Content to just be

Sorry it´s been so long since I´ve blogged . . . it´s not really because we´ve been all that busy, but it seems that the time has flown by the past week. It has been very cold here so we haven´t been working a whole lot. The church youth leader and good friend Milton told us that yesterday was the coldest day he has experienced in his 10 years living in Trinidad!! Wow! It definitely took me by surprise. I had to buy an extra layer at the market yesterday. It is a used blue wool sweater with sparkles in it . . . looks like something from the 80´s but it was only about 3 dollars and it keeps me warm so I don´t really care! haha

This past week has been good in a lot of ways. I feel like it has been a good recovery from the rollercoaster ride of emotions the first two weeks. It has given us time to just think a lot more and just ¨be¨. Sometimes our culture in the United States looks down on ¨wasted time¨. Any time that isn´t spent being productive is often considered wasted. Being down here has helped me to realized that it´s ok not to be productive all the time. I had a chat with one of our good friends Pippo (the younger brother of the pastor Carlos Hugo) about this very issue. He talked how he used to live in Spain and how it was so busy and hectic. People didn´t even have time to spend with their kids. He said it´s the same way in the big cities of Bolivia like La Paz and Santa Cruz. People are so busy that they don´t take time to enjoy God´s abundant blessings around them. They are so worried about making more money so they can buy more things and be ¨happier¨. Pippo said the people in Trinidad aren´t rich with things, but they are rich in the important things like spending time with family. It was really cool to have a deep conversation in another language! All of the others have really been improving with their spanish as well. Our conversations have gone from a simple ¨what is your name¨to deep conversations about faith and God.

Though we haven´t physically accomplished a lot this week I think we have done so much as far as deepening relationships. I really feel like that´s what this trip is really about anyway. . . forming relationships with our brothers and sisters in Bolivia. The more I get to know these people down here, the more I realize that they are just like us. Just people who love and want to be loved. People who love God. We might have different cultures and speak different languages, but we are very similiar, we are all brothers and sisters in God´s family. It´s such a blessing just to ¨be¨in this human family and realize how connected we all are.