Rio de Vida

Deep Breaths

2006-06-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we have finally arrived in the city of LaPaz. Deep breaths is a poignant phrase as we found ourselves taking a few deep breaths along the ride around the mountain. We were delayed by a couple of hours due to construction on the mountain road (during which an intense rock throwing contest ensued). This meant that the final leg of our journey was after nightfall along the highest peaks and most narrow passes of the mountain road. But we made it without incident! In fact, we discovered many new species of bees along the way.

We are now taking deep breaths to keep our lungs and brains in a fully functioning mode here in the city which is 10,000 feet above sea level.

We had a wonderful devotional time this morning as we reflected upon all that God has done through us in Ixiamas over the past 5 years. Praise God!

We are all now hitting the streets to explore the city. Everyone on the team sends our heartfelt love and appreciation for the many prayers that have arisen as incense before the throne this week. Your prayers and the grace of God have sustained us.

We long to see your faces, feel your embraces, and eat what you cook for us.

Adios!

Farewell Iglesia de Internado

2006-06-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

Our time here is quickly drawing to a close. We are finishing up lunch now, and in less than an hour we´ll be departing Ixiamas bound for an overnight stay in Sapecho.

The last two days have been an incredible experience of bridging the chasm of need with the work of our hands. Much was accomplished on the construction side. We completed digging the new septic system, made great progress on constructing the brick interior of the existing septic system, and laid the foundation for the new bathhouse.

After finding very few children of the internado in need of glasses we decided to open up the eye clinic to the people of the town. All day yesterday and all morning today we saw a steady stream of people coming from the town to the internado to have their eyes tested and to be given the gift of clearer vision. We fitted over 120 people with glasses. We saw firsthand a miracle of provision. We had 100 over-the-counter reading glasses of varying strength. The people God brought matched the quantities we had of each strength. It truly was a miracle of God orchestrating the flow of people to match the provision.

As we leave, I reflect on the true definition of ¨church.¨ When I look at the internado today, I see approximately 50 people living in Christ-centered community under the leadership of an incredibly humble man of God (Eduardo), where the Gospel is proclaimed, the doctrines of the Apostles are taught, young men and women are being trained in the faith, and the greater community of Ixiamas is being touched by the love of God. There may not be a steeple, or pews, or a church sign in the yard. But somehow I get the feeling that this may be a beautiful expression of what Christ had in mind when He said, ¨I will build my church.¨

I´ll try to post again very soon after we arrive in LaPaz.

Everyone sends their love and the team is grateful for your comments to them here.

Mucho Palabras

2006-06-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

I have much to pass on to you tonight. I was going to do this in three separate posts, but this internet connection is like something from the ancient past...like 1994. Very slow, so I will break this up into the following four parts:

1. Travel Update
2. Message From Jessica Stephens
3. Message From Sharon Brown
4. Greeting From Janet Coppage

Travel Update:
We have finalized the arrangements to stay in Sapecho, so we will be leaving Ixiamas around 2:00 pm tomorrow and arriving in Sapecho around 10:00 pm. We´ll leave Sapecho early Friday morning, travel the mountain road by daylight, and arrive in LaPaz sometime Friday evening. I will try to make one final update here before leaving Ixiamas tomorrow. Then it may be Friday night or Saturday before I can post again.

Message From Jessica Stephens
There have been so many amazing experiences on this trip I can scarcely believe it´s only been four days! I have been humbled and awed byd the love, sincereity, dedication, and sacrifice of so many here. The Christ Community Team, the staff at the internado, and the interns from Auburn have more God-inspired stmina than I thought possible. Honestly, there isn´t room to begin to describe the experience so I´ll give you a snapshot of yesterday.

Several of us traveled to Tahua, a village about 2 and a half hours down the road. Most of the trip was made standing in back of an amazingly powerful Toyota pickup truck. On the way to the village I was noticing that my fingernails were dirty yet again. I thought about cleaning them a little but since both hands were equally dirty I didn´t accomplish much.

We reached the village and watched the welcome program. It consited mostly of songs and poetry. As part of the team conducted eye screenings of the adults, the others did a Bible school activity with the kids. We made gospel bracelets (bracelets that have 7 colored beads - each one representing a part of the story of Jesus.) I was helping these eautiful children tie their new bracelets on their wrists and I realized our hands matched - we all had dirty fingernails.

Probably none of them noticed my nail dirt and definitely none of them cared, but it reminded me of two things: 1. God will prepare you to meet what and whoever He sets in your path. 2. Dirt doesn´t matter. My dirt didn´t hinder my ability to love the children of Tahua. Nor did their dirt decrease their value in God´s eyes or their ability to have a meaningful relationship with him.

So that was my "ah-ha" moment for the day. Beyond that please know that we are all well - possibly the best we´ve been in a while. We will dedicate the next chorus of "Praise ye the Lord" (possibly the 1,000th chorus) to you.

Message From Sharon Brown
I stand amazed at the diversity of God´s creatino. From the Andes in Quesimpuco to here in the rainforest; the people, cultures, and earth are full of God´s glory. It´s so exciting to walk down the street and see how people respond. The fruit trees; oranges, grapefruit, plantrain, coconut, etc...everywhere you look. The world is truy yearning to break forth with praise and I always feel it when I´m in Bolivia. I pray God will give us the same passion whether in Bolivia or in our day to day lives. I love you and pray we all allow the fullness of Christ to mature in us more and more.

From Janet To Jimmy
Just wanted to say hello Jimmy and let you know that all is well here. I miss and love you!

Beautiful Muddy Feet

2006-06-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

Somewhere the scripture says, "Beautiful are the feet that bring good news!" Today the feet that brought good news of hope to the village of Tauah (spelling) were covered in mud, but beautiful nonetheless. Several of us arose this morning at around 6:00 am to eat a quick breakfast and then head toward this village located in the pampas, just outside of the rain forest.

We first all loaded onto the bus and road it as far as we could. Following closely behind was a pickup truck which was to serve as our transportation for the remainder of the ride down roads that the bus could not travel. What an incredible adventure. Imagine if you can approximately 20 people standing in the back of a pickup truck traveling through the depths of the rainforest on roads that are far from vehicularly condusive. I wish I could post pictures here. For most of the ride the road was mud with several washed out areas in which the truck got stuck and had to be pushed out. At one point we came upon a tree across the road and started to cut through it with a machete so we could clear the road. Finally the driver just motioned for us to get out of the way and he simply drove over the tree. This was just before Dennis Tricochet had to fight off a wild ibex with his bare hands.

I made that last part up.

Macaw´s flying overhead, parrots screaming from the trees, giant insects falling on us...it was an amazing ride.

We finally arrived and received a beautiful welcome from the people of the village. They sang songs for us, read poetry, and gave us the honor of raising the Bolivian flag while they sang their national anthem. They then filled the tables in front of us with all kinds of delicious fruit. Jessica´s favorite was this little nut-like thing that you had to chew the bark off of. She absolutely couldn´t get enough of them. Be sure to ask her about that.

Emily & Jessica did a wonderful job of leading vacation Bible school while Dan, D.J., Dennis, Bill Gaddy, Janet and others led the vision clinic. We ended up fitting close to 30 people with glasses. It was wonderful to see them smiling with their glasses on.

Four-o-clock came and we boarded the truck for home, this time with four more people as we transported a mother with her three children (2 of them babies) to Ixiamas so she could get one of them to the hospital.

A few stayed behind today to continue working at the internado. I have no news to report as I jumped off the bus here at the internet cafe to do this update and haven´t had a chance to talk with any of them yet.

We´ve made a small change of travel plans. We have agreed to forego the zipline tour that we were going to do in Rurrenabaque on Thursday. Two reasons: We want more time at the internado, and none of us are very enthusiastic about traveling the mountain road at night. We are currently working on a plan to try and get lodging secured in Sapecho for Thursday night. If this works we will leave around noon Thursday, drive to Sapecho (about 12 hours), spend the night, and then leave for another 12 hour drive to LaPaz Friday morning. This will give us mostly daylight travel through the mountains, get us into LaPaz in time to get good sleep before a day of shopping Saturday.

Tomorrow´s (Wednesday) activity will be primarily work at the internado.

Last night I asked everyone to think about anything they would like to contribute to the blog. I want you to "see" our time here through more than just my (Bill H.) eyes. Emily Hawk wrote the following for me to share with you:

So Emily´s eyes here at Ixiamas. I really just wanted to express to you some of the love I have been feeling. The children here are so amazing. They smile all the time, they hug even more. It is amazing how much love can come from such a small being. They love, love, love to sing and to learn English.

On the work side, the trip has been challenging. I tried the hole, not a good match. The brick-laying and VBS were much better! We got a lot done, a lot more than I think was expected which is always a good thing. So that is all for now. Please continue to pray for our health & safety as well as the encouragement of the workers, Auburn interns, and children at the internado.

God bless!

-Emily

Humberto Can See Clearly Now

2006-06-12T15:58:00.001-07:00

It´s Monday evening, a few minutes before 7:00 pm. I´ve spent the last 20 minutes waiting for this page to load to make this post and now dinner is served in about 2 minutes...so this post will be brief.

The big story today is Humberto. Several people on our team, under the guidance of Dan Phillips, conducted an eye clinic for the children of the internado. We were prepared to assemble about 200 pairs of glasses, but as we got into the testing we were finding that all but 2 of the 43 children had perfect vision. Praise God! Humberto, however was barely able to read line two on the vision chart. After conducting another test we found that prescription glasses would not help him. He was incredibly distraught to find that we he knew as normal was not normal at all. And then when we told him regular glasses wouldn´t work, he was on the verge of tears.

We then took tried on several pairs of over-the-counter reading glasses and one pair improved his vision dramatically. He was smiling from ear to ear and has been running around showing everyone his new glasses!

We are then did the same testing on several people from the town and were able to fit a few more people with glasses as well. Tomorrow we are going to attempt a visit to a distant village to have a vision clinic for the adults...where we expect to find more vision problems than we have with the children.

Another team has been working on digging the holes for the new septic system and in typical Billy Gross fashion came up with a slogan for their new enterprise: We Scoop So You Can Poop! This work is arduous, but it is going well.

Yet another team has been laying the brick walls of the first septic system which was dug before we arrived.

We´re going to eat dinner soon and then we´ll return to the Internado where Bill Huffhine will talk with the kids about the Bible being a light for our path and a lamp for our feet. We´ll then hand out new Bibles to all of the children.

Everyone is doing well. Nobody has any physical problems that I´m aware of. We are all in awe of God´s goodness in allowing us to be a part of his work here.

Till tomorrow!

Humberto Can See Clearly Now

2006-06-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

Dusty Roads, Smelly Clothes, and Unruly Pirates

2006-06-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

We´re here! Forty-eight hours after leaving our homes to travel to Ixiamas, Bolivia we made it here safe and sound around 2:00 Sunday afternoon.

Punishing. That is the only word I can think of to describe the travel experience that we have all been through these past couple of days. Both of our flights went logistically well with no delays and no turbulence. We arrived in Miami around 9:30 pm and had a layover of about hours before boarding for LaPaz at around 11:15. I think the maintenance crew forgot to check the freon in the plane´s air conditioning system because that was one hot flight. It didn´t help that the flight was fully booked.

We arrived in LaPaz around 5:30 am Saturday morning and all went smoothly as we processed through customs. Rachel from SIFAT and one of the interns - Lauren - greeted us as we disembarked. Some of us went to the Burger King in the airport for a cup of coffee before leaving. Our first casualty occured here as Jessica Stephens fell under the influence of the altitude and slowly slipped out of her chair bound for an unconsious meeting with the ground. Bill Huffhine (me) saw her going and grabbed her on her way down quickly followed by her brother Aaron who also grabbed her. The two of us brought her safely to the floor where she immediately regained consciousness. After a few moments time and a couple of tokes off the oxygen tank she was perfectly fine. Don´t worry Denise...all is well.

We boarded the bus and began our journey toward Rurrenabaque. We knew it would be long and hard but for some of us it was punishing. Nineteen hours of rocky dirt roads through the Andes mountains with no more than 12 inches or so between the bus and the mountainside. Our bus driver is an amazing man! I don´t know how he did it, but he handled the bus beautifully through the mountains. Several times we would meet an on-coming vehicle and be forced to stop, back up, and let them pass. In all of our minds, our bus driver has achieved hero status.

We finally arrived in Rurre at 2:00 am Sunday morning and checked into the Hostal Beni. I don´t think I´ve ever experienced a bed feeling so good. There was only one shower per floor and there were a lot of people staying at the motel. We had to jockey for position to get a shower during our brief stay; a shower that arbitrarily turned on and off on it´s own, usually at the most inopportune time. Sunday morning came though and we all felt great after a few hours of sleep and a great breakfast at Ristorante de Camilla´s. We boarded the bus again and spent the next four hours singing, blessing one another, and looking forward to all that awaited us in Ixiamas.

We arrived at around 2:00 pm and have spent the last few hours playing with the children, touring the internado, and getting to know the interns.

As I reflected on the punishing travel we endured I was reminded of a couple times in scripture where Paul talked about his hardships. You remember, he faced danger day and night, was shipwrecked, left on the open sea, went without food and sleep, was beaten and left for dead...etc. I very quickly began to feel bery grateful for a road, no matter how rough and dusty, for a bus, no matter how hot and loud, for planes that stay in the air, no matter how crowded and uncomfortable, and for water that pours out of a showerhead even if it is cold and unpredictable.

God is with us. And our prayer is that the people of this town will come and walk with us not because of what we can give them tangibly, but because they see and feel the very real presence of God in our midst.

They are having telephone problems in Ixiams, so please don´t worry if your don´t hear from us via phone. We may not be able to telephone until we leave Ixiamas at the end of the week.

Buenos noches. Hasta manana.

Oh....and the unruly pirates...you´ll have to ask Billy Gross about that.

Let The River Flow South, Again

2006-06-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

On Friday, June 9th a team from Christ Community Church will leave for the rainforest town of Ixiamas, Bolivia to continue a project that we have been a part of for the past six years. We will continue construction on an internado (boarding home) which houses children from distant villages during the week enabling them to receive an education.

We'll also be conducting Vacation Bible School for the children of the internado and the children of the town as well as a vision clinic through which we'll do eyesight screenings and prepare eyeglasses for children who need them.

We'll do our best to update this online journal on a daily basis to help bring our loved ones in the states into the pages of our story.

Please pray for safe travel, for victory in spiritual warfare, and for great fruitfulness in introducing our new amigos to the Lord Jesus Christ.