After a three week long visit to Bolivia, my friend Lisa Birzer and her daughter Danielle returned to the States. We enjoyed many fun things while they were here, including a quick trip to Samaipata with my roommates and two of the pastors from my church (in the picture above, the one in the front on the right is Dalmiro with whom the Birzers came to visit as well.) They also had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with Dalmiro's family, particularly his sisters. In addition, I appreciated their help at school being willing to fill in wherever necessary and do just about anything! We don't have enough people like that floating around this year! It was a huge blessing to me!
On Friday night, October 15, I attended my good friend America's wedding. It will be the first of a few for her as she married a young man from North America so although they had a religious ceremony here...they will legally be married in the States in a few weeks. I am very happy for her although, I will miss her terribly when she leaves this weekend to go to live in the U.S. They will be living in Washington state...I told her that I couldn't believe she'd be living about as far away from Virginia as she could get! Regardless, I hope to find a way to get over to see her the next time that I am home on furlough.
I continue to greatly appreciate your prayers on my behalf and on behalf of those here (both Bolivians and other missionaries). Personally, I am feeling very tired and that is adding to an already stressful time at school...leaving me more irritable than usual, with little patience. I haven't had much time at home in the last few weeks so there are several things that I need to take care of there (replacing the gas tanks so that we'll have hot showers tomorrow, paying the phone bill so that they'll turn it back on, cleaning my room so that I can find things, etc.) Of course, there's also the car...once again giving me fits. To add to all of this, my body is showing signs of stress as well, such as a rather constant back pain that I've had for about the last month. I find a bit of relief in realizing that I'm not the only one feeling this tension...I know of several teachers at school who could use more encouragement right now too, including my roommates. I am sure there are others in my church and in SAM as well, but where I'm noticing most of the strain is at school. Please pray for our school, students, and staff, we have become very proactive in fighting certain negative behaviors (i.e. bullying) recently and I believe that Satan doesn't want to lose that foothold...so his way of trying to stop it is by discouraging the staff and (it appears) by putting extra energy in all of the students. I think as a whole we could use an extra boost of His strength and constant reminders of His grace! Thank you for joining us in laying these concerns before the throne of Him who can do all things, whose plan cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2)!
