I'm missing it right now. The laughter and smiles and family dinners and Alex's lego and Maddie's dressups and Annie's perpetual smile. Sigh. Not to mention Liling's cinnamon rolls and....heyy....I never ended up getting to ride Lawrence's motorbike!
The photo below was actually taken at the end of our trip but I thought I'd put it first anyway, to introduce you to the beautiful LLAMA Tan family: Lawrence, Liling, Alex, Maddie, & Annie (with Lawrence's mum Aunty Lydia on the right). They are a missionary family our church supports and have been missionaries in Bolivia with SIM for the last 9 or 10 years if I'm not mistaken.
"Take five Aussies, throw them in a van, add faith, prayer and, oh yes, medical supplies. Drop them into the middle of Bolivia's stunning Andean valleys and what do you get?
PROJECT WALKABOUT.
The hoped for results: better health care and church growth. Mission today is innovative, faith-packed, and sacrificial." ~ Excerpt from here.
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
~ John 8:12
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"Grandma! Take the girls and run up the hill!!"
Above you see the Project Walkabout Van that becomes their home for the majority of time as they travel from village to village teaching, encouraging, and sharing their gifts and their lives among the Bolivian people. It also acts as mobile clinic which provides medical care and training for health practitioners in remote mountain towns in the Quechua-speaking areas of Southern Bolivia. This was also supposed to be our lodging as we travelled with them but on the drive home from the airport to their place in Sucre, Aunty Lydia tells us the story of How the Van Caught Fire. I know little about mechanical and electrical equipment, but figured that diesel dripping on electrical cables, gas tanks, oxygen tanks, and lots of precious lives at stake is a chilling combination.
But God was gracious and no one was hurt at all. It was also very lucky that they had diesel and not petrol or it would have been devastating. For the rest of the trip, we managed to squeeze into their 4WD and pack the bags on top 'old style' in cables and blue tarp. And the big van has since been repaired and is back on the rugged road for lots more lovin!
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Kawsay Puyju. I think this translates to 'living water' in Quechua and it was the name of the clinic that Lawrence worked at whilst in Sucre. Uncle Alan and Jeanne also helped out here as well, and at the end of the trip we had a really nice evening with them in the clinic, learning more about each other with some translation help, and singing songs to each other in English and Spanish after a huge, huge meal.
In the evenings, Joel and I headed to a nearby uni cafe called "El Alfarero" - a Christian cafe targeted at Uni students, with games on the table and an offer to come and talk if there were any issues that you wanted to share with someone in confidence. We donned aprons and caps and washed dishes, microwaved a bajillion tacos and sandwiches, and kept the potatoes cooking all night long. And then we ate lots at the end of the night ;D
Although it began simply as a Christian cafe, as time shaped its path it developed into a pregnancy crisis centre and refuge for young women in response to the needs of the direct community (click the link above for a video and detailed expanation). Whilst in the kitchen trying to converse in our very limited spanish we met some lovely people. Some were young missionaries (lots of aussies!), others were local volunteers, and still others had been through the program and were pregnant or mothers themselves, all younger than me...
I really liked this place and the way everything ran. It was educational, open, and loving all at once, and it was also here I was introduced to this really yummy fruit-milk drink called 'jugo con leche' (literally, juice with milk - but it tastes much better than it sounds!).
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I heart markets.
Adoro helado!
I suppose you were wondering what Julie was doing all this time? Julie was definitely in the most experimental zone of her life, trying her hand at anything from babysitting, to toilet-fixing, to dumpling making. And she was pretty much great at everything (including her two-day stunt as a pharmacist a little later down the track). Here we see her and little Anneka rolling out the dough for the dumplings we had for dinner that night. The food was very good in this household when all these chinese tastebuds were in the kitchen! Gracias / (pro vecho) !!
Playtime & dressups with Caleb & Abby!
A picture from one of our last nights in Sucre, before the dinner started at Kawsay Pujyu. We were playing a game of squish+squash and these girls are tiny but very very strong! miss you!
xoxo