Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Writer's Block

So, I know no one, except maybe Mom, is waiting for my next blog post, but I do feel bad when I'm way overdue. It's not that nothing's been happening, it's more that a lot's been happening. The president of Compassion International was a missionary kid and he said the best missionaries always have the hardest time getting their prayer letters turned in. Which might subconsciously make me a bit hesitant about trying to write well, or regularly. Plus, I know as a reading audience, you really just want more stories about sweet little Ange, and there just hasn't been anything to tell except that she won a little race in school, and her grades went up enough in the second trimester to warrant a trip to the movies. We went to see Los Pitufos, anyone wanna guess what that translates to in English?

In between exciting Angie episodes I thought I'd tide you over with a few photo-stories of a project we're working on with the vet students. I think I'd rather tell you the whole story when we're finished, but this should whet your appetites.

Let's just say it's a project where they're letting me lay bricks,
Angie mix cement,
and our VetRed students are pretty much in charge.
Scary, huh?
Can't wait to tell you all about it, but in the meantime, better get back to working instead of just talking about working. ;)

Monday, August 15, 2011

Is it Weird to Love Your Office?

This morning, I said goodbye to two of the first fruits of our new office. For the past month I've been tutoring two cousins of one of the doctors that works in the veterinary hospital where our campus ministry office is located. They've been visiting from Spain on their summer break, and asked if I could help them with some English. They were sweet sweet kids, and I really enjoyed our hour together every day, where I tried to remember my British English and Spain Spanish. Sometimes just before I would correct them for some English error, I would realize,"ah, maybe that is how they say it in England." Today, as we enjoyed the Coke and salteñas they brought to thank me one asked, which is better English from the US or from Britain? I'll leave my answer to your imaginations.
Everyday, as I sit in the office between classes grading papers or planning lessons, random students and professors drop in. Sometimes to ask about our ministry, to find out when our Bible studies will be, to ask about the English class schedule, to fill time between classes reading The Daily Bread in Spanish, or my favorite -- two professors stopped in to ask for a couple Spanish New Testaments because they'd seen someone on campus reading one and asked where she'd gotten it.

And sometimes just to hangout. I met a student who's husband is a youth pastor at their church and she has a 6 year old daughter who I hope will someday be friends with Angie. My three lovely Bible study girls come by to visit and relax on the couch when they have breaks between classes. This afternoon Paola, my good friend and colleague at the university, stopped in to chat about our families on her way home to hers.

This Friday we hope to bring them all together to decide what material we'll dig into this semester, what hours work best for everyone, and start planning our chicken coop service project. I love the excitement of the beginning of the semester. And I love this new office!

Sunday, August 7, 2011

VetRed Open House (does not translate well)

So VetRed's got this lovely new office on the veterinary campus, and we wanted to share it with everyone, so I thought we should have an open house. The new semester just began last week, so there were lots of fresh faces and the always reliable new-semester-enthusiasm, so all we needed to add was food.
One of the women in my church small group makes wonderful cuñape, empanadas and other such treats, so I thought I'd hire her to bake for our little inauguration. Turns out she'd had a cancellation just that day so not only was she available, but she'd been praying for God to replace that needed income. God's pretty cool that way. And as you can see above, David didn't mind a bit that we used his desk for all the delicious-ness.
We had quite a few old friends and new visitors stop by to see our new digs and learn about what we've got coming up. Such as Bible studies, English classes, surgical and practical training, visitors (like our veterinary guest, Mike Joyce, down from Iowa who taught orthopedics here last week and left for a few days with VetRed in Paraguay this afternoon), and chicken service projects (more details surely to follow in future posts.)
The only problem with our little open house, was that it was possibly Bolivia's first open house ever, thus no one quite understood the concept of stopping by for a tour, a snack, and a few pleasantries. Instead they settled into our cozy couch and waited for the formal program to begin, uh... So, we took advantage of our captive audience and got to know them a bit better, learn about their class schedules this season, their interests, and shared the ever-entertaining Evangecubes. Someday I'll have all these cultural differences figured out. Who'm I kidding, that'll never happen!