Trip to San Jose, Fua and Santiago

WARNING: This will be a LONG post. :-D

You just never know what you will find on the road in Bolivia.....

Always up for an adventure, Jason and I joined our team (Mercado family, Massey family, and Joe and Julie Kidd) for a trip to visit several towns to the East of where we live. Although it was hot hot hot and we didn’t have air conditioning, the trip went well. Day1: Today the adventures included driving. Not just regular driving on pavement, but driving through large construction sites with no cones or traffic directors (meaning we were driving next to or behind the very large machinery doing the work!), and over a mountain ridge on a dirt road which resulted in our friends turning literally orange in our back seat because of all the dust that came into our car! They looked like they had put on way too much self tanning lotion. We passed areas that looked like small rivers where only 2 weeks before, when the road wasn’t completely ready, Jason had driven in the team’s exploratory trip. God was gracious and we had no car problems. Once we got to San Jose, our resting point for the evening, the guys went to get the wood from the carpenter that had been ordered ahead of time and found it only to be half completed. So the men took what was available out to Fua to have ready for the next day and told the carpenters to finish the rest by the next day.

Day 2: This day our team went to work in Fua, a small Ayore community about 40 from San Jose. The primary goal of the day was to put up some walls on the church building and by the end of the day (after a few generator problems) the guys got quite a bit accomplished. Jason had a blast teaching the Ayore kids to use old 2 liter bottles of soda cut up to scoop a pest beetle off of the community’s pepper plants so they would be able to produce peppers for them. Toni Mercado and Julie Kidd set up their medical supplies and were able to help out lots of community members by examining them and handing out medication. I was able to count pills and write instructions for people. Bush medicine is very interesting, that’s for sure!

Ayore girls playing a hand game

Jason, Joe and Julie Kidd taking some measurements

We also had along Cesar and Mirta, the couple who lives near us in Poza Verde, and they hung out for the day. In the afternoon Mirta led some singing in Ayore, and Cesar gathered the people for a little church service. We met at the entrance of someone’s house since the church building was still being worked on. It was an awesome little service, simple, but so beautiful. Cesar started out by telling a story- a story that even had me captivated- and then used that story to make a poignant point about the need to come to Jesus. He has amazing abilities to make stories have a point, one thing that I really appreciate about indigenous cultures.

"Welcome to the church. No spitting."

All in all it was a good, long, hot, tiring, special day. I love just spending time with people here and not necessarily having an ‘agenda’. There are some really fun things that go on.

Hanging out with the town, watching the guys do the church construction

So Day 3: The men went in the morning back to Fua to work some more on the church. The ladies took the morning to go to the Ayore part of San Jose to do a little singing, service, and seeing medical patients. We were waiting for some of the Christian ladies to come back from an appointment so Toni and Julie started doing medical work. Emily, Toni’s daughter, brought a guitar and so they asked me to play a few songs. I tried to pick ones I knew in Spanish J We had just finished up the medical attention when a truck full of politicians drove up and wanted to talk to the Ayoreos (who were of the opposite political party). Toni decided it was time for us to leave so we headed out and spent some time at Mirta’s family’s house in San Jose before meeting the guys for lunch. That afternoon we spent driving to Santiago, a small town another probably 2 hours down the road. The scenery was gorgeous! Think US southwest, but greener. That evening Jason, Ken Massey, Toni and Placido met with a local leader in Santiago. They spoke with him about what some of the needs in the area are so that we can potentially partner with him in the future. Historically our mission had a big influence in the Santiago area so we are looking to potentially expand again in that direction. While this meeting was going on, I went to visit the memorial for the 5 men (from New Tribes Mission) who were martyred by the Ayore back in 1943 when they were first trying to contact the group. For those who are interested in more of the story you can read “God Planted Five Seeds” which details their experiences and what happened. The memorial was simple, a wooden cross mounted on a large limestone outcropping with a small plaque next to it. It definitely makes you think about how much these missionaries gave up for the Ayoreos in order to reach them.

Toni Mercado, our team leader, working with some of the medical patients

Day 4: We awoke to find out that there was a bloqueo (blockade) on the other side of San Jose and that our chances of getting home this day were slim. So we took our time getting back to San Jose and took a little detour to a town called Chochis where there are super cool rock formations. We found a little sanctuary and hiked around a bit (well, they hiked, I walked on the paths). The views were beautiful and it was a lovely day. We eventually got back to San Jose and got another phone call that the bloqueo would be open for 2 hours, so we quickly scrambled back into our cars to head that direction, hoping to get through without problems. As we approached the bridge where the bloqueo was, we found only twigs as remnants of what had formerly been there. A long ride back and we were finally home again, again without any problems.

(View of "Devil's Tooth" in Chochis)

Overall, great trip. It was fun to spend time getting to know another Ayore community and seeing some of the historical areas of Bolivia where missionaries first were trying to contact the Ayore. It was great to spend time with our teammates, getting to know them better and doing service together. Lots of adventure, lots of uncertain moments, but through it all, God was present.

Thanks for your prayers as we went!

January Thaw, How the time flies

Jason as "George" and Jenna as "Sarah" in the play "January Thaw". 11 years ago this January we met in Dram Club for this play.

Jr/Sr (Prom) Jason's Senior year 2001. We we best friends at this point but still denied anything more than friendship.

So much for "just friends".

September 2007

Cowboys, Crocodilians, and Quicksand

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a western with the wide open space out here and people who stop by on horses. The other day a “cowboy” rode up looking for his lost horse. Unfortunately he was a day late. There was a horse wandering around our yard the day before but had moved on.

Other times it feels like something out of Indiana Jones when I take a hike around our landlord’s property and suddenly find the ground beneath me trying to make me a midday snack. I’ve run into “quick mud” before or sand that sinks relatively fast but this was the real deal quicksand. Everywhere I stepped the ground turned to liquid and so I could not backtrack, I had to find a new path. The faster I moved, the quicker the what felt like solid ground liquefied into a soupy mess. How to survive quicksand: Don’t run, you’ll only make the quicksand “quicker”. I feel like there is a moral in there somewhere.
And then there are Crocodile Dundee moments like Tuesday night when all the dogs were barking more intensely than usual. I went out to investigate only to find a hissing pair of glowing eyes in the bushes surrounded by the dogs. At first I thought it was a small wild cat but it turned out to be a Spectacled Caiman, a smaller relative to Crocodiles and Alligators. Those of you who know me know that of course I could not leave it alone. Soon I was traipsing up to the house to display my 5 foot Caiman to Jenna.

Quicksand, Caimans, Snakes in my seedling fruit trees, and tarantulas on the porch, it has been an adventure as usual. The new year promises to bring lots more exiting things, in addition, of course, having a little one around. Last weekend we had our team out to our house for a meeting to plan for this coming year. There are a lot of projects and ministries we hope to accomplish this year. Hopefully we can get the chicken project running smoothly and put in the nutrition garden for the children’s center early this year. We have several trips to the Beni (Amazonian part of Bolivia) where we will live on a boat going up and down various rivers to various communities to provide medical aid. Often times doctors, dentists, or church teams come down from North America to help out. Our big team dream is to find a plot of land for a camp that would eventually be converted into a bi-vocational (Bible and other vocational options) training center for indigenous peoples of Bolivia, provided funds become available. I cannot wait to see some of out plans become reality as well as experience the realities we did not plan on.

The SAM Bolivia Team at Conference

Back to Santa Cruz

After only a few days in our new home out near Pailon, we had to move back to Santa Cruz. Well, not really, but we spent 5 nights back near Santa Cruz which is as long as we have been at our new house. We went back for conference, a week long retreat where all the SAM missionaries get together to get away. I am not sure we were quite ready to "get away" after just moving but we really enjoyed conference. Jenna led worship and I just sat back and enjoyed the retreat, well that and led a nature hike. I think I turned all the kids into little naturalists.

As for our new home, we are loving it. We were enjoying settling in, getting to know our neigbors, and watching Simon make friends with our landlord's dogs and chasing cows around our backyard. Below are some photos of our new place.

Dining Room

Our Bedroom

Soon to be baby nursery

Living room

Kitchen

Christmas Time = Weigner Family Moving Time

Christmas Day 2009

Jenna at 23 weeks pregnant

Yes! It's that time of year again! Christmas has come and gone and again we find ourselves moving. We have moved for the last 3 years the week between Christmas and New Years, and it's beginning to feel like a family tradition. We have been married a little over 2 years, this is our 3rd country we've lived in and we just moved into our 7th house! We are definitely ready to settle down for a little while- like a year and a half.

Christmas was great this year. The week before Christmas we attended several Christmas dinner parties where I accompanied a trumpet player from our mission as the evening's entertainment. We also were able to attend a Christmas Eve service at the English speaking church in town. I sang "Breath of Heaven"- which seemed very appropriate since I'm is getting bigger day by day. We opted to head home after the service for a quiet evening- which was interrupted by a very interesting Bolivian tradition of fireworks starting at about 8pm and reaching its crescendo at midnight. Imagine the biggest 4th of July fireworks display you have ever seen and multiply that by about 4 and that was what we saw and experienced at midnight on Christmas Eve. Everyone in the city buys fireworks and sets them off from their yards, filling the air with the smell of smoke and making it sound like a warzone. It certainly was not a "silent night", but it was fun to see that many fireworks.

As I mentioned before we just moved into our 7th house of our marriage. We will post more pictures soon. We are now living much closer to our ministry site, Poza Verde, and are about 1.5 hours from Santa Cruz. The house we are living in is owned by another missionary family that has to live in the city for now since their kids are in school. We are also located next door (about 400m) from a Trans-World Radio station where we have lovely neighbors who have already made us feel at home. The house is beautiful, in a great location and it is wonderful to be back to country living. We have a cow pasture behind our house and the occasional smells remind us of central Pennsylvania in the summer, not to mention being surrounded by lots of Mennonites who speak only German or spanish.
We have been greeted in German several times now, and I'm wishing I had paid more attention to my Grandfather when he tried to teach me a few basic German phrases. Spanish works as a nice intermediary for communication.





I think thats it for now. Stay posted for more pictures- coming soon! (After we get our internet set up in our house!)

Like a chicken with its head cut off

The dirty deed is done. We butchered the 120 chickens out in Poza Verde. After two days of butchering, everything smells like chicken. It may be a while before I can even look at anything made from chicken.

Paul and Bubba plucking Chickens. This was by far the longest part of the process.

The first day, three of use SAM missionaries went out to help. It took us 3 gringos along with Cesar and Mirta 5 hours to finish 40 chickens. It must have been amusing watching we three Gringos try to butcher chickens. I have only butchered a few at ECHO, Paul did it a few times in Peru many years ago, and Bubba had only researched chicken butchering online. We all had our "unique" ways of getting the job done. Finally Cesar showed us how it was done while a unified, drawn out "ohhhh" escaped our lips at the revelation of a simpler and more effective way. A few times over the course of the day, some of the Ayore children joined us to watch and snack on chicken blood and feet. Yes, you read correctly.

Gusto, one of the Ayore kids snacking on a chicken foot.

On day two, Bubba and I made our way our to Poza Verde dreading the 80 more chickens especially since we were down a man. To our relief, this time the community was involved and already a good portion of the way through. Not only did the increase in numbers speed up the process, but exchanging Gringos for Ayore women who are accustom to plucking and cleaning chickens increased our efficiency. We finished the last chicken around lunch time and all the Ayore who help were rewarded with the chicken innards. Now all that is left is to sell the chickens which has not been too hard, most are already spoken for. All the profits will go to Cesar and Mirta and their work in Poza Verde. I think we unanimously agree that we will be switching to raising chickens for eggs rather than for meat.

Gusto roasting his chicken foot

Election Day: Trapped!

So you have probably had school canceled, work canceled, maybe even had your city shut down, but how about your whole country? Today is election day, and for 24 hours, everything is shut down. Alcohol, meeting in groups (including church), and driving vehicles are all banned for the 24 hour period. There is nothing to do but hang out at home or go out and vote.

As you probably guessed, elections are a big deal here. The differences in political parties here make the Democrats and Republicans look like best friends. Whatever the outcome could mean large changes for the country. We personally do not know enough about the politics to presume to know what result would be best for the people of Bolivia. We can only pray for the best.