Pineapple

I can't exactly do it with the speed of one of the ladies that sells sliced pineapple from a wheelbarrow in the market, but my pineapple slicing skills have significantly increased.  And I know how to make the juice by boiling the skin.  I might be a real Bolivian some day!

Rainy Day at Home

Muscles

 Showing off

Even they know they are cute!

House Work

We've been getting lots of work done on our future house (for Angel and I).  We need to have a new bathroom added on, so that required moving lots of rocks that were left over from previous construction.  And in the midst of the rocks, we found what appeared to be a small tree.

Turns out that small tree took a LOT of elbow grease and broke a pickax to remove!

 I gave up, but Angel managed to get it out.

We also purchased our water tank.  The house is on city water, but the city doesn't provide water every day.  So "tank-burg" is our backup.  We also bought a kitchen sink and shower.

I was able to borrow a couple of ladders from the BLC so that we could spend a Sunday afternoon sanding the terrible dark blue ceilings in most of the house.  Angel wasn't a fan of getting rid of the blue since it is his favorite color, so he took some of it with him.

Ramiro came with us to help with the ceiling and managed to escape with nothing more than a light dusting.

Workshops

With the new year I am quite happy to be taking on some new responsibilities.  Our life skills workshops our now if full swing!  I will be not just be putting the kids to work, but using my skills as a psychologist to develop personalized life development plans for every boy in our 2 oldest dorms.  My goal is to help them get to know their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, and focus their career goals in areas that will best fit each individual.

The tractor finally came and is getting the Agriculture area ready for planting.

Our bakery is producing yummy bread for breakfast every morning.

We also have a projects group that is sanding the front of the building in preparation to paint.

The boys aren't necessarily excited that I started a work program half way through summer vacation, but they were all very interested in the goals of giving them more focus and direction for their futures.  They crave that and still have a greater fear of the unknown than your average person.  So they are all participating and that is all I can ask until I've had enough time to prove the success of the program!

Sad and Happy

Both a sad and happy day.  One of our boys was reunited with family recently.  Sad for me, but happy for him.  Luckily for me, I have been able to get to know some details of his history and have been present to see the reactions of his family with this new change.  And I am confident it is a good and safe move.  And I definitely know that distance doesn't restrict family, but that doesn't make it easy to see one of our boys off.

Reading the last official letters from sponsors at a going away party with the staff and his closest friends.

Opening a present from the staff.  A photo of his class and art supplies for a passionate drawer.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

Sidewalk Sunday School

While the Christmas team was here, we headed out to do some Sidewalk Sunday School children's evangelism.  We had about 20 kids at our first site.

The park had a great set up for the show.

Thank goodness the rain held off!

Fun fact: my future house is 2 blocks up and 2 blocks to the left!!  Isn't my view awesome?

One of the boys came up after the program and handed over a butterfly.  He said that his mom has lots of flowers, so he had brought a butterfly with him.  After I took the picture, he took it back and headed home with it sitting on his shoulder!

New Year 2013

I don't think I have ever been so excited to welcome a new year.  Even greeting year 2000 my senior year of high school doesn't compare to my joy right now.  So many good things are coming!

This is part of the amazing view from Angel's parents' house.  The fireworks started around 11:30pm and were just starting to quiet down around 1:30am.  The view of the city is enough to awe me, but this night there were fireworks going off everywhere!

It was a little chilly outside, so I took complete advantage of this really soft blanket that Angel's sister offered!  We toasted at midnight, ate 12 grapes (Bolivian tradition), and hugged all of Angel's family.

The next day the whole family went out to the lake.  We took a tour on a boat and even went down a zip line.  Here my prince charming hangs out by the castle (restaurant) near the zip line (we don't know the people up top).  Start of a great year with great people.

Halloween USA

I've been enjoying a last minute visit to the USA and got to celebrate Halloween!!  November 2 is All Saint's Day in Bolivia and it involves praying for spirits in hopes that they will avoid torment and making sacrifices in the cemetery, so our church there is solidly against anything that might even look related to participation in such activities.

But not in the USA :)

My little sister and I carved pumpkins...

I may have forgotten just how gross gutting a pumpkin can be!

It was my very first time using a pumpkin carving kit instead of just chopping out triangles with a kitchen knife.  So I copied a design from the booklet but changed the letters to spell my last name!

Adrian was much faster and more detailed than I was.  Her pumpkin got ooh's and aah's from the trick or treat crowd.

I spent pretty much the entire time that kids were coming to the door back at the table trying to separate all of the seeds to be roasted.  Mom found about 4 recipes online, so I attempted to follow one and they didn't come out too bad at all!  

In the end we had to turn out all the lights because we ran out of candy.  I remember being really little and running out of candy one Halloween.  My parents scrambled all over the house looking for loose change to hand out instead!

Genius!

The boys were messing around with some old poles and things, and I really didn't think to pay much attention to what they were doing.  The next time I checked on them, I found that they had planted the poles, tied string to the top, balled up old socks and tied them to the other end of the string, and created tether ball!!!

Awesome!

Even the older boys are in on the action.

Apparently you have to be super cool while playing.  Love the expression of the boy on the left!