Stories, Stories, Stories

Above: The view of our orange orchard from the garden.

These past two weeks have been very good. They have been pretty ordinary, but there are several stories that I’d like to share today from them. In addition to each of these stories, I have spent much time working in the garden, weeding, harvesting our first honeydew melon, corn and sunflowers, pruning trees, and doing lots of laundry.

Below: Pruning with Gaby and Hope, harvesting squash, cucumbers, melon, sunflowers, and corn, a baby eggplant, and lots of laundry washed by hand.

Story number 1: Two Sabbaths ago, I spent a bit of the afternoon at the Flores house helping watch the girls. Kelsey had the genius idea to hang up a hammock right above the table so that whoever is supervising the girls while they color on Sabbath can supervise from the comfort of a hammock. I was particularly sleepy this day, so I gladly climbed into the hammock. It was quite the full service experience, because when I needed my water bottle filled, all of the girls would argue over who got to do it because they love filtering the water in my bottle. So I even got water delivered straight to my hammock perch. Every now and then I would see a head pop up beside me as one of the girls would stand on the table to talk to me and show me something she had been coloring. The girls gifted me lots of colored pictures and even craft projects like pieces of paper with pieces of black beetles taped to them.  Understandably, I felt very honored. One of these times, it was Mariana’s head that popped up. She excitedly handed me a piece of tape folded over on itself with something in between the pieces of tape and said “Teacher, it’s your hair!” Somehow she had found a strand of my hair on my chair and preserved it in between tape to gift to me. Once again, this was quite the gift! Those girls are so creative: they even dressed up a beetle, named it, and kept it as a pet to feed. I also enjoyed doing the girls’ hair before worship that night. My abilities to do little girls’ hair are rapidly improving, so I guess that’s a good thing. The girls are so cute when they are all dressed up with their hair done for worship.

Below: Lots of little girls ready for worship, some coloring pages gifted me, and the poor pet beetle.

Story number 2: We are still harvesting lots of cucumbers from the garden. It is such a blessing. We have not had to buy cucumbers when grocery shopping for over a month now. The older girls’ house — the Lillas — especially likes taking a lot of cucumbers because there are 19 kids in that house and they like eating them as snacks. Whenever we have extra cucumbers and no more houses need them, I give them to the Lillas for snacks. Santi is the 2 year old baby and the only boy in that entire house. He gets quite the experience having 18 older sisters I’m sure. He had been watching me bring cucumbers to their house for a little while now and was particularly excited when I showed up with more one day. I dropped them off and Carlie later told me what happened shortly after. Santi apparently watched me drop off all of those cucumbers and thought they were all for him. He diligently started taking them one by one off the counter, toddling to his room, and putting them in a stack beside his bed. When Carlie found him, she had to try to explain that he unfortunately had to share those cucumbers with the rest of the house too. The next time I came to drop off cucumbers, Santi ran over excitedly to peer into the bucket, quite happy that his cucumbers had finally arrived again even though he would have to share them with everyone else too.

Below: Santi enjoying his chips.

Story number 3: Right now there is a gas shortage in Bolivia. As a result, once we have run out of propane in our houses, we have to cook over fires. Thankfully, Sophia and I have not run out yet since there are just two of us and it takes a long time to use up one tank. However, many of the houses have taken to cooking over the fires for their kids due to our lack of propane. Last week on my day off, we all got a message from Hermano Juan that they were passing out propane gas, but we were only allowed one tank of gas per person that was there. So, many of us who were on our day off piled into the truck as Hermano Juan pulled up to go wait in line to get as much propane as we could for Familia Feliz. It was a rather unique experience. We waited in line for about 40 minutes or an hour with probably a couple hundred other people. There was even an ice cream man going up and down the street selling ice cream to the people who wanted to have a treat in line. Whole families with their kids were hanging out there as well. It was quite the event! People were a bit shocked to see American people standing in line for gas, as usually the only non-Bolivian people here are tourists. One man was so shocked, in fact, that he was trying to discreetly video all of us getting gas. We noticed, but didn’t say anything. The next day, however, someone sent Hermano Juan a reel video from Facebook of us standing in line for gas. It is also on Tik Tok, another social media platform. On Facebook it now has 20K views, and I don’t know how many it has on Tik Tok. That afternoon, I arrived at the Leones house for lunch just for Emily to hug me and say, “Teacher, you’re famous!” I never thought I’d be “famous”, much less just because I stood in line for propane gas one day.

Below: The lines for gas.

Story number 4: Last week in our Familia Feliz group chat, I was informing people that if they needed cucumbers, I would deliver them straight to their doors. Carlie joked in the group chat that I was doing Door Dash deliveries now, and that I needed to start bringing fast food to the houses as well. Someone else responded that they would like some Starbucks or even Taco Bell delivered straight to our door — we can dream, right?! We all miss food from the US, so I decided to try to recreate Taco Bell’s Spicy Potato Soft Tacos for our Friday night gathering. On Friday, I spent many hours cooking. Hope and Sophia were great helps as well! I made tortillas from scratch for the first time, and Hope rolled them out and shaped them while Sophia cooked them. Sophia chopped lots of potatoes, and I boiled them, covered them in spices, and then deep fried them. We got lettuce from the garden too! Then I tried to make a chipotle sauce. This whole recipe was difficult because I did not have any paprika, and I did not have like half of the ingredients in the chipotle sauce. So by the end I was just smelling random packets of Bolivian spices to see if they smelled right and then would put them in. In an attempt to make “smoked paprika”, I burned pepper, an all purpose seasoning, and chili powder and added it to the sauce. Somehow, it turned out well, and we all loved having a Taco Bell meal for Friday night!

Below: Our Taco Bell meal and Carlie with her cake.

Story number 5: Earlier this week on a rainy day, I went to visit the Flores house to eat supper and spend the evening with them. When I arrived, little girls enjoyed trying to see how many they could fit on my lap at once while we watched the older girls play Twister. Later that evening, Dianara told me that she had a gift for me upstairs. She pulled me upstairs and gifted me a pipe cleaner ring she had made for me. It had a little butterfly she had made on it. As soon as the other girls saw that she had given me hers, they decided they could not be outdone, and they each clambered to bring me pipe cleaner rings to stick on my fingers until my hands were full of pipe cleaners. Now, I have no use for pipe cleaner rings, but I thought it was so sweet that they wanted to give me something pretty that they had all made. We give a lot to these kids, but oftentimes, I think they give even more to us, whether its in the form of love, lessons, hugs, or pipe cleaner rings.

Below: The girls on my lap and the pipe cleaner gifts.

Story number 6: Sophia and I spent an entire day this week moving our house around. We have both been squished into one tiny room for a while, but we finally were able to move beds so that we can each have our own room in the clinic. We enjoyed getting to hang out and reorganize and rearrange our rooms. It is nice to have a bit more space now. The biggest plus is that my bed is no longer underneath a hole in our roof. I have not appreciated having the corner of my bed get soaked every time it rains, and am especially happy to have that taken care of as we enter rainy season. We also discovered that about 10+ cockroaches had been living right below us in our bunk bed frame… I also found a lovely tarantula that lived in there too. Unfortunately for the cockroaches, we evicted them from the bunk beds. We have many visitors arriving this week. Yesterday, Carlie’s family, Laney’s family, and Sophia’s family all arrived to visit, and on Friday a former SM and his girlfriend are visiting! It is wonderful to have so many visitors around! Sophia's parents are staying in the new clinic room. We are also excited because Sophia's dad is going to try to fix our rat problem (no more rat pee smell everywhere!).

Below: Our previous bed situation with my top bunk squished under the hole in the leaky roof and Sophia transporting one of our heavy mattresses.

Story number 7: On Tuesday evening, all of Familia Feliz gathered at the Lillas house to celebrate the first birthday of our twins, Henry and Heidi. Apparently the first birthday is highly celebrated in Bolivia, so it was quite the occasion. Everyone was wearing their fancy clothes and ate lots of yummy pasta, cake, popcorn, and Cheetos. It was truly quite the party that the twins will have no recollection of, but everyone else sure enjoyed getting to celebrate them!

Below: Assorted pictures from the party including the polaroid photos and Teacher Jafet holding the sleeping birthday girl, Heidi.

Story number 8: Last night, I was supervising the Lillas for about an hour. When I walked into the house and sat down, Carlie’s mom handed me some bags my mom had sent. So many kind things were in it from snacks to even some plant cuttings from Lauren’s sweet mom. The girls all crowded around and enjoyed watching me unpack it. Santi sat on the counter and enjoyed it too, even though he had to be reminded that the stuff wasn’t actually brought for him to keep. Then, I sat down to watch the girls making supper and Carola and one other girl gasped and looked at my hands. “Teacher! You’re so tan!”, they said as they were comparing their arms with mine. Carola looked at me and said, “You were white when you came, but now you’re so tan! Are you white when you’re in the United States?!” I guess I’ve gotten a little bit darker after being in the garden so much.

Below: An assortment of pictures from churches and worships including lots of photos with the Flores, singing up front with them, Fiorella looking at a Nathan Greene painting of Jesus, and Santi enjoying two other little boy toddlers.

Story number 9: Today is my day off, and I enjoyed attending a mushroom growing class that was randomly presented at Luz de Mar. Several of us from Familia Feliz went to learn how to grow mushrooms here from three people from the states. It was so interesting, and they were so kind! We hope to be able to grow mushrooms at Familia Feliz now.

Below: Hope and I with our mushroom growing kits.

Story number 10: Now for my final story of this blog. Rainy season has truly hit this week. It has dumped buckets on us multiple times this week. One day it rained so hard that the ground could not keep up and the garden started flooding. Thankfully, we have raised beds, so most of the beds weren’t fully submerged, but it was still pretty flooded. I was really praying that it wouldn’t rain again soon, so that the garden could have a chance to recover, but the very next morning, I woke up early to hear it raining so hard outside. I texted Hope because I knew we would need to try to go out and shovel a way for the water to run off or else it would completely flood the garden. I put on some clothes I did not mind getting wet in and just gave up on trying to stay dry because it was raining so hard. I walked out to the garden and looked around to see is majorly flooding the garden. In some spots, there was like a foot and a half of standing water. Lots of plants were under water, and I did not know what to do. As I looked around, I quickly realized how pointless it was for me to think that I, alone, could do something about this problem. I started praying very hard that God would somehow help because if He didn’t, the plants could very well die — nearly all of them. I was feeling pretty heartbroken and wondering if I’d have to start all over again, while feeling so completely helpless. But God heard that prayer, and before long, I saw Matthew coming out towards the garden. He asked if I needed help, and I asked if his boys were all available to help. He went back and pretty soon 8+ of the Guerreros were running outside, grabbing shovels and hoes and picks and digging trenches to direct the water to the pond. There were even little boys with rakes raking out any obstructions from the waterways. After working hard in the mud and rain for about two hours, the water was rapidly flowing away from the garden. It literally looked like a river. I was so grateful for those boys and their willingness to get wet and work hard to help save the garden. So far, not a single plant has died from the water and the garden is drying out impressively fast. I am so so grateful for a God who hears our prayers, never ever fails us, and knows what we need before we even ask Him. He always sends us help in our time of need whether it’s in the form of his angels, a stranger on the street, or lots of teenage boys with shovels.

Below: A picture of the garden the first time it flooded before the second rainstorm came, me after the muddy work of making a pathway for the water to drain into, and a frog because there are so many everywhere right now. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of me or the boys while we were working because it was too rainy and urgent to take pictures.