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!