Return to Urubichá

I recently had the opportunity to visit Urubichá again after almost 3 years.  When our ministry plans changed direction in 2013, I made a rather hasty exit -- packed up the Patrol, threw all my tools and gear in the trailer, and hit the road for Santa Cruz.  Although the transition to ministry at Etnos has been bittersweet at times, I haven't truly regretted that decision.

However, I was excited to go back for several reasons:

1.  Since I left, Emilio and Marlen have finished culture/language study and started writing chronological Bible lessons.  They have a small group of believers meeting in their patio each Sunday and have a kids' program on Saturdays.  I was eager to see and hear how things are going for them.
2.  Margarita joined the team about a year and a half ago, and Eliana moved out there in June.  The purpose of the trip was to evaluate their progress in the Guarayo language.  My role was to accompany Judy, our language consultant, and learn how to do evaluations, a natural extension of what I am already doing in the training center!
3.  My parents are here for a few months to visit us and help around Etnos and I was able to take them along.  They haven't spent much time out of the city on this side of the country, so it was a great opportunity to introduce them not only to a place so important to me as Urubichá, but all of the countryside along the 210 mile trip as well.

The Guarayos team (l-r): Eliana, Margarita, Esteban, Emilio, Ninoska, and Marlen

On the trip out to the village, it occurred to me that this was the first time I was going to Guarayo country without planning to live there.  That realization gave me the freedom to look at everything through different eyes and I found myself much more relaxed.  I definitely took a lot more photos (Click here to see 80 of the best).

We drove on Saturday and arrived just before the kids' program.  They were having a special game day to encourage more kids to come, and there were a ton!  The younger ones and the gals played board games while Emilio reffed a soccer tournament for the older boys.

On Sunday, we joined the group in the family's patio. Unfortunately, most of the congregation was at a big event at another, Spanish-speaking church in town.  Even so, we enjoyed our time and were treated to several Guarayo worship songs, a violin duet by Esteban and Ninoska, and Emilio teaching in Guarayo.

On Monday, the work started.  Judy and I spent a couple hours with Eliana that morning, asking her to do a variety of activities using the Guarayo words and phrases she knows.  Then, in the afternoon, we invited a bilingual Guarayo lady to come listen to the recordings and talk to us about how Eliana speaks.  We also visited a couple from the church, Hermenegildo and Matilde, to get their perspective.  She is doing great!

Judy, Eliana, and Rafaela

Urubichá is known for making the best hammocks in Bolivia. Matilde is finishing the one in the background.

On Tuesday, it was Margarita's turn!  She is also advancing very well!  She is fairly well conversational and speaks rather fluidly.

Judy, Margarita, and Esther

Of course, no trip to Urubichá would be complete without going to the baroque music institute!

A highlight for us was to find Esteban giving a violin lesson to a 5-year old student.

Behind the music institute, there is an artisan institute that offers woodcarving classes for the men and weaving, sewing, and needlework classes to the gals.

Guarayo men hand-carve wooden boxes to sell

Guarayo girls with their needlework samplers

Eliana is using the weaving institute as an opportunity to spend time with the ladies, building crucial relationships and listening to language as she weaves.  She recently started a new bag and showed us the process of setting up the vertical threads on the loom.

That evening, we spent some time on the plaza and stopped in to see the church and watch the Urubichá youth choir practice for the following night's performance.

The region's reliance on timber and woodcarving shines through, even in the Catholic church

On Wednesday, our final day in town, Judy and I spent some time talking over the results of the evaluations with the gals, giving them suggestions for how to continue improving in their studies.  We visited the Rio Blanco in the afternoon.

That evening, we went back to the plaza and joined a packed house for a performance by the choir.  They sang an amazing rendition of the Kyrie from Domenico Zipoli's Missa in F.

Our plan for Thursday was to take some final photos of the team and hit the road by 8:00am for the ~7 hour drive home.  We had been gone for 5 days already, and I was eager to be back with Kaylee and the girls.  We were also taking Eliana and Margarita back to Santa Cruz with us, for a missions conference that started that evening!

However, first thing that morning we got news that there was a big blockade in San Julian, a town about halfway home.  Apparently, the soy and sunflower growers were upset about prices, among other things, and applied Bolivia's normal form of protest:  block the highway until the government agrees to help.  I was unsure how to proceed -- whether we should stay another night and see if it died down, or go look for a way to go around.

Then Emilio got a phone call, in which he learned that a group in Urubichá was planning to block the highway in Ascención due to a timber dispute.  So we decided to get out of Dodge.

We drove as far as El Puente, home of Bolivia's nicest gas station (in my opinion). After fueling up, I asked about a way to get around San Julian and one of the old timers told me about a route that cut cross-country to Montero.  I have often wanted to find a way through there, so of course we decided to try it! :D

Lunch in Nucleo 29

It was an exciting, crazy drive through farm country on bumpy, dusty roads.  We had no map, no GPS (mine was stolen recently), no road signs, and for most of the journey, no cell coverage.  I lost track of how many times I stopped and asked people for directions.  We had to flip a couple of U-turns, but we never got truly lost and never got bad directions.

For me, the highlight of the trip was crossing the Rio Grande on a barge, my first time!

The AC conked out around noon, so the inside was just as dirty as the outside!  We made it home in 10.5 hours, hot, filthy and exhausted, with just enough time to shower, change, and grab a bite to eat before the conference started!!

I spent some time on Google Earth figuring out as much of the route that I could. Due to a recent, significant change in the course of the river, I was unable to complete the center section, but it gives the idea. :)

Celebration!

I'm not sure whether our circumstances have improved, or just our outlook, but either way, things are going much smoother than the last time I wrote.  However, please continue to pray for the staff of Etnos - there are lots of health issues right now!!  Colds, flus, dengue fever, and two ladies with broken arms within 5 days!  Anne said, "I guess I started something."

We have important reasons to celebrate this week!  We celebrated Kaylee's birthday yesterday.  It turned out well, although not at all like we had planned.  One of our coworkers fell and broke her arm at the wrist and Kaylee spent a good chunk of the afternoon helping with that situation.  All in God's plan, right?

Instead of a birthday cake, she got an apple fritter with a candle in it!

Our other reason to celebrate is that our friend Eliana, an Etnos alumna from La Paz, is moving to Urubichá today!  A new missionary moving into a village to begin ministry is always a reason to celebrate, but for Kaylee and I, this is doubly special.  Eliana is the first one of "our" students to make the leap of faith into indigenous ministry.  So as she begins studying to learn the Guarayo culture and language, she will be applying the things we have taught her.  Yikes!  We are excited to see how the Lord uses her.

Please pray for Eliana as she makes this transition and begins an exciting new adventure!

At the bus terminal, ready to go!

There and Back Again (Adventures on the Road)

Kaylee already posted about her thoughts and feeling regarding our trip to Urubichá, but we decided that we should also write about the trip itself, as it was very stressful (especially returning!).

We set out from Cochabamba on the 15th of February, headed for Santa Cruz.  It was an uneventful trip and we felt quite comfortable on the road, since we had been over the same 300 miles just five weeks earlier.

On the morning of the 17th, Kaylee and I said goodbye to our girls and my parents and got on the road to Urubichá.  The first 185 miles to Ascención de Guarayos is on one of Bolivia's major highways and is paved pretty well all the way.  Then you turn off the main road and go another 25 miles on dirt.

I recently purchased a GoPro camera and have had a lot of fun filming our latest driving adventures (more about that in this post, including the video of me getting the Patrol very stuck in a big mud hole).   Take a drive-through look at the town that is going to be our shopping headquarters and the first part of the drive to our future home:

There is a gas station in Ascención, but it didn't have any gasoline!  We had filled up in San Ramón, 150km back, but thanks to a wonky gas gauge, I thought we had less than a quarter tank left.  By the time we actually got out to Urubichá, it was reading empty.  According to our coworkers and the people in the village, the fuel truck would come on Tuesday (the day we planned to leave), but there would be a huge line of cars waiting and not all would get gas.  So we purchased 50 liters from a friend, enough to get us back to San Ramón.


Here's a video of Urubichá, taken as we left town:

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, other than never being sure about how much fuel we had and a couple of problems due to my international driver's license.

Uneventful, that is, until we reached Villa Tunari and were on the last leg of our trip home to Cochabamba.  We got about halfway up the very steep climb out of the lowlands and ran into a huge line of trucks, buses, and cars.  We weren't sure what was going on, so we decided to stay wait and see what happened.

During rainy season, that particular road is fraught with landslides and unstable areas.  When there is a problem, the truck traffic starts to get backed up and the little cars and even the coaches start to pass them, often packing up 3 lanes wide!  Even after the roadway is passable again, it takes forever to get the traffic mess untangled!


We waited for 2 hours and, since it was already 4pm, decided to turn around and find a place to spend the night in Villa Tunari.  The idea of spending the night on a mountain, in the car, with 3 little girls and limited food and water did not appeal to us.  This is what happened when we turned around:

Thankfully, I was able to get through to my brother on the cell and find out where they have stayed in the past.  We ended up in a very nice bungalow-style hotel with a great pool, a good restaurant, and nice rooms with AC.

The next day we tried again in the morning.  This time, we took a chance and followed some other cars up the wrong lane as far as we could.  We didn't even get to the same spot as the day before!  Kaylee asked a trucker how long he'd been there and he replied, "Since 3am!"  A police officer was coming through the traffic on his motorcycle, informing everyone what was going on and it didn't look promising, so we turned back, checked back into the hotel, and enjoyed another afternoon in the pool!

On Sunday morning, I went down to the roadside restaurants near the hotel and talked to several truckers about how the road was.  They all said that the problem was fixed for the time being and traffic was slowly making its way through.  Sure enough, we made it home, with no trouble!

We didn't know until later, but when we turned around on the second day, we were 14km (8.7 miles) from the actual problem!!  That's a lot of trucks!  This is what the situation looked like (click photo to enlarge):

The Village

This week Nathan and I took a trip out to the village where we hope to work in the future. We are so thankful that Nathan's parents were willing to watch the girls for us in the city while we traveled, especially so I could see everything without the additional stress of taking care of the girls in a situation that was really out of my control.

We left on Sunday morning and were able to stay two nights. My first reaction was very discouraging. I was overwhelmed and couldn't imagine myself making that move with our little family. When you arrive it is just so real. The pictures, the training, nothing could have prepared me for what really hit me that first night. The heat was almost unbearable, the bugs (mosquitos, chiggers, beetles, among others) were everywhere and everything is so different from anything I've ever known. Our training really did prepare us, don't get me wrong, but it's just so different in real life.

The "Laundry Room"

Me in the "Laundry Room" :)

This trip was really for me, to see and experience the village for the first time. (I didn't take very many new photos with how overwhelmed I was. . .and trying to take it in as it was, not through a lens.) We spent a lot of time talking with our future coworkers, a Bolivian couple with three children (one is now in the city at the university). They are pleasant people with a heart for their countrymen. It was good (and hard) to hear their stories from the past three years of living in the village. It has been quite difficult for them. The village is mostly Catholic (in an "old world" way) and most are not excited to see evangelical missionaries in the area, especially the nuns and priest.

The Catholic Church and grounds

We asked questions about housing and found that there really is nothing available, mostly land for building. We asked about groceries and found that we will be able to purchase dry goods in town but will have to travel an hour (on bad roads, see below) to get dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt) unless we want to purchase from the lady in town who sells fresh milk from her cow. :)  We would also need to make our own bread or purchase in the same town as the dairy products. All fresh fruits and vegetables are purchased in a town about 3 hours away (on our way in and out from Santa Cruz). We learned that the soil is good but because the fruits and vegetables are not natural to the area the people do not grow them. They do have grapefruit trees, mango trees, some lemon trees and a couple of different fruits (native to Bolivia that I don't know the name of!). They also grow corn and rice and fish in the local rivers (but the fish population is dwindling).

One of the fruit trees. The fruit grows on the bark.

The road to the village. It was full of washboards and potholes.

You can see a bit more depth to the potholes in this photo.

We walked around town, visited the music school, and stopped in at the nun's shop where she sells the work that the locals create (with materials provided by the Catholic church). The nun pays the locals for the work they did and then she sells the items with the profits going to the church. Their handwork is very well done. The men have wood working specialties that include making violins. The women specialize in weaving hammocks but also crochet, knit and embroider. There are classes available to learn the wood working and hand crafts for a very affordable price, about $3.00 a year. (You can read more and see examples of the handwork here.)

Lord willing, we would like to join our coworkers in this village. After a lot of time talking, praying constantly through out the day and getting past the initial shock I was able to get past my initial discouragement. I know that we can do it. It's going to be the hardest thing I have ever done but I know it's possible if I trust in our great God!

Progress!!

Kaylee and I both had language evaluations this week, to determine where we are at in the process of learning Spanish.  We are excited to let you know that we both advanced a level! 

Here's where we are at:

The language-learning process requires constant adjustment of expectations.  The higher you get on the scale, the more time it takes to reach the next level.

I also just uploaded a 4th video from my trip to Urubichá.  Even if you've seen the photos (in our last post), this may give you a better feel for the town:

Trip to Urubichá

Here's the link to the photos from the trip!  Click the gecko to go to the album and view the high-resolution photos, or just look at the slideshow below! 

Guarayos Trip, May 2012