*Due to internet issues, I was not able to add photos. I will try again later but for now you can see photos from this trip at: http://picasaweb.google.com/JayWeigner/OrangeHillTeamJune2010?feat=directlink *
This past week a team from a church in Georgia came down to work with our team. The first night they spent out our house before the 28 of us made the long journey out to the communities we were going to work with. Our first stop was San Jose, a painful 6.5 hours from our house down red rock roads that resembled the surface of Mars and roads covered in dust as fine as flour that envelope our car and clogged our lungs. More than once I had to use the windshield wipers for dust rather than rain. At one point several vehicles blocked the road and some guy mentioned we could not pass and used some word I did not understand. When the road in front of us suddenly exploded in a cloud of dust and rock, and the concussion rocked out car I realized the guy had said "dinamita" or in English "dynamite".
We spent the night in San Jose, after working out some double booking issues at the hotel, and then went to the village of FUA in the forest outside of San Jose. FUA is a community of Ayoreos who wanted to get their kids away from the influences of drugs and prostitution that are common in other Ayoreo communities. We spent the day visiting with the Ayoreos, conducting a medical clinic, a VBS for the kids, and constructing a rain water catchment system on the roof of the school and church to help alleviate some of the water problems in the community. We are hoping that a well will soon be dug in the community.
After our time in FUA, we moved on to Santiago (Bolivia not Chile), a small town in the middle of nowhere which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places on Earth. The road out to Santiago was nothing like there previous trip, it was actually a real highway! To wonderful hours on a smooth highway with painted line, rumble strips, guard rails, real road signs, and reflectors, then a short dirt road and we were to Santiago. Why there is such a beautiful highway out in the middle of nowhere and then such awful roads between major cities I will never know. One the way we stopped at a hot spring and had a baptism for one missionary family's 3 kids.
Santiago is a clean, quiet little town at the base of a fantastic plateau system. There is even a small orchestra in the town that put on a little concert for us. We spent the next few days working on building an extension on the back of the church and conducting several VBS and adult services. Noah did just fine with all the traveling and picked up another grandmother along the way. One of the ladies on the team snatched him up and hardly let go until she had to go back to the states. The extra set of willing arms was a real blessing on this trip since it freed us up a bit more.
Over all, the trip went smoothly, that is until the return trip. Both our car and one of the other trucks began to overheat. The truck was leaking oil like water from a faucet. We had to buy 4 or 5 four liter containers of oil to pour into the truck every hour and managed to limp it home. Our car was not so fortunate. It sprung several leaks in the radiator system and blew a head gasket (or something like that, can you tell I'm not a mechanic?). The bleeding truck towed our car the 2 hours back to San Jose where we found a mechanic who is currently still working on it. Since we were down a vehicle, we had to send some of the group back by train while the others squeezed into the remaining cars. I was going to go back by train and pick up my car this week, but today I found out that our Beni river trip was moved up to TOMORROW and so someone else will have to pick it up for us. Today we spent franticly packing and preparing for our river trip. Always the adventure!
For more photos from this trip, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/JayWeigner/OrangeHillTeamJune2010?feat=directlink
