The start of 2025

Below: Assorted pictures from the glacier in Argentina and Machu Picchu.

As I was compiling stories, pictures, and information for this blog post, I realized that I have a lot to update you all on. So without further ado, here is an update about my past 7 weeks here in South America. Hope you enjoy!

Our South American vacation was an amazing and exhausting experience. To save money, we had lots of red eye flights and spent many a night trying to sleep on airport floors. We had flight delays, altitude sickness, amazing food, incredible views, and so much more. Our first night was spent in La Paz were it was 40 degrees. We froze. Apparently we have acclimated to Rurre’s climate quite thoroughly. Unfortunately we got in to La Paz so late that the only food we could find for supper was pasta, soy sauce, and eggs. In case you have ever thought of making a meal out of pasta and soy sauce with boiled eggs on the side, think again. We only ate it because we were very very hungry. Thankfully throughout the rest of our trip we enjoyed much better meals, including an incredible potluck meal at a church in Peru. We went to Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. My favorite places were definitely Machu Picchu and Patagonia in Argentina. The views were absolutely breathtaking and the hiking opportunities were incredible. We even got to visit a glacier in Patagonia and went to the farthest south city in the world. I am so glad that we were blessed with this opportunity for a trip together.

Because of a number of different factors, I ended up coming back from the trip a little bit before the others from Chile. The others had made some last minute changes to our travel plans, and my flight was already booked according to the previous travel plans. So that and some other factors tesulted in me coming back by myself a little bit early. It was quite the adventure. I had to take a bus in Chile, get to the airport, travel to La Paz, get through very tricky Bolivia immigration without my debit card and with hardly any money (it’s a long story), fly to Rurre and then take a 2 hour taxi ride to a town called Ixiamas. I had decided that I wanted to visit some missionary friends who were currently in that town helping a short-term mission trip at a school there. I breathed such a sigh of relief when I landed in Rurre. I had never thought that I would feel so safe here, but in comparison to the scary bus stations in Chile with lots of pickpockets, big cities, and generally the struggles of traveling by myself, it felt just like coming home. There were many miracles that God worked on that trip home, and so many people He placed to help me along the way. I am so grateful for His protection.

The 2 hour car ride to Ixiamas was beautiful and I had fun talking to another girl in the car for a while. I spent five days at Ebenezer, the school, and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to rest, to be spiritually encouraged by the other people there, and to help with the mission work. I even got to do laundry in the river, and I have decided that doing laundry in the river is far superior to our laundry sinks at Familia Feliz. Overall, it was a huge blessing of an experience, and I am so grateful I got to spend a while there before come back, refreshed, to Familia Feliz.

Finally everyone arrived back, and we drove back to Familia Feliz. It was a little bit of a shock to return to cold showers, a house where the rats had throughly taken advantage of our absence, and a garden with some weeds as tall as me. However, we quickly adjusted back and began preparing for the school year. There was much garden work to be done, and it honestly seemed a little bit of an impossibly huge task to recover a huge garden that had been growIng weeds for a month without any disturbance. However, we started working on it and harvested the corn and pumpkins, had huge weeding parties, started collecting cut grass for ground cover (as we do not have cloth weedblock available here), and planted starts. I had left a boy in charge of the garden and he did a wonderful job with keeping up with harvesting and watering when needed.

Above: Me with a pumpkin, lots of little boys helping collect grass for the garden, and the top right photo is of Luis climbing to pick a papaya.

We have a new interim director right now, and it is the beginning of a new school year. That means that we are undergoing a huge amount of changes at once. We went to four-hour-long staff meetings to discuss the new changes nearly every weekday for two weeks. In the afternoons we often would work with the kids. One of these days, I was sent Dianara to help work in the garden. She had gotten in trouble and was sent to Hope and I to help her calm down. We took her to the garden and enjoyed working with her.

She had also been enjoying sitting beside me at meetings and even falling asleep on my lap occasionally. One day, she asked to come to the garden of her own accord, so she came and helped me harvest corn. She was a good little helper, and it was fun to have her along. I could tell that she was getting attached to me a little bit, and at one point she looked at me and said “Teacher Ellie, can I call you Mama?”. My heart broke. Poor little girl does not have a mama to take care of her. She just wants to have a mother so much that she was wanting me to let her call me her mama, so she could at least pretend I was hers. Since I have to leave in a few months and am not here long term, I cannot let her call me Mama because I do not want her to feel like her mother is leaving when I go back to the States. But I told her she can call me her aunt if she likes. It is at moments like this one when I realize that there is so much more that these kids need than I can ever give them. I do what I can to give them love and stability but in the end, I cannot fix the choices or circumstances of their parents that made them end up here in the first place. And sadly, I am only here for nine months. I am increasingly grateful that we have a God who promises to be our Father — a more loving and good father than even the best ones on earth. A Father to the fatherless and a friend to the friendless. It is such a comfort to know that even when I go back to the states, God will stay here with Dianara to be the family and friends that she does not have. If you could add Dianara and her siblings to your prayer list it would be very appreciated.

Another day in the garden, I was assigned the older girls to work with me. As they came out, I could tell that a few of them were in rather grumpy moods. I asked one how she was doing and she said she was doing badly and then proceeded to explain why. However, the explanation was too quiet and fast for me to understand. I assigned each girl to a job and decided I was going to weed with the girl who was having a bad day. Her name is Elizabeth. As I weeded with her, I prayed, because I really had no idea what to say or how to help her feel better. Did she want to talk about how she felt? Or did she just want to be left alone? I decided that I would just ask her questions and make small talk, and that seemed to cheer her up a bit. We talked about how she is going to Ebenezer soon for school, and I think she is a little bit nervous for it all. I told her about how I was nervous before high school and college, but that I eventually loved them both. After awhile, I needed to go motivate some other girls to keep working, so I left Elizabeth. But after a little bit, she showed up where I was working and held out her hand with a cute wildflower bouquet in it. “For you, teacher.” I thought that was so sweet, and I was glad that she seemed to be feeling better too.

When I went back to weed with her, we talked about her hobbies. She loves to read, and I told her that I like to read too. I told her, however, that I forgot to bring any English books with me, so I do not have much of anything to read. I did not think much of our conversation until later that evening. I was walking by the Lillas house in the dark when Elizabeth suddenly ran out and pressed a book into my hand. “This is for you, teacher Ellie” she said. When I got back to my room I saw that it was a book in English. She wrote a very sweet note in the cover and drew some pretty flowers on it too, just like the ones she had given me. That touched my heart so much. What a thoughtful gift! I am so happy that I was able to help her feel better, and that I was able to be a blessing to her. Little did she know how much her  gift meant to me. I know I am here to be a blessing to the kids, but often they bless me more than they will ever know.

This last Sabbath afternoon, I headed over to watch the Lillas house to give Emilie a break and teach the girls how to play guitar. They are all so fascinated by it, and some of them are very fast learners. One of the fastest learners was  a girl named Sarita. She has been at Familia Feliz for years, but this time when she got dropped off for the new school year, she was so unhappy. It was evident that she did not want to be here at all. I tried to talk to her and help her feel better, but nothing seemed to help very much. I had a good Sabbath afternoon teaching girl after girl guitar chords, and I was about to pack up and go home when Sarita appeared. She asked to play guitar, and even though I had been looking forward to going back home and having some downtime before supper, I felt that it was too important an opportunity to pass up. We sat down and I taught her chords. I think she was the quickest learner out of all of the girls and seemed to enjoy it a lot. She was able to play a song by the end of our little session. Right after I packed up and was about to head to my house, she came over to me and gave me a hug and said thank you. That was the most happy I had seen her since she got back.

Unfortunately, the next morning when we woke up, she had run away with her little sister from Familia Feliz, was found at the taxi station, and we ended letting her go back home because she did not want to be at Familia Feliz. She has a rather rough home situation, and it is hard to think of her going home, knowing she will probably never come back to Familia Feliz. When I heard that news, I thought about playing the guitar with her the day before and was so beyond glad that I had taken the time to do it. I hope that it will be something that she is able to look back on and remember that there’s people who care about her and that she’s gifted musically. I hope she can remember that time and always remember how much we love her. And maybe, one day, she will be able to play the guitar.

When we got  to Familia Feliz, there were kittens everywhere. They are all soo cute, and Sophia and I got gifted a mama cat with three kittens to help with our rat problem. They seem to be doing the job, because I have not seen a rat in like a week. We are working on training them to use the litter box, because at the moment it seems that we traded rat droppings and germs for cat poop, cat throw up, and blood from killed rats on the floor… However, at least the kittens are cute and cuddly. Some of the other kittens on campus were tiny enough to fit in my overall pockets and fall asleep which was very sweet. I am really enjoying having cute pets to cuddle and play with.

One day, however, our mama cat bit

me, and we decided it would be good for me to go to a hospital and get checked out just in case the cat had rabies. The cats are unvaccinated, and the mama goes hunting outside every night, so we wanted to be on the safe side. It was quite the interesting experience. I went to two different hospitals and at both, as soon as I said I had gotten a cat bite, I was rushed to the emergency room — a room that was more like a small office in one hospital and an old fashioned large open hospital bedroom in the other. Beds lined the wall and I was seated at a desk to be examined. I was surrounded by about 8 excited medical people all talking to me at once, examining my bite mark, and one lady even asked if she could take a picture of it. Thankfully, I have ended up being fine and the mama cat has not shown signs of rabies, so that is a big blessing. But it was certainly a unique experience to go to the hospitals here.

My birthday was on January 23, and I had arranged it so that I could go to town for a half day off in the afternoon. In the morning I attended another four hour meeting, and then we had lunch. It is a tradition here for the kids to throw eggs and flour all over a staff member who has a birthday. I had dressed accordingly as I did not know when my time of egging and flouring would come. Right after lunch, after I had been sung to, I saw one of the Guerreros boys whispering to Jayden about something. I had a feeling my time might be coming. Dianara had made me a card, and after she had pulled me aside to  read it with her, Luis came over to me holding an egg. He is one of the Guerreros, and he pretended to crack the egg on the wall in preparation and looked at me like he was very eager to begin the process of cracking eggs on my head. I decided that this process would be best done outside, so I went outside, was given three seconds to run, and then was chased by Guerreros as they cracked eggs on my head and dumped flour all over me. I was soo covered in it. They were thoroughly enjoying the whole process while I was being covered in food. One of the boys yelled to Carlie, our cafeteria chef, that they had a cake ready for her to bake since I was covered in the ingredients for one. Needless to say, it was a fun experience even though it took a lot of time to get it all out of my hair. It was also all over a top that I had been wearing. As I was about to go to town, I decided to leave the egg and floured top hanging in our bathroom and wash it later. When I came back that night, it was still hanging there, but there were big holes in it, and I assume a rat had thoroughly enjoyed its supper of eggs, flour, and cloth.

I got to call lots of friends and family in town, and then two of my student missionary friends were able to join me for a yummy supper and ice cream to follow. The SM’s made a sweet card for me too. The next night at our SM gathering, they even had a cake for me that we all enjoyed eating. I am so grateful for such good friends and family who worked to make my birthday special even when I am so far away from home.

One of the recent changes in Familia Feliz has been that Santi, the resident 2-year-old has been moved to live in the clinic with Sophia as his primary caregiver. Another is that we now have a cafeteria where Carlie has become our chef instead of a house parent in the Lillas house. Since some of our student missionaries from last semester have gone home, the two girls’ house parents are single parenting right now, so I am also assigned to the Flores house as a part-time house parent when I am not in the garden. I have also watched Santi a bit in the last two weeks and he has been a very faithful little garden helper. He has put grass on garden beds, pulled weeds, and shucked corn. One of the days this last week, I was also assigned to make supper in the cafeteria. I had never cooked for 20ish people before, but thankfully it went very smoothly. Mainly my days have been filled with babysitting, parenting, gardening, cooking, and cleaning.

Above: A compilation of Santi pictures: Him carrying a pack of toilet paper, him eating, him sitting in the wheelbarrow in the garden, him freshly showered with the towel on his head, him wearing Aiden’s large hat, and him with pink barrettes in his hair (what happens when you have lots of older sisters).

This last Sabbath, we all piled into the dump truck with all of the kids that we had (most of them were not back from vacation yet), and we headed to the SDA church in town. We were there to watch the baptism of a girl who had formerly been at Familia Feliz. It was a very fun experience to be back in a more “churchy” feeling church. It is certainly a different feel going to church at Familia Feliz because you go with the same people you have seen all week, and the large majority of those people are little kids. I enjoyed getting to be back in a service that felt more like churches at home. Somehow I ended up sitting in a row with 5-6 boys from Familia Feliz and it was quite the chore to keep them quiet during the service, but I enjoyed them a lot too.

Yesterday was my first full day ever house parenting alone, because it was Kelsey’s day off. I was so tired because we have all been working majorly overtime right now. Due to a number of circumstances, we do not have Bolivian teachers at the school yet, so we SM’s have been functioning as houseparents, teachers, work instructors, cooks, and gardeners all at once. Free time is very hard to come by and sleep is even more rare. Yesterday, there were multiple long fits with some of my girls who are more prone to temper tantrums, arguing, and power struggles. It required a lot of wisdom from God to know how to deal with each situation that arose, but I was so thankful for His help.

By the end of the day when my sleepy girls crawled into bed, the two girls who had been giving us trouble apologized to eachother, and the one that had been having the hardest time all day said that she loved me. I really experienced a unique picture of God when helping that little girl throughout the day. I loved her so much the whole time and just wanted her to grow up to be a Godly woman someday so badly. And yet there she was, throwing major tantrums for hours. That is so often what we do with God — He just so wants what is best for us and is always trying to guide us in that way, and so often we are kicking and screaming as if God did not love us and was being so unfair. I was happy that she told me she loved me at the end of the day, because my prayer through it all was that I could still display God’s love to her through the whole process even though she had to face consequences for her actions. It was certainly an extremely difficult day, but it all turned out all right, and God was there to help every step of the way.

As I was showering that night, I was thinking how glad I was that I only had four girls yesterday instead of the ten that were there last semester. (We are still waiting on some to return from vacation.) Then, I laughed at myself thinking about how before I came to Bolivia, I never would have thought that parenting four kids was so few and such a nice break. But compared to ten, it seemed pretty easy.

My family is visiting next week, and I am so excited for that. I would like to solicit your prayers for the SM’s, students, and Familia Feliz in general as we are undergoing major changes right now. Please also pray about our teacher situation and for strength for each SM as we are wearing many many hats at the moment. We so appreciate your prayers.

I want to end with a quick cute story that really displays how unique life is at Familia Feliz. I was sitting inside my house doing some garden planning one day a couple weeks ago, and Hope was out in the garden. Presently, I heard Emilie yell towards the garden, “Hope!” trying to get her attention to tell her something. As soon as Emilie yelled that, I heard Santi’s little boy voice echoing from upstairs “Hope!” (Said in a baby voice). And then I heard our parrot, Blue, croak loudly and say, “Hope!”. And I smiled to myself and thought of what a blessing and unique opportunity it is to be here. It is not every day that your name is called by Emilie, a two year old, and a parrot all at once, but here at Familia Feliz, that’s just how life is. And what a blessing it is to get to live this life.