canceled and that I would be rescheduled on a different flight 3 hours later, and going through La Paz. I decided to take a taxi back home and then return back to the airport 3 hours later. At the airport the second time I found out that the plane had been officially delayed for another hour and a half. However the hour and a half was soon 2 hours and a half. Once we did finally begin to load we entered a very small boarding area to wait for the plane to arrive and unload. The airline decided to expedite the process by having the passengers line up in order of their seats and isles. I can now speak from experience, but having 60 Bolivian people crammed in a small room line up by order of seats is not exactly an efficient process. Further more once we did get lined up the attendant then asked my row to begin walking in a line in the opposite direction in order to reverse our order. (Yes a diagram is needed to fully comprehend.) We then proceeded to wait another 20 minutes for the plane to arrive. By that time half the people were tired of standing and decided to sit down totally disintegrating our sense of order. After 20 minutes we left the boarding room and proceeded outside to the tarmac where we waited another ten minutes for the plane to totally unload. Finally we boarded the plane only to find a flight attendant standing at the door pointing to the seat where we would sit. Yes, taking into no account the actually seat that we were assigned or the strategic order that we had spent 30 minutes arranging. Finally we waited another 10 minutes on the plane. So basically all the effort to expedite the boarding process was futile as we ended up sitting in the plane waiting for the baggage to load. We did eventually end up leaving and I did get where I was supposed to go safely so I was thankful about that. You learn to not ask questions and just accept the fact that any attempt to understand the reasoning behind the strategy will always come back void. Of well, just a glimpse into travel in South America.

Double Take

A few weeks ago I was walking past several store fronts. Something caught my attention and I had to do a double take. Initially I was a bit startled and as I kept walking I slowly realized what I had just seen. I HAD to go back and take a picture because it was just to funny to pass up. This pharmacy type store had a mannequin that was displaying every possible contraption that it had to sell....jock strap and all!

Our first Visitors!

For the past 5 days we have had the pleasure of hosting FH missionaries Ed and Sarah Moulding and their 3 year old daughter Alana. They are from the UK and are currently serving in La Paz, Bolivia. Part of their job involves looking after all the FH missionaries in Bolivia. Besides helping us with our visas and keeping us informed on important info, they visit each city with FH missionaries every other month. During their visit they check on us to see how we are adjusting, watch our kids for us so we can have a date night, and help with other various tasks we have on our plate. They also showed us some other fun things in Sucre that we have not had time to discover yet. Below are some pictures of the weekend!

We found a new park! The girls had a blast.

Of course while we were at the park a group of donkeys walked by.

They also took us out to an outdoor restaurant that over looks the city.

John ordered a hamburger... this is what it looked like. It took a while to find the hamburger (bun not included), but it was wonderful nonetheless.

Career Day

Last Saturday our family had the privilege to see Food for the Hungry (FH) in action. Up to this point our days have been filled with mostly language learning, so our time with FH has been limited. This past week however we were invited to help with a special FH project in near by Orna Casa. Orna Casa is a very low income suburb of Sucre and one location of many that FH has an ongoing presence. The project was a "Career Day" that involved around 450 kids from the surrounding villages. Many kids in Bolivia, especially children from low income villages, grow up with little hope of ever living outside of the extreme poverty that is often passed from generation to generation . They are raised in an atmosphere where dreams are squelched by disease, abuse, and abandonment. With that said, one goal of FH is to begin providing opportunity for children to see hope beyond their current circumstances. We believe that all children have been created in the image of God and blessed with skills and abilities that make them unique, beautiful and talented. We desire for children to grasp that life has purpose and that each new day with God brings hope for a brighter future. Not only was this past weekend a kick start for the dreams of many kids, but it ignited a sense of value, meaning, and relevance into the life of many who feel forgotten.

As you can see from the pictures below a wide variety of careers were represented. Police and Fire Department, K-9 unit, EMS unit, doctors, nurses, finance, nutrition, agriculture, social work and many more. Each of these "careers" volunteered their time for the day and brought all kinds of interactive tools to help teach the kids about their job and how they too could some day have a career in their field. The teachers were great and the kids loved it!

K-9 unit showing their stuff.

This boy was proud to show off his flower he received from the agriculture booth.

Getting checked out by the Doc.

Fireman's display

Trying out some fireman's gear

CPR session

Ella enjoyed and was inspired by career day too!

This final picture was the highlight of the day. About 30 minutes prior to the end of the event a bus rolled up filled with the local professional soccer team. For these kids this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. This was like having the Bengals or Reds show up at to an event where you could talk to them and get their autograph. The kids swarmed the bus and every face had a grin from ear to ear.

What an incredible opportunity for these kids to see beyond their circumstances and see that God has created them with purpose and potential. We pray that the seeds of hope that were planted this week will blossom into lives of purpose and impact in the years to come.

Treasure Found!

Many of you out there know that I (Jennie) have a special place in my heart for a batch of really good brownies. Over the past 2 years I have come to perfect the art of making brownies...out of a box. While the process is much easier than making then from scratch, there is SOME skill involved in this. Most of my trial and error in working with boxed brownies came from the brand of brownies you use and the kind/size of pan you use. After many painstaking attempts and taste testing of various brands of brownies and pan sizes, I have found my favorite.

Coming to Sucre I have had to start all over in my aim to find the perfect boxed brownie. I have discovered, however, that my trial and error will be a much quicker journey. You see, in Sucre, the trial and error is in FINDING a brownie mix. Most of the time the stores have none. And if you are lucky to find a box mix in the store, before the other missionaries in town buy them ALL, you will find only one brand....from Argentina. So far in my quest for brownies I have not been able to get my hands on this Argentinean brand.

But last week, in Sucre's version of a western supermarket, this caught my eye...

Wow! Heavenly music filled the isles as I grabbed the box. It took me all of 2 seconds to decide if the $18 US dollars was worth buying this HUGE box of Betty Crocker, HERSHEY's Ultimate Chocolate Brownie Mix with mini Kisses Brand Chocolates and Hershey's Semi Sweet chocolate chunks. Four brownie mixes are included in this box.

Now the only problem is how to cook this at 9,000 feet! I learned the hard way with a batch of cookies that took over 30 mins to cook...and came out like hockey pucks. So I crossed my fingers and baked my first batch of brownies at 450 degrees for 50 minutes. And....they turned out great! Just like home! Now I just need to keep myself from making the final 3 batches all in one month!

As you can see, I am rejoicing in the little blessings that come our way!