Follow-up

Only one more month in Bolivia. Yes, we are heading back to the states to pick up where we left off and try to live a normal life. Can anyone really pick up where they left off after experiencing life in a third world country. Our lives will forever be changed.


My last day of teaching at the Santa Cruz Christian learning center occurred last Thursday, May 14Th. On that last day, prior to taking their final and handing in the required work book I took this picture of "my girls" wearing the aprons they made. From left to right are Gaby, Ziza, Marela, and Arriana. I will never forget them. I pray they choose to follow Christ and make Him first in their lives. A couple posts ago I wrote of the baby shower that I had for Rosa our guesthouse maid. Well, Rosa delivered a healthy baby boy on May 6Th. Rosa was dismissed from the hospital on May 9Th and sadly the baby had to stay in the hospital a week longer due to jaundice. But he is all right now. Traditionally Bolivians do not name their babies until they are a year old. They think it is bad luck to name the baby sooner because so many babies die before their first birthday. Rosa stopped by the other day to pick up her maternity wages and I took this photo. Nothing is official yet, in fact probably nothing for several months, but Rosa seems to think they will name him Samuel after his father.

We have been blessed these past four years to have a dear Christian women working for us. Her name is Nancy and Nancy has worked for the guesthouse and SAM missionaries for over 50 years. She started working when she was 15 years old. Nancy celebrated her 65th birthday the other day............ we think that she is older but no one really knows. She is almost blind and has a variety of health problems. She makes the best bread and sweet rolls I have ever tasted! Below is a picture of Nancy with Dan. Nancy is wearing on of the necklaces we gave her for her birthday. It is not the best picture of her, she had already worked all day and was preparing to go home. We will always be grateful for her hard work and endearing nature. She is a sweet and wonderful women of God. When she is not working she is visiting the sick and keeps very busy teaching at her local church.

Work Day at the SAM base

On May 1st, (Bolivia's Labor Day), South America Mission/Bolivia had a work day at the SAM base. Our goal was to do painting and repairs to the "El Atrio" our pastors training center, to repair ceiling tile, fix lighting and wiring, and to take down the kid's tree house which was had extensive termite damage. After all the work was finished we ended the work day with a "Chorozco" a traditional Bolivian cook out with plenty of hamburgers and Bolivian sausages, along with chips and banana chocolate cookies provided by Laurie Vanderzwaag. Below are some pictures of the people that came to work. Above is a picture of Tom Throssel preparing the wall to paint. Bubba Massey and I, (Neva) put two coats of paint on this wall. It was very difficult painting since there was a lot of tape and glue which had been used on the wall and hindered the paint from sticking.

In this picture is Cody Vanderzwaag and his Bolivian friend who are helping to tear the tree house down.

The above picture is of Dana Wilson painting the entrance to the El Atrio.

Above is Jenny Strebig. She first had to patch damage to the wall. There is a big problem in Bolivia with mold which gets in under the paint and eats away at the wall.

In the above picture is left to right.... Laurie Vanderwaag, Dana Wilson and Laura Boyce.

Above you can see Dan trying to sort through the wood we pulled down from the tree house. While some of the wood was damaged from termites, some of the wood was fine because the wood used was a very dense wood which is very difficult for the termites to penetrate.

In this picture Greg Dahl is working on a light fixture while Steve Vanderzwaag hold the ladder.

Angela Massey is putting a fresh coat of paint on the railing of the balcony which is on the second floor of the El Atrio.

In this picture Isabel (the El Atrio secretary), is helping Paul Kinezle put a coat of paint on the upstairs railing.

Bolivian Baby Shower

Rosa, the guesthouse maid is expecting her fourth child. It was really pretty unexpected..... at least for her. She was really surprised. Any way, I thought that it would be good if we honored her with a baby shower before she went on maternity leave. She was very pleased, especially since, as she shared with us, that no one had ever given her a baby shower. Baby showers here are pretty foreign. They just don't give things to other people, especially when each family struggles to take care of their own needs. I had invited about 22 people to the shower and hoped to get 8 to 10 people. To my surprise, about eighteen people came, mostly SAM missionaries. We had a lot of fun playing baby shower games and having some delicious eats together. In Bolivia only small gifts are given..... it is the Bolivian way, and no one puts their name on the packages so that no one is embarrassed by what was or was not given. In the picture below Rosa is opening her gifts. As you can see she seems very pleased.

Below the ladies had to hold a baby, hold a phone, carry a balloon under their blouse and then we strung up a clothes line and when we said "go" they had to quickly hold all these things and also hang clothes on the clothes line. The picture below shows the ladies before the game actually began. The winner was Angela Massey, the thin dark haired women on the end..... she did it all in record time. It was fun to watch.

School at Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center

This past year I have had the priviledge of teaching at the SAM operated Christian school known as Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center. In the fall semester I taught two First Aid classes and this Spring semester I taught Home Economics. The pictures of the girls below are the girls in my Home EC class. Their names in order are: Gabby, Arianna, Mariela and Ziza. The first three girls are Bolivian and Ziza is a missionary kid. It has been an interesting year teaching these girls about the fine are of home management. Hopefully they have learned things that they can use throughout their lifetime.

Below is the the name of the school, posted on the wall as you enter the gated entrance.

As you can probably guess, the school mascot is the "Eagles." The building below houses the library on the first floor and the chapel and computer lab on the second floor.

And, like most of Bolivia, animals roam free. This cow is a usual appearance right outside of the school entrance. The other day when we arrived there were pigs wallowing in the mud of the drive way.

For the past few years there has been a lot of construction going up around the school and this has affected their drainage system. The school has a lot of problems with standing water on the grounds, so much so that they have not been able to use their soccer field or much of their playground. This has been particularly bad when there was a dengue outbreak and with the standing water the mosquito population soared. Recently we have contracted a local firm to put in a new drainage system which we hope will fix the problem.

Here is a picture inside of the school gym. My home economics class is actually in an alcove of the gym and Dan and I often watch the kids in their gym classes as I wait for the class before Home Ec to finish up. During my Home Ec class Dan helps the special needs teacher with kids that need special attention.

With all the rain, this concrete basketball court has been the only place that many of the kids could go for recess.

This is a few from outside their lunch room, also known as the "Eagles Nest." On the right and also in the rear are class room, mostly used by the high school and junior high. The grade school kids classrooms are actually on the other side of the far class rooms.

Barrio Bolivar

One of the most recent South America Mission projects has been to build a child developmental center for children in Barrio Bolivar, an area almost completely inhabited by Ayore Indians. The Ayore people live in poverty and the children suffer from malnutrition and parasites. Hopefully the child development center will help by providing nutritious snacks for the kids, treating them for parasites and testing them for developmental delays so that the kids will not be handicapped by their environment. I have posted a few pictures of the kids from Barrio Boliviar.

Dengue Epidemic hits Bolivia!

This year has been one of the worse out-breaks of dengue in Bolivia in years! There have been over 50,000 "reported" cases of dengue and probably just as many unreported cases. For those of you that are not familiar with the illness, it is spread by mosquito, and is very similar to malaria. There are five different varieties of the disease with hemorrhagic dengue the most serious since it usually ends with death of the individual. Dengue "classical" is the most common and generally is milder than the other four varieties. Symptoms include high fevers, aches, pains, nausea, malaise, anorexia, hallucinations, rashes, and stomach ache. The illness usually runs its course within about ten days. Once you have had dengue you generally receive a life long immunity to "that variety" of the disease. You can still contract one of the other varieties.
This past Saturday the city of Santa Cruz declared a "dengue paro." A "paro" is the Bolivian word for "strike" which generally means that no one goes anywhere, but rather stays at their home. This "paro" was designed for everyone to stay at home and clean up their yards, getting rid of waste and standing water.
On Saturday morning someone representing the city came to our door and gave us all the instructions as to what must be done to clean up our yard for the paro. Everyone was instructed to place their garbage, such as old mattresses, refrigerators, pop bottles, car tires, leaves, etc. on one of the corners of their block and someone would be by to pick everything up. We always keep our grounds clean so we really did not need to do anything. We did put a couple of old tires outside and an old toilet bowl. Later in the day someone came by to inspect our property. That was kind of a joke because all they did was ask us if we had cleaned up our yard. Of course the answer was yes. Below, the picture of the giant mosquito with a red line through it was place on our exterior gate for everyone to see that we had passed inspection. Here is the garbage that made its way to our corner by all the neighbors.....................

By Monday morning scavengers had already gone through our garbage and made off with everything of any value.

Here is a picture taken from the local paper of one of the garbage heaps. There is so much garbage it will take weeks for the city to get everything hauled away! And yesterday we received torrential rains which made matters worse. If there was any mosquito larva in the garbage the rains only helped them in their growth cycle.

As you can see below, this is something that was in the local paper describing what took place.

Below you will see just one of many pictures of people with their families waiting for medical care.

Below is a picture of someone who was not as fortunate. They died from the dengue. Here is a typical picture of a wake. Usually when someone dies in Bolivia they must bury them within 24 hours because there are no embombing facilities. Family is notified of a death and they come together and prep the body and then sit together the remainder 16 or so hours until they take the body to the cemetery for burial. Bodies are usually entombed and not buried under ground.

Below is a picture of a women with her sick child. They ran out of hospital space and the child is on a gurney in a hallway of the hospital.

South America Mission Annual Field Conference

Each year alll the South America Mission missionaries are required to gather for a week long conference for a time of teaching, spiritual instruction and a time to take care of mission business. This year our conference was held January 5th through the 9th (2009) at a small resort by the name of "Los Cedros," which was about 40 minutes south of Santa Cruz. Bill Ogden came down as our guest speaker and Jeffry Olrick, a child psycologist also spoke. Front row (left to right): Marlene and Terry Throssel (came to teach the children), Raquel Strebig, Aleyna and Amara Holcombe, Georgia, Sam and Angela Masse, Bev, Benji and Bill Smith, Alyssa, Abby and Noah Holcombe, Philip Throssel, Dan, Jenny and Elizabeth Strebig Second row: Tara Wilson (came to lead worship), Dana Wilson, Kathern Strebig, Laura Boyce, Bubba and Ty Massey, Jeff Olrick (a child psycologist who came to speak), Alan Holcombe. Third row: Peter Throssel, Nick Smith, Racheal Kienzle, Jessica Smith, Katie Wells, Ruthie Nyquist, Lydia Emmans, Erica and Becca Kienzle, Angela Emmans, Laura Kienzle, Dan & Neva Fourth Row: Janine & Tom Throssel, Greg Dahl, Bill Ogden and Paul Kienzle.

These are the SAM kids!

And the SAM teens! left to right: Peter Throssel, Nick Smith, Erica Kienzle, Lydia Emmans, Ruthie Nyquist, Jessica Smith and Racheal Kienzle.