The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

Although we are pretty used to living here now, every once in awhile we still have days where it’s very apparent that we are not in control of our environment!

Today, like every weekday, I called the taxi company that serves our school to pick me up so that I could go get Avery from her preschool. Unlike every other time I have called, no one answered. After repeated calls, I asked our secretary if she knew what was happening or if she could call another company. She told me another company would charge me a lot more, so she said she would call the owner of our usual company to see what was going on. She got a hold of him, and he explained that today was the taxi company’s anniversary. Therefore, they were all partying and not working today. She explained my situation to him, and he agreed to send someone to get me. Meanwhile, I called Avery’s school to tell them I’d be late since I was stuck at Highlands. The taxi never came, so I ended up getting a ride with one of our teacher’s assistants who was leaving for the day. It all worked out, and Avery didn’t mind the extra play time at school.

This afternoon, seven of us who still do not have our work visas were told to go to immigration to pick them up. When we arrived, they issued two of our visas, but not the others. They said that the paperwork still had to be signed by the director, and that we should come back next Tuesday. Apparently he can only manage to sign his name a few times a week!

On our way home, we drove by the Curves that I joined earlier this school year. It is still closed. While we were in the States, the toilet in the apartment above the Curves leaked for so long that it flooded their floor, which meant the ceiling of Curves fell in. Thankfully, it happened at night so no one was hurt. However, it pretty much ruined the place and equipment. So about seven weeks later, it is still not open and I don’t know when it will be. Although it’s kind of nice to have a legitimate excuse not to exercise, I really was looking forward to working out there!

In order to counteract our feelings about Bolivia today, we went to our favorite Tex Mex restaurant for dinner and topped it off with Italian gelato for dessert!

We have said goodbye to Barkie twice in the last two days. Yesterday, we had a day off of school for All Saints Day, a big holiday here. Tom took out the trash, and I wasn’t able to close the door behind him quickly enough. Barkie ran out behind him and then took off down the street. Tom hunted for him for about a half an hour, but he didn’t have any success. Barkie seemed to have a major burst of energy and initiative once he got outside. He apparently explored the whole neighborhood. Avery and I went out a little later to look for him. After about ten minutes, I was ready to go back inside when Avery said she saw him about two blocks away. Sure enough, there he was. We got within a couple of feet of him, but he acted like he had no idea who we were and quickly went off on his way.

Just when we had accepted that Barkie seemed to prefer freedom to a nice safe place to eat and sleep, eagle eye Avery spotted Barkie out the window. He was trotting down our street. We put some food outside our door, and he eventually came over to it and came in the house. He was quite tired after his adventures so he slept for most of the day. He seemed very restless after that and started barking often for the first time. This scared Avery and frustrated us since we try to keep him quiet for our neighbors’ sake.

Our friends who found Barkie in the first place said that a family with a large yard had agreed to take him, so they picked him up tonight. We were glad to say goodbye under better circumstances than yesterday. We think Barkie will be happier with more space and Avery will be happier without the barking.

We have decided that we might like our cat better than we thought we did. . .

Barkie & Avery

We have a new, but temporary, member of our family. Our friend Faith found this Collie a little over a week ago near her home. He was scared, and they were concerned he might have been hit by a car. After a couple of days and a trip to the vet, they realized he wasn’t injured, but just old and deaf. . . He was obviously well-trained and good-natured. After getting our landlords’ permission, we said we’d keep him for a few days until our friends found the owner. Avery named him Barkie, which is ironic, since he almost never barks. He isn’t much trouble. In this picture, we had dragged him in the living room, but on his own accord he never leaves the kitchen. He pretty much just stays on his blanket unless he’s eating. He does liven up a bit when you take him outside. He is very sweet with Avery, letting her pet him and brush him. We are doubtful now about finding the owner, but we’re hoping another family with a nice yard will take him soon

One of the funniest things about having Barkie is that you realize it’s very hard not to talk to a dog, even when you know he can’t hear you. So Avery I have this conversation several times a day:

Me: “Come here, Barkie. How are you, Barkie? Are you hungry, Barkie?”

Avery: (said with some exasperation) “Mom, he can’t hear you. Remember, he’s deaf!”

My friend Heidi and I have always been interested in personality types. She’s more knowledgeable about it than I am, but through the years we have read books to examine our own personalities, then we focused on the best personality match for a spouse, then it was figuring out our “mom” style. Now of course, we have thoroughly analyzed our children to try to figure out their emerging personality types.

I pretty much suspected what Avery’s was from the get-go, but a comment she made last night kind of sealed it for me. She announced to me and Tom as we were walking upstairs, “I’m going to be the leader, and I’m using a pogo stick”" (while jumping up and down). If that’s not a choleric/sanguine comment then I don’t know what it is!

Sorry we haven’t posted, but there isn’t anything we do while in the US that we feel like people would be all that interested in! We have enjoyed seeing family and friends, but definitely miss La Paz and having a place to be settled. Avery is handling this time very well, thankfully.

We feel comfortable enough with the situation in La Paz that we have booked return tickets for Oct. 11th. It’s an overnight flight, so we’ll arrive on the 12th. We are flying American Airlines, so we will hope that they do not cancel the flight. They are supposed to resume flights on Thursday of this week, so we should have a pretty good idea if there will be any problems with the flights by the end of the week.

Highlands continues to be open and according to our friends there, life in La Paz is peaceful and fairly normal. We are following the peace talks between the President of Bolivia and the opposition leaders. Although it doesn’t seem like they’ve made a whole lot of progress, just by the fact they are still negotiating and the violence has ceased, they are moving in the right direction. We pray that they can continue to work through the many sensitive issues on the table. This process could go on for a long time, so it doesn’t make sense to us at this point to try to wait until there is a final agreement.

The US and Bolivia continue to trade diplomatic insults, and the relationship between our countries is definitely at a low point. Evo Morales is following Hugo Chavez’s lead in courting Russia and Iran to try to provide assistance that the countries previously sought from the US. We don’t sense that this issue is going to affect our immediate safety, but is a major concern for American Christians serving in Bolivia over the long haul. Public perception of Americans can be strongly swayed by the government’s statements and positions. We would appreciate prayers for us to be gracious as we may be treated poorly at immigration when we return to Bolivia as well as in other situations.

We also ask for prayer as we continue to feel unsettled away from our home, routines and work. Please pray for all of us to be able to jump back into our ministry and relationships there easily. We are praying that the country will remain stable enough for Highlands to continue to thrive and for us to finish our school year.

We arrived back in NC this morning. We had a few stressful moments during the process of trying to return to the States, such as waiting three hours at the Bolivian immigration office for no apparent reason to get our passports back. Then when we arrived at the airport in La Paz, the man at the ticket counter said I didn’t have the right information and so he could not locate our reservations. Thankfully, our “travel agent” is a friend from school who I was able to call immediately and he located the correct numbers on his computer. We got to our flight there without a moment to spare, but all of our travel actually went pretty smoothly. No flights were delayed and our luggage made every leg of the journey from La Paz to Lima to Bogota to Miami to Charlotte - amazing! Avery was a real trooper, but we are all pretty worn out today.

We are communicating with our friends in Bolivia and keeping up with the news reports online, so we hope that a week from now we can determine if the situation is likely to remain stable enough for us to make flight reservations to return.

We just wanted to post that we will be coming back to the States on Friday morning. We currently still feel safe here, and our school is operating normally. But with the possibility of the situation deteriorating and the likelihood that the costs for flights later on may be outrageous, we decided to take what we hope is just a two or three week visit to the States and then return to Bolivia to continue our work here. Please pray that we will be able to easily retrieve our passports from the Bolivian immigration office tomorrow. We will post again when we’ve returned to North Carolina.

We attended the meeting this morning for US citizens. They did not give too much new information. They did indicate that the explusion of the ambassador is serious in that this has not happened anywhere else in the world in the last 20 or so years. The other issue is that the US congress will vote soon to decide whether or not to continue to trade relations with Bolivia. This decision would also affect the many aid and anti-drug projects that the US funds here.

The situation within Bolivia may be getting better. The opposition governors met with the Vice President of the country into the early hours of the morning. They are supposed to sign an agreement tonight to resolve some of their issues.

Currently, our area remains peaceful and we hope to resume classes at school tomorrow.

Just wanted to update the blog on the latest with the political situation here. The US embassy has announced an authorized departure for spouses and children of US embassy/government employees here. That means they will pay for them to leave and go back to the States for at least a 30 day period. There is a meeting tomorrow morning for US citizens here to give more information. Tomorrow and Tuesday will be crucial to determine if the situation is getting better or worse. South American leaders are meeting in Chile tomorrow to try to prevent more violence here. Our area has been peaceful and life has been pretty normal. There is the possibility of a protest at the embassy and in other parts of La Paz tomorrow, so our school has been cancelled. We will probably make reservations on a flight for later in the week as a precaution in case the problems escalate. Please pray for peaceful solutions here, wisdom for us and school leaders and that we can retrieve our passports from the Bolivian gov’t in the next couple of days.