A look at our life overseas

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Sunflower Harvest

This past weekend I spent out in Poza Verde, one of the Ayore settlements. The mission cultivates a field out there. In order to keep the land, a certain percentage has to be productive. Sunflowers were the crop of choice this round and were ready to harvest. We hired a group to harvest the field and we got 25 tons of seeds. Now we are praying the global price of sunflower seed will go up in the next few weeks.
The money made will go to the ministry with the Ayore. This has been a successful way to meet the productivity laws, but is dependent on the mission. Ideally we would like to come up with agricultural projects that the Ayore can sustain on their own. This will be one of the main goals of my work.

Ayore kids playing in the sunflower field

Hired harvesters
Ayore kids playing in the harvested seed

Mission Impossible: Bolivia

The next two years of our lives packed into 4 check bags and 2 carry-ons

Two years of preparation and now we are finally here in Bolivia, but it almost did not happen. At the end of our two weeks in the states, after a great last few days with family, we visited the SAM office where our passports and visas were supposed to meet us. Thanks to a series of delays, the passports did not make it to South Carolina in time. So we tried re-routing them to Baltimore to meet us at a friends house the day we were to leave.

Eating Breakfast on the sidewalk in Baltimore, waiting for UPS to deliver our passports.

Over breakfast, we got the call that our passports were still in South Carolina

Turns out our passports got stuck in South Carolina. We tried delaying our tickets a day or two only to find out the next flight with open seats was not until Sept. 22nd.

A couple long hours at the airport trying to come up with a new plan

Lunch at Natcho Mama's while waiting for Sue to fly in with our passports

Back at the airport waiting for the passports to arrive

In one last ditch effort, Sue, from our office, intercepted the package at the UPS warehouse in South Carolina, hopped on the next flight to Baltimore, handed the package off to our friend Matt who was waiting to run it to us at the American Air desk. He delivered it to us just in time to check in, with 10 minutes to spare! Once we were on the plane, the rest of the trip was smooth. We were so focused on just getting on the plane that it was not until I was in my seat buckling in that it hit me, WE'RE MOVING TO BOLIVIA!

Agent Matteo running 'the package" (our passports) through the airport

So now we are adjusting to life here. So far we really like it. Basically we've been spending our time in meetings, getting to know the people we'll be working with, and getting oriented to the area. We did take one trip out to Poza Verde, one of the villages I'll be spending a lot of my time. They have a large crop of sunflowers that our team has been helping them grow and will probably we ready for harvest this week. I have been brainstorming with the team on lots of interesting potential projects. It is exciting to see how many opportunities there are here to use my interests and training.