June 9th, Monday.
Man, I tell you what, these past few days have been extremely difficult for me. I had been feeling kind of off since Wed/Thurs maybe, but didn't start feeling really bad until Saturday. We went to Simon Patino's house on saturday morning, who I guess what kind of an idol for monopolizing the tin industry here, and went shopping for bolivianitas (a stone that is only mined in Bolivia). I started feeling pretty awful then, so Kelli and I went home with Juana - I had a fever, my throat hurt, my joints and whole body hurt, I felt nauseous.. ugh it was miserable. So I stayed home Sunday and talked to mom who told me it was probably strep throat and asking Pati if she could get me some antibiotics from a farmacia. I missed a bunch of fun things that day too like trying llama meat and the last soccer game of the season so that stunk, but I learned a few more Spanish medical terms, and I guess it is giving me empathy for those who are sick in foreign countries and made me appreciate modern medicine that's for sure haha. I guess I didn't realize strep sucked so bad. Anyway, I think I'm starting to respond to the antibiotics so hopefully I'll be back to normal very soon. I've felt very homesick these past couple of days, which is weird for me since I know I only have 2 more weeks here. Father, please heal me. And don't allow this to affect my resolve to follow You and find joy in this trip, and to trust that You can use this time in Bolivia for good. Show me Your purpose in this season.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Journal entries from Bolivia - June 6
My soul waits for You alone
Just like the watchmen wait for dawn
Here I've finally found a place
Where we'll meet, Lord, face to face.
I'm kind of sick today. My throat/nasopharynx has been hurting, and I've had some stomach issues lately :/ The hospital has been awesome though! Yesterday Christina and I got to pray for and talk to Sigundina, the Quechua lady we met yesterday. She had been in a moto accident and had broken her leg. We talked with her about her family - her 3 kids and her husband - and how she was a Christian, but her kids never wanted to go to church with her. She seemed really saddened by this, and the verse about teaching your children in the way they should go and when they are older they will not depart from it, popped into my head, so I told her something along those lines. She seemed grateful for someone to talk to. We also got to see her cast get set, so that was kinda neat.
Just like the watchmen wait for dawn
Here I've finally found a place
Where we'll meet, Lord, face to face.
I'm kind of sick today. My throat/nasopharynx has been hurting, and I've had some stomach issues lately :/ The hospital has been awesome though! Yesterday Christina and I got to pray for and talk to Sigundina, the Quechua lady we met yesterday. She had been in a moto accident and had broken her leg. We talked with her about her family - her 3 kids and her husband - and how she was a Christian, but her kids never wanted to go to church with her. She seemed really saddened by this, and the verse about teaching your children in the way they should go and when they are older they will not depart from it, popped into my head, so I told her something along those lines. She seemed grateful for someone to talk to. We also got to see her cast get set, so that was kinda neat.
Journal entries from Bolivia - June 4
Today was my 3rd day at HOH. In the afternoon on Monday, we went to an orphanage called Fundacion Esperanza to play with the kids for a couple of hours - there were surprisingly well behaved! We ended up reading to them and giving them piggy back rides for a long time. They were easily pleased so that was fairly easy, but rather exhausting.
Yesterday we went to the hospital, and Christina and I shadowed the internal med doc again. We saw a lady (Quechua) come in who came from an area that commonly saw the parasite that causes Chagas disease - one of the later manifestations is heart enlargement, so they did an EKG on her, which turned out normal. We also talked with Josemar, another one of the brazilian med interns, for a while who is hoping to do another BBQ at his house soon. I think there is a big ministry opportunity to be a light to the interns - I don't think many of them know Jesus, and they seem very open to us and willing to talk.
Yesterday after the hospital we came home and had something called silpancho - a Bolivian meal - so freakin' good! It's just rice, fried potato slices, fried beef, a fried egg, and tomato, but for some reason its ridiculously delicious. I napped for a while after Sam and I spend some time in the sun on mattresses we pulled onto the lawn in the courtyard. We also ended up going to a bible study at 3 American's apartment in Cochabamba - 2 girls who worked as nurses at HOH for a year as their first job out of nursing school, then began teaching a bible school here, created their own radio show that plays every day at 1, and are going to start a prison ministry (one of them, Shelley, is actually from Colorado Springs ironically) - They were BA! It made me wonder how my life could be different if i did something like that after nursing school.
Today at the hospital, Christina and I walked around and talked to a guy with a broken arm (brought him some reading materials because the hospital here can be super lonely and boring, and most family members live far away and can't come to visit often). We also talked with a lady who spoke a little Spanish, but mostly Quechua. I told her I wanted to learn, but I think she misunderstood and thought I knew it - woops! haha. She taught me "Ayatamani", which means goodbye. I hope to be able to bring one of my Quechua dictionaries and try to talk to her again tomorrow.
We went to Fundacion Esperanza again tonight and I did some more reading and twirled some of the girls around for a while. They are adorable, haha. I told one of the little girls, Juliana, that I had a secret for her "Jesus te ama!", and she looks around and says "Donde?" (Where?). haha! I told her he lived in heaven, but was also always with her and lived in her heart too. Maybe it meant nothing to her, but maybe it was a seed. Sometimes I wonder how much of a difference I am going to make as a foreigner here and for the short amount of time that I am here. But I was talking to Kelli last night about how short term missions have seemed to become kind of like a "trend" or the cool thing to do for Christians rather than truly caring about the people and how sad that is. We both agreed that there is still a place for short term missions, but that sometimes we miss our call to be a light to our own communities - they need Jesus just as much as anyone. I don't know... sometimes I think of how much I love speaking Spanish and traveling, but am I just denying my own home community in my efforts to show people thousands of miles away Jesus? I guess the rock I have to rest on is that whatever I do, if anything good, I do it all by the power of the Holy Spirit. And he will guide me. Father, give me courage and boldness to seek out the path you hold for me. Help me to constantly pursue you with a desperate heart, knowing You love and respond to the lowly of heart, the hungry, the sojourner.
Yesterday we went to the hospital, and Christina and I shadowed the internal med doc again. We saw a lady (Quechua) come in who came from an area that commonly saw the parasite that causes Chagas disease - one of the later manifestations is heart enlargement, so they did an EKG on her, which turned out normal. We also talked with Josemar, another one of the brazilian med interns, for a while who is hoping to do another BBQ at his house soon. I think there is a big ministry opportunity to be a light to the interns - I don't think many of them know Jesus, and they seem very open to us and willing to talk.
Yesterday after the hospital we came home and had something called silpancho - a Bolivian meal - so freakin' good! It's just rice, fried potato slices, fried beef, a fried egg, and tomato, but for some reason its ridiculously delicious. I napped for a while after Sam and I spend some time in the sun on mattresses we pulled onto the lawn in the courtyard. We also ended up going to a bible study at 3 American's apartment in Cochabamba - 2 girls who worked as nurses at HOH for a year as their first job out of nursing school, then began teaching a bible school here, created their own radio show that plays every day at 1, and are going to start a prison ministry (one of them, Shelley, is actually from Colorado Springs ironically) - They were BA! It made me wonder how my life could be different if i did something like that after nursing school.
Today at the hospital, Christina and I walked around and talked to a guy with a broken arm (brought him some reading materials because the hospital here can be super lonely and boring, and most family members live far away and can't come to visit often). We also talked with a lady who spoke a little Spanish, but mostly Quechua. I told her I wanted to learn, but I think she misunderstood and thought I knew it - woops! haha. She taught me "Ayatamani", which means goodbye. I hope to be able to bring one of my Quechua dictionaries and try to talk to her again tomorrow.
We went to Fundacion Esperanza again tonight and I did some more reading and twirled some of the girls around for a while. They are adorable, haha. I told one of the little girls, Juliana, that I had a secret for her "Jesus te ama!", and she looks around and says "Donde?" (Where?). haha! I told her he lived in heaven, but was also always with her and lived in her heart too. Maybe it meant nothing to her, but maybe it was a seed. Sometimes I wonder how much of a difference I am going to make as a foreigner here and for the short amount of time that I am here. But I was talking to Kelli last night about how short term missions have seemed to become kind of like a "trend" or the cool thing to do for Christians rather than truly caring about the people and how sad that is. We both agreed that there is still a place for short term missions, but that sometimes we miss our call to be a light to our own communities - they need Jesus just as much as anyone. I don't know... sometimes I think of how much I love speaking Spanish and traveling, but am I just denying my own home community in my efforts to show people thousands of miles away Jesus? I guess the rock I have to rest on is that whatever I do, if anything good, I do it all by the power of the Holy Spirit. And he will guide me. Father, give me courage and boldness to seek out the path you hold for me. Help me to constantly pursue you with a desperate heart, knowing You love and respond to the lowly of heart, the hungry, the sojourner.
Journal entries from Bolivia - June 2, Monday
June 2nd, Monday.
We went to HOH today! Manuel (our trufi driver), picked us up at like 8:30 ad we got to the hospital around 9. It's pretty small and there weren't too many patients during the morning, but I went with Kelli and Christina to shadow an internal medicine doc in an exam room. The first patient he saw was a 75 y.o. Quechua man who had a terrible cough, was not eating and could not swallow, could not pee, and was very weak. This was a cool experience for me because I understood what was going on since many of the things he did, we have learned about in nursing classes. They suspected he had had an embolism in his brain, had aspirated some phlegm, and had a pleural effusion, so they were going to do an xray (CXR), urinalysis, and draw some blood. The family had to translate for him from Spanish to Quechua, and he was hard of hearing which made the equation even more difficult.
Another lady came in who said she had a little "bolito"that pouched out of her stomach and was causing her some discomfort. The doc suspected a hernia, but the epigastric area he thought it was in was not the area that was hurting her. She had also traveled to Italy recently and fell in the shower, so they thought that she had had a DVT (maybe that had become dislodged?), and prescribed her an expectorant, told her to check her BP at home for 5 days (her BP at the time was 154/84) to see if she needed to be put on a blood pressure med, told her to make sure to keep taking her ASA consistently, and referred her to a general surgeon to take a look at her abdomen. We were also able to talk a lot with Marlington, one of the brazilian med interns, and met a girl in nursing school at the U down the road named Wanita from Guyana. I'm hoping we will have more opportunities to talk with and witness to the interns/students here.
We went to HOH today! Manuel (our trufi driver), picked us up at like 8:30 ad we got to the hospital around 9. It's pretty small and there weren't too many patients during the morning, but I went with Kelli and Christina to shadow an internal medicine doc in an exam room. The first patient he saw was a 75 y.o. Quechua man who had a terrible cough, was not eating and could not swallow, could not pee, and was very weak. This was a cool experience for me because I understood what was going on since many of the things he did, we have learned about in nursing classes. They suspected he had had an embolism in his brain, had aspirated some phlegm, and had a pleural effusion, so they were going to do an xray (CXR), urinalysis, and draw some blood. The family had to translate for him from Spanish to Quechua, and he was hard of hearing which made the equation even more difficult.
Another lady came in who said she had a little "bolito"that pouched out of her stomach and was causing her some discomfort. The doc suspected a hernia, but the epigastric area he thought it was in was not the area that was hurting her. She had also traveled to Italy recently and fell in the shower, so they thought that she had had a DVT (maybe that had become dislodged?), and prescribed her an expectorant, told her to check her BP at home for 5 days (her BP at the time was 154/84) to see if she needed to be put on a blood pressure med, told her to make sure to keep taking her ASA consistently, and referred her to a general surgeon to take a look at her abdomen. We were also able to talk a lot with Marlington, one of the brazilian med interns, and met a girl in nursing school at the U down the road named Wanita from Guyana. I'm hoping we will have more opportunities to talk with and witness to the interns/students here.
Journal entries from Bolivia - June 1, Sunday.
June 1st, Sunday.
So! Kid-washing: we took the trufi to Plaza Principal, and met some people from the international church who were in charge of the washing, and set up two tents while the moms and babies lined up. We had three washing stations, and then an area where we had nail polish and clothes to dress them in. I was at a washing station. The kids would get naked outside the tent and run into the tent when we had an open tub. Most of them were super excited to get clean, and all of them were super dirty, some with lice. That lasted about an hour, and then we got picked up by 2 brazilian interns from the hospital in a teeny 4-door - there were 11 of us crammed in there (haha). Thankfully we made it alive to their house (there was a going away party for some of them). We has a little grill out in the back courtyard, and I tried literally the best grilled steak I've ever eaten in my entire life. They had some weird yucca powder to dip it in too -- SO good. Anyway, I met a few of the interns, talked to a couple brazilian girls (Mariana and Lilian) interning at the hospital who spoke Spanish, and was forced to try to play the guitar while one of the guys, Elberte, sang in Portuguese (needless to say I handed that job off real quick haha). They are all really great singers somehow. After that we ended up having a fiasco trying to figure out how to get home because the interns who were going to drive us had had some drinks - we called a taxi, but no one could understand the driver so they called me over to translate. And then we didn't know exactly where we lived (me included since this was my first full day here) so we couldn't tell her the directions... haha. Thankfully Joseph (one of our HOH volunteers) knew mostly where to go since he's been here the longest so we got home safe. We also went to the international church this morning which was cool - they did worship bilingually - verse in English, then translated to Spanish, etc. The pastor spoke on how we can worship in spirit, body, and truth, which was a good reminder for me today. When was the last time I did not let any barriers come between me and worshiping with my whole heart? I was telling Christina, one of the girls I've been getting to know the best, that I don't want my time here to just be like a glorified vacation - I want to pray for things and see God moving in and through us in powerful ways, Let it be so, Jesus!
Oh, I forgot to say that I bought a Quechua/Spanish dictionary yesterday, so I am going to try to learn/remember some helpful words to use at the hospital :) Today is
Paykuna jampina sunqu (They are going to cure/treat the heart).
So! Kid-washing: we took the trufi to Plaza Principal, and met some people from the international church who were in charge of the washing, and set up two tents while the moms and babies lined up. We had three washing stations, and then an area where we had nail polish and clothes to dress them in. I was at a washing station. The kids would get naked outside the tent and run into the tent when we had an open tub. Most of them were super excited to get clean, and all of them were super dirty, some with lice. That lasted about an hour, and then we got picked up by 2 brazilian interns from the hospital in a teeny 4-door - there were 11 of us crammed in there (haha). Thankfully we made it alive to their house (there was a going away party for some of them). We has a little grill out in the back courtyard, and I tried literally the best grilled steak I've ever eaten in my entire life. They had some weird yucca powder to dip it in too -- SO good. Anyway, I met a few of the interns, talked to a couple brazilian girls (Mariana and Lilian) interning at the hospital who spoke Spanish, and was forced to try to play the guitar while one of the guys, Elberte, sang in Portuguese (needless to say I handed that job off real quick haha). They are all really great singers somehow. After that we ended up having a fiasco trying to figure out how to get home because the interns who were going to drive us had had some drinks - we called a taxi, but no one could understand the driver so they called me over to translate. And then we didn't know exactly where we lived (me included since this was my first full day here) so we couldn't tell her the directions... haha. Thankfully Joseph (one of our HOH volunteers) knew mostly where to go since he's been here the longest so we got home safe. We also went to the international church this morning which was cool - they did worship bilingually - verse in English, then translated to Spanish, etc. The pastor spoke on how we can worship in spirit, body, and truth, which was a good reminder for me today. When was the last time I did not let any barriers come between me and worshiping with my whole heart? I was telling Christina, one of the girls I've been getting to know the best, that I don't want my time here to just be like a glorified vacation - I want to pray for things and see God moving in and through us in powerful ways, Let it be so, Jesus!
Oh, I forgot to say that I bought a Quechua/Spanish dictionary yesterday, so I am going to try to learn/remember some helpful words to use at the hospital :) Today is
Paykuna jampina sunqu (They are going to cure/treat the heart).
Journal entries from Bolivia - May 31
So I was pretty terrible at keeping up with journaling/blogging while in Bolivia, but looking back in the journal entries I wrote there, I decided to post some of them up here (better late than never right?). There were some great ways God moved and good memories, and I figured I would share :) I didn't intend when I wrote them for people to read them, so bear with me a bit as some of them are prayers and not written the best. Nonetheless - here is a very very late update about what my time in Bolivia was like:
May 31, Saturday.
This morning we had breakfast and then found our way to Parque Pairumani to do some hiking. It was really pretty! I think the altitude here is pretty high, so I am pretty tired after that. We took a couple of trufis (vans) there, and it only cost 2.5 bolivianos to get in, which is like 50 cents. There is a river/irrigation type of thing you can follow all the way up. We passed by some of the boys from an orphanage that the HOH people had visited recently, and they led us up a greener ravine a ways. It was pretty! Nothing like Chile yet, but still cool :) Let's see, what have I learned so far? Cochabamba means plains of puddles (cocha is Quechua is puddle) and bamba --> pampa --> Spanish word for plains. There is about a 50% indigenous population here, mostly Quechua people, also Aymara, then Guarani. $1 USD = 6.9 BOB currently. We are currently staying at Pati and Juana's house in Cotapachi, which is like a suburb of Cochabamba.
Today we are going to was homeless kids in the square, and then apparently go to a fiesta. Jesus, meet my heart in this place. Guard us from making this a vacation time and nothing more. I believe that I am here for a reason, so I pray that You would give me the heart to respond to you and be willing to serve and call out the gifts of those around me. I pray that we would not be idle here, but that You would give my team the desire to pray, and guard us from being divided about pointless things.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Bienvenidos a Bolivia!
Hello everyone! This is my first post since arriving in Cochabamba, sorry for the delay! So, what have I been up to the past few days I've been here? Well, let me first tell you about the plane ride. I had just about a thousand connections to get here (DEN --> Dallas --> Miami --> La Paz --> Santa Cruz, then had to buy a ticket from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba) so that was a little crazy, but God has already been showing me his sovereignty over my situation. Thank you all so much for your prayers. I was a little worried when boarding the plane to Bolivia since this was my first time truly flying alone to a different country. Having an internal freak out as I got on the plane that my Spanish was going to be sucky and that I somehow would not be able to relate to the bolivianos got the best of me for a few minutes, but then I ended up starting a conversation with the lady in the seat next to me in Spanish, who turned out to be a Spanish professor (Flora Terran) at CSU and was making her way to Cochabamba herself. Flora ended up being a huge blessing to me - she ended up telling me a lot about Bolivia and the Quechua indians, and even stuck with me as I went through to get my visa and got stopped at customs because of the medical supplies I was bringing, and helped me buy my ticket to Bolivia, change my money, and waited with me until the people from Hospitals of Hope (HOH) came to pick me up from the airport. It's funny how sometimes God surprises you in the ways you least expect it. I know I would have been really worried when I got to Santa Cruz if Flora would not have been there because I could not get a hold of the people who were supposed to pick me up until the very last minute. Another randomly awesome answer to prayer was that even though I got stopped at customs (some insulin syringes, chest tube supplies, meds, and sterile instruments had been donated to me - thank you to Dr. Button Family Practice!!! :)), I was still able to get through with all of the supplies. The lady searching my things took out all of the syringes, told me I could not take any of them because I was not a doctor, then told me I could only take 10 of the packages. As she was saying this she shoved them back in my bag and then just let me leave. HAHA! I didn't question it. If that wasn't God I don't know what it was.
So after I got to the Cochabamba airport, about 7 of the other students volunteering with HOH came and picked me up in their trufi (the Bolivian word for van), and took me to the guest house we are staying at, which is in Cotapachi, a sort of suburb outside of Cochabamba. After being worried about being left in the airport to die, seeing all of the HOH people come in with their scrubs sure was a site for sore eyes! haha. After unpacking, we ended up going to visit a nearby hospital where some of the students went to a burn unit, and a few of the others (me included) visited the pediatrics unit where we played Uno with a girl who had just gotten her appendix taken out. I wasn't sure what exactly we would be doing that day, but even playing a simple game of Uno seemed to mean a whole lot to this little girl. We taught her the rules of the games and soon she was sheepishly smiling and laughing at us. The Bolivian hospitals are nothing like the US ones for those of my medical friends who are reading this. I'll elaborate on that later after I have spent more time in the HOH out in Vinto, which is another suburb of Cochabamba where we spend most morning Mon-Fri 9-11:30 shadowing and helping.
WOW there is a lot to say, I will have to update more so that these blog posts aren't a thousand pages long! The next day we had some free time in the morning, so we took a couple of trufis to a national park (Parque Pairumani) nearby, and followed an irrigation ditch/river up a ravine. Some boys from the orphanage that HOH volunteers at were also there, and they led us up another greener ravine. The area of Bolivia we are in is very arid and dry, but also at a high elevation (8,300 ft in the city), so I was embarrassingly pooped at the end of our hike. It was beautiful though! In the afternoon we went "babywashing" in one of the town squares. Apparently this is a ministry that has been happening for almost 12 years now - a local church comes every Saturday to set up 3 washing stations, and the Bolivians/Quechuans line up their toddlers and babies so that the volunteers can bathe and dress them in clean donated clothes. Some of the kids had lice, and all of them were very dirty, but excited to splash around. It was awesome seeing how such a simple thing could be a blessing to people. After the washing all 9 of us HOH volunteers crammed into a tiny 4 door with 2 of the Brazilian interns that come do rotations at HOH, and drove us to their house for a going away party for some other interns. After trying literally the most delicious brazilian style fried steak I have ever tried, and attempting to sing some songs in Portuguese, we finally decided to head home.
I think this will have to suffice for an update for now, but I will be posting more often. Again, thank you all so much to those who have been praying for my safety and this trip and for those who donated. I seriously cannot do this without you, and it has been so incredibly encouraging to see how you all have stepped up to support me and how generous everyone has been. It has definitely taught me a lesson in what generosity means and how I can practice that better in my own life. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be here, and the adventure has only just begun!
So after I got to the Cochabamba airport, about 7 of the other students volunteering with HOH came and picked me up in their trufi (the Bolivian word for van), and took me to the guest house we are staying at, which is in Cotapachi, a sort of suburb outside of Cochabamba. After being worried about being left in the airport to die, seeing all of the HOH people come in with their scrubs sure was a site for sore eyes! haha. After unpacking, we ended up going to visit a nearby hospital where some of the students went to a burn unit, and a few of the others (me included) visited the pediatrics unit where we played Uno with a girl who had just gotten her appendix taken out. I wasn't sure what exactly we would be doing that day, but even playing a simple game of Uno seemed to mean a whole lot to this little girl. We taught her the rules of the games and soon she was sheepishly smiling and laughing at us. The Bolivian hospitals are nothing like the US ones for those of my medical friends who are reading this. I'll elaborate on that later after I have spent more time in the HOH out in Vinto, which is another suburb of Cochabamba where we spend most morning Mon-Fri 9-11:30 shadowing and helping.
WOW there is a lot to say, I will have to update more so that these blog posts aren't a thousand pages long! The next day we had some free time in the morning, so we took a couple of trufis to a national park (Parque Pairumani) nearby, and followed an irrigation ditch/river up a ravine. Some boys from the orphanage that HOH volunteers at were also there, and they led us up another greener ravine. The area of Bolivia we are in is very arid and dry, but also at a high elevation (8,300 ft in the city), so I was embarrassingly pooped at the end of our hike. It was beautiful though! In the afternoon we went "babywashing" in one of the town squares. Apparently this is a ministry that has been happening for almost 12 years now - a local church comes every Saturday to set up 3 washing stations, and the Bolivians/Quechuans line up their toddlers and babies so that the volunteers can bathe and dress them in clean donated clothes. Some of the kids had lice, and all of them were very dirty, but excited to splash around. It was awesome seeing how such a simple thing could be a blessing to people. After the washing all 9 of us HOH volunteers crammed into a tiny 4 door with 2 of the Brazilian interns that come do rotations at HOH, and drove us to their house for a going away party for some other interns. After trying literally the most delicious brazilian style fried steak I have ever tried, and attempting to sing some songs in Portuguese, we finally decided to head home.
I think this will have to suffice for an update for now, but I will be posting more often. Again, thank you all so much to those who have been praying for my safety and this trip and for those who donated. I seriously cannot do this without you, and it has been so incredibly encouraging to see how you all have stepped up to support me and how generous everyone has been. It has definitely taught me a lesson in what generosity means and how I can practice that better in my own life. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be here, and the adventure has only just begun!
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