Hey all! Today, I wrote a little prayer-guide you can use as you pray for us, for Highlands and for the general situation in Bolivia.

Let us pray…

• For the Church in Bolivia, for her purity, for unity, for her mission in Bolivia, and for all the people of God in this land.
• For those in Bolivia who do not yet believe, and for those who have lost their faith, that they may receive – even in the midst of the current situation in Bolivia – the Light of the Gospel.
• For the peace of Bolivia, for an end to racism and hate.
• For those in leadership in Bolivia, that they would be freed from anger and fanaticism, and instead promote the dignity and freedom of every person.
• For those who live and work in this community, and call La Paz their home.
• For those who are poor, persecuted, sick and all who suffer; for all who are in danger in this tense time.
• For our enemies, and those who wish us harm, and for all we have injured or offended.For the forgiveness of our sins, and for the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives.
• For those who have commended themselves to our prayers, our friends, families back home, and our neighbors here in La Paz.
• Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, we commend ourselves, one another and all our life to Christ our God. Amen.

Thanks for prayin’!

I am… well, a microphobe. Don’t care if that’s not a word; it’s true enough. When I cook eggs, I wash my hands… countless times. When I am forced kindly asked by my sweet dear Anne to buy any raw meat, I use several plastic bags to encase the already sealed package, and then I usually find some hand-sanitizer (Avery calls it “hanitizer”, and so do we); if I’m not carrying any, I will buy some just so I can use it right then and there.

Okay – you get the picture.  I like a germ-free (or at least germ-challenged) environment.

That’s why tonight was a monumental display of bravery and cultural barrier-crossing.

You see, we were invited upstairs to our dear neighbors, the Goyarebs.  They are the sweet Lebanese family that owns the building.  Their daughter, Nur, is the most willing and patient babysitter in the universe.  We love the Goyarebs.  So, when we, and two other Highlands families were invited over, we were rather eager to go, and (in Nur’s words), experience “real Arab food”.  Yum.

The company was great.  The wine and Sprite was bubbly and delicious.  I got to meet Abdo, a Lebanese Catholic priest who is here as a missionary (has the coolest hair any priest could have); amazing guy.  When we got to the table, the spread was amazing.  And most of the food was completely irresistable.  No lamb, but, well, this is Bolivia (that’s an odd comment, considering there are sheep that graze around our school; you let me at a sheep, and we’re havin’ gyros, baby!).  But, seriously.  Amazing food.

And then Basam, Nur’s dad, offers me the dish I had been strategically avoiding.  The name escapes me; the image never will.  It was the plate of flavored, um … raw beef.  The tray was pretty, in its own way.  It seemed to be saying, “I’m beef!  Grill me!”  But the Goyarebs were not hearing its cry.

I submitted to Basam’s friendly-but-persistent urging.  He scooped a small helping (is there any such thing as small in this situation?) onto my plate (I was quite aware of the exact location of the raw meat, and made sure no other food was touched).

After some hesitation, I decided that hiding it inside the hearty, delicious pita bread they had would be my best bet.  I scooped (with a utensil I’d not use the rest of the night) and…

… I really don’t know what it tasted like, because it was a very small quantity buried in a nice, thick piece of pita.  But it was raw.  And it is inside my digestive tract as I type this.  I.  Ate.  Raw.  Meat.

Deep breath.  It’s over.  And the meal was excellent.

Now, where’s the sushi?

A new way to support the ministry…

Hey! Anne and I discovered something called Amazon.com Associates stores. Here’s a great way to support our ministry in Bolivia: if you are planning on buying something from Amazon, just go to Amazon by way of the search window here on our blog, and you can get the product you were looking for, at the price you would normally pay, plus we get a percentage (between 4-10%) of the price! So, if you buy something from Amazon, we totally appreciate you doing it through our blog! Thanks!

I told the folks at our monthly Community Group, “May’s meeting will be ‘bring your own worship’.” They were given an explanation, that it meant they could bring anything that they thought would build up our little body of believers. “… for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor. 14:26 – NET)

I was given many responses, usually along the lines of, “I don’t know… I’m stuck… I’m not sure I have anything… that’s not my, um, thing, ya know?”

But, when the time came, they… well, they brought it. They really, really, brought worship!

Just a sampling: Abby (age 4) led us in “Hallelu, Hallelu”; songs of various types were shared both live and on mp3; Avery (age 4) did liturgical dance with Abby; quotes from Henri Nouwen were read; a 4th century prayer was read and reflected on (that was mine); Tim sang while his wife Whitney did a chalk-drawing of the Father carrying His weary child (see photo); testimonies were given.

In short, worship was brought and it built up Christ’s bride as she met in our living room. Amen.

If you wish to see what our evening looked like, check out an extended version of this post at my worship blog. Chau for now!

A couple of things you might like to see:

Our visit to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) just five minutes from our school!

And our new family photo:

Our school done got tattled on.

Today is Bolivia’s version of Labor Day.  We planned to have our third Team Day – a big, fun day of four teams made up of kids from Grades 1-12 working together; today was to be our Academic Team Day (spelling bees, scavenger hunts, giant crosswords and the like; not your typical school day).  We picked today because, with most parents off work, they could come and participate.  Sounds great, aye?

But someone - a parent?  a student? – told the Department of Labor.  So, they told us our fun school day had to be cancelled, or we would be in big trouble.

We were gonna observe the holiday tomorrow, so now, we have a four-day weekend.

It’s your classic good news, bad news thing: The bad news, Team Day (and my debut as a spelling bee announcer – I’m ready for my close-up, ESPN) is postponed; the good news, I’m here blogging after a nice breakfast out with my ladies and I’m enjoying the Cubs on mlb.com whooping the Brewers.

A day off.  It’s the law.  If I must.

Since Avery turned four, she’s been asking many more why and how questions and seems to be thinking all the time, trying to figure out how “things” work. Some of her funniest comments so far came this morning before preschool. She asked me how God could hold the whole world in His hands. I guess it’s not safe to sing children’s songs anymore, they will all be analyzed carefully!

We also had this interchange:

Avery: (with gusto) I’m a lion tamer! Mom, what’s a lion tamer?

Me: It’s someone who teaches tricks to lions. Like at a circus. So, do you do that?

Avery: (with complete sincerity) No, do you?

I guess she hadn’t realized that there is a dearth of lions around La Paz for either of us to tame. . .

(In my head, that’s supposed to rhyme!)  Ah, yes!  The uncertainties of life in La Paz.  We’re in the middle of prayer at church and we hear folks praying for the supposed “paro” (strike) that is supposed to – might – may – could – happen tomorrow, Tuesday or Wednesday.  These strikes can be anything from a stoppage of public transportation to a full closure of all stores, cafes, schools etc.

And here it is, the end of Easter break!

But, as usual, nothing’s official, so it will remain this big question mark looming, causing us to do some extra shopping, and thinking we may just need to invite everyone over for board games tomorrow.

Maybe.

Click here to see photos. . .

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=22560&l=74eea&id=641192218

If you come to our apartment and go out to our courtyard patio, you’ll see a big rock on the ground.  Now, that rock normally is for propping open the screen door.  But it can also be used for other purposes!

If you turn that rock over, you will likely notice the large, black spot.

Well, it’s like this.  Um, after returning from Sorata (a trip our “travel and tourism” writer, Anne, will likely post about really soon), we found an… unexpected traveling companion, a huge wolf-spider-lookin’ thing in our big duffel bag.  Just sitting there, ready to strike (okay, more likely ready to start a family and kill all the flies in a four-mile radius).  That duffel bag wasted no time in getting zipped back up, dragged out to the patio and dumped out unceremoniously.  As a rather dramatic, minor-key (think, an especially tense scene on Lost, including lots of trombone and dissonant piano-playing) soundtrack played in my head, I nervously flipped through the clothing, a plan formulating in my head (hammer?  No, too skinny.  Book?  No, it would taint the reading experience.  Ah, YES! Big rock.  That will do nicely…).

But, as go all the best-laid plans of mice and arachnophobes, things went awry.  As I uncovered it, the spider was supposed to stand bravely before me, eight-or-so eyes blazing with intense fury and malice, ready to take its last stand in the name of brave critters everywhere.  But no.  It somehow figured out, “Hey!  This dude is way big and I’m relatively small and… I gotta get outta here!”

Then began the running (on the spider’s part) and the screaming (on my part) and the random swinging of brooms and throwing of rocks (again, my part).  The music in my skull intensified (I had hoped we could cut to a flashback or even a commercial, but life is not so kind), and the spider ran under things.  I tossed laundry aside, raised the aforementioned big rock and hurled it.

As you might expect, in such a great flurry of activity (in a relatively small space, mind you), it was not a direct hit.  The rock splintered a bit, bouncing to reveal… one leg on the ground!  Where was the offending (or victimized, if you will) arachnid?!?!  Was it crawling up my leg with its remaining seven limbs to exact its revenge?  Was I long for this world?

Okay, no.  It was lying on the floor to my right, all sad and curled up.  So, to put it out of its misery (and because I still half-expected it to strike its deadly last attack), I smushed it with the big rock.  Now it is a spot.

The music changed to sad violins as I examined the poor, dead, beautiful creature.

denouement: Some of you may think, Monster!  Why not just put the poor thing in the wild?  I agree.  Had we possessed the space to safely introduced the lovely thing into our ecosystem, hoorah.  But, alas, we live in a big city, and if we had let it go, it would have just ended up getting run over or stepped on.  So there.