Reality Reality Reality

Reality Reality Reality

Intro:

I have been at Familia Feliz for 3 weeks now. One of the main aspects of life I have learned to deal with is the fact that reality hits you harder every day. I expected this to be a tough experience and that I would have a difficult time adapting to life at an orphanage in a foreign country. However, I had no idea what it would be like to truly mean something to the kids I am taking care of. I am pretty sure everyone that is reading this has an idea of what life is like here. Seeing pictures and hearing stories give a semi-clear picture of what missionaries do on a regular basis. However, experiencing all of this first-hand has made me realize the importance of places like Familia Feliz.

Reality Strikes:

At the moment, I am the parent of 13 boys. They look to me for advice, for encouragement, for food, and for every duty that a parent must provide for a child. Yet just 4 weeks ago I was a college student who looked for the same things from my own parents during the summer. How do you survive suddenly having all of that responsibility dumped on you? Quick answer… Jesus.

Jesus is an absolute necessity. Every single day God shows up for Familia Feliz. I can see him working in nearly every aspect of my everyday life. He works in the healthy and the sick. He works in the volunteer and the visitor. He works in our days off and the nights on. He works in school and in the home. He works in the games we play and in the jobs we do. He works in these kids and He works in me. God is obvious here. Its impossible to ignore him.

However, with all the happiness God has blessed Familia Feliz with, the Devil sure seems to take note. These kids have had nothing close to a normal life. Some are sent here by Social Services and some are simply unwanted by any members of their family. Kids come here all of the time. In my first three days of being here, we got 5 new kids. A 3 month old, a 9 month old, a 4 year old, a 9 year old, and a 14 year old. The 14 year old was the mom of the 3 month and 9 month old. Their caretaker passed away and they simply had nowhere to go. Imagine that? Five kids all under 15 years old with NOWHERE to go. The thought of that makes me sick. The extremely harsh reality of this situation is that if Familia Feliz was not here, they would likely be on the streets, dead or even in some sort of sex trade. What every child has gone through to end up at our Familia Feliz hurts my head to comprehend. Stories like this are common here. The Devil wants these kids so bad and he makes it obvious too.

What I have been most thankful for is that we have a God who fights harder then the Devil knows how. All of these kids are smiling and playing. All of these kids are getting an education and staying busy. All of these kids have food on their plates and a bed to sleep in. All of these kids are loved by their current "parents" and all of these kids are learning that JESUS loves them. Reality is that we will be okay no matter what the Devil throws at us. We know that Jesus will protect our Familia Feliz.

Adapting:

Standard of living -

It is hard to comprehend what we are doing here because I am used to such a different standard of living. Back home we use things like hot water, electricity, computers, phones, cars, entertainment, toys, and basic groceries like ketchup and mayo like it's nothing. Meanwhile here, they are all luxuries that only the most privileged get the opportunity to have. Looming in the back of my mind is a simple question. “Do they know what its like where I come from?” I am constantly wondering if they know that all of the "luxuries" that are a privilege to experience here are average things at home.

Being a "dad" -

The title “house-parent” is exactly what it sounds like. My every day responsibility is to ensure that 13 boys get to school, maintain a reasonable amount of responsibility, and of course eat. To say the least…my respect for parents was already pretty high, now it’s through the roof. Not only are these kids in need of parents and someone to look up to, they are in need of respectful and considerate discipline. Many of them did not grow up in a house with any discipline or their experience with discipline goes far beyond what anyone should ever do. This makes it extremely difficult to maintain order in the house at times. Not to mention that I don’t speak their language, so much of what I say to them is through body language. I try my best to be calm and thoughtful when having a serious conversation(/google translate session) because I don’t want these boys to think I'm here to push them away.

These boys seek a sense of normality. Even though they may not know what that looks like, they are aware that we are part of achieving that goal. One night we were all sitting at the dinner table and my kitchen buddy Ivan asked me a question. He said, “Teacher, Vienes de una familia feliz?” I had no idea what he said so I typed it into google translate as I usually do. I thought he was asking how I got here or what I am doing after I leave. Then I realized all 13 sets of eyes were staring straight at me with an intense gaze. I pressed enter and read, “Do you come from a happy family?” My heart sank. He wanted to know if I was like him, or if I was what he wanted to be. I said “Si, yo vienen una familia Feliz.” (in very broken Spanish) and all the boys smiled and continued on to ask me many questions about my Dad, Mom, Brother and any other information they could get their hands on. They CRAVE anything normal, even though I may not always see it.

My House:

My home is Los Guerreros de Dios (The warriors of God). We currently have 13 boys ages 5-14. These boys are incredible in every way…and sometimes difficult to deal with. But I'm working on it! We have everything you need in a home. A working kitchen, a table, benches, beds and a refrigerator! Listed below are all of my boys in our house. Please keep each of them in your prayers as we continue to learn to undertested each other.

Leonardo (5 y/o)

Otto (5 y/o)

Joel (6 y/o)

Josa Elias (6 y/o)

Daniel (10 y/o)

Leonel (12 y/o)

Yhostin (12 y/o)

Zacarias (13 y/o)

Carlos (13 y/o)

Luis (13 y/o)

Roger (13 y/o)

 Ivan (13 y/o)

Ricardo (14 y/o

Currently these boys mean everything to me. I'm so happy that I can be a part of their lives.

Like any parent, life is busy…like very busy. So, here is a rough schedule of my day.

5:30 – Wake up

5:45 – Personal worship

6:00 – Start breakfast

6:15 – Wake up the boys

6:30 – Group worship

6:45 – Oficios (Chores)

7:30 – Breakfast (yea, it takes that long)

8:00 – School

8:00-10:00 – Cleanup and help campus

10:00 – Start Lunch

10:30 – Kindergarteners come back

12:00 – Lunch

1:00 – Oficios

2:00 – Work around campus

4:00 – Supervision time! (break of sorts)

5:00 – Start dinner

6:00 – Kids back from soccer/Start showers

7:00 – Dinner

8:00 – Evening worship

8:30 – Kids bed time

9:00 – Prep for next day

10:00-12:00 – Real bed time

Repeat the next day :)

Yes, that is a lot of stuff to do in a day. It is exactly what I signed up for. I did not want an easy year of simplicity and contentment. I wanted a challenge, and a challenge is what I got!

Cooking for 17…usually:

As my Mom would say…I'm a chef…at least when it comes to scrambled eggs and throwing some veggie meat in the microwave. Cooking here is a little bit different then that. I’ve found that these kids eat with their eyes instead of their brains and that they are in fact picky eaters. So, becoming a master chef for 13 hungry boys has been a challenge of its own. However, when you have to cook good food from picky eaters, you pick up the skill quick. One night I spent 3 hours cooking mashed potatoes, cabbage, merinesas and a salad. Turns out…the kids don’t like raw carrots in salads and quite a bit of my salad ended up on the floor. I felt like it ruined my whole evening and was nearly impossible to recover.

*note* I say 17 because we regularly have visitors from other houses eat at our home.

Thankfully, I have room for error. When cooking for 17, you can add WAY too much salt to something and still magically fix it. Especially when your co-parent Zoro is an incredible chef. Like all kids, the boys here LOVE sugar. If I put sugar in anything, they are sure to love it. However, we work on rations. The big house distributes groceries to the smaller houses every week and we have what we are given to work with. So it is a constant game of “will we have it?” To say the least…I have rather shocked myself with many of the meals I have prepared. It seems like the boys now look forward to me cooking instead of staring at their plates. *"Staring at plates" only happened one time and it terrified me…I will make sure that never happens again.*

Germs don’t exist:

Germs of course exist…to us. Not the kids. Maybe this is how all kids are? But I for sure have never seen it. Asi (Soap) is one of those luxuries I was talking about earlier. For dishes and silverware, we do not use soap. However, if we’re lucky, we will use Asi to clean our pots and pans. But that’s not always the case.

They also have a drink called Upi here. I would call it glorified coolaid, and its delicious. However, the way you get Upi in a cup is simply dunking your unwashed hand in the bucked full of the drink. This was surprising at first, but now I crave some Upi at lunch time. You may ask, why don’t you try to fix that? Simply put, it’s a cultural thing. The last thing we want to do during our time here is take cultural joy away from these kids. “Fixing” something we may not be fond of would be more damaging then leaving it be.

Internet and Money –

Wow. Bolivian internet hit me hard too. Anything you try to do will hardly load between the hours of 9am and 8pm. But hey, if you happen to hop online at 3am your speeds are CRAZY! Five bars of 3G. Such a happy moment. I had planned on uploading blogs and vlogs all the time. However, information regularly doesn’t save and my progress is lost on many projects I start. This makes it very difficult to keep a consistent uploading schedule for blogs and Facebook posts.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of this has been my YouTube channel. If you know me well, you are aware that I love to document what is happening via videos. I have a YouTube channel but am realizing it is near impossible to upload any size video to the internet. I spent 9 hours attempting to upload a video last week and the whole day today with no success.

The bright side of this is that I do have full access to WhatsApp calling and messaging. I can message as much as I want to and have sustained calls on campus for anywhere from 3-30 minutes before disconnecting. I will say…time with no internet is nice. I enjoy all the peace I seem to have when it is not working. However, when your brother proposes to girlfriend and you can’t see pictures or videos of it…its very discouraging.

Finally, money. Today I realized that the ATM’s in town that give a good exchange rate do not accept my MasterCard branded debit card. This means that I currently have no way to take money directly from my bank account. As I said, reality seems to hit hard every day. Please pray that a simple solution to this problem is found, because we want our kids to feel special. It is difficult to provide for them with little to no money. I now God will provide a way.

While reality is hard, I am beyond thankful for everything I have had the opportunity to experience here. Working at the hands and feet of Jesus is the most fulfilling thing someone can do. When you see that work happening in front of you, it is life changing. Thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement. We as missionaries appreciate it more then you know.

Pictures of the last few weeks:

Play time after church on Sabbath

Jose Elias (left), Otto (middle), Leonardo (right) showing their typical emotions!

I find that Leonardo always ends up being carried around by one of us.

Sierra and I a couple days before she leave us with Joel on my shoulders :(

(She was here all last year so she has an excuse)

Brinlee loves to be held.

Sean and my legs are like walking tree trunks.

On the first sabbath all of the little ones wanted to meet us and know if we were willing to sing hymns with them or not.

Our current Student Missionaries on the first sabbath!

Beth, Zoro, Danel, Collin, Sean, Lisianne, Victoria, Ally

Delivery of plantains to Recardo.

Little buddy Leonardo showing me his Cigarra(cicada)

Casual campus Mccaw

Rojer doing his chores.

Our church before the repairs were made. A tree fell on it back in July.

Sierra and Sean at the store down the road with the kids.

Hermana Ruth's family with their home in the background. We're trying to fundraise to make it better!  She is one of the workers here at Familia Feliz.

Leonardo showed me his sandal and this is what I saw... We fixed it as soon as possible.

Azul the Mccaw likes me :)

Meal time rush to get to the start of the line.

The boys are very fascinated by Sean's medicine.

Cooking buddy Leonardo! He comes back from school an hour and a half earlier then the others, so we have quite a bit of time together. Thankfully he has 2 friends that live with us now so I am not his only entertainment.

3rd of MANY taranchulas.

First time making Arepas.

Carlo, Yhostine and Ivan excited for beans and rice!

First time doing laundry.

Pasta dump. Burned my hands too...

The meal still turned out great! The red drink is Upi.

Ivan baking as usual.

Ally's house loves taking pictures.

More Leonardo time. The boys love the planes I brought.

Banana bread and hot chocolate is a regular around here.

The boys singing for church on Sabbath morning.

First coconut!

Trees are meant for climbing. Here is Otto, Yhostine and Jose Elias taking on this task.

Daniel and his kitten.

Sunday store time.

Carlo, Yhostine, Luis, Ricardo

Movie night requires popcorn. And Beth baking in the background.

Chacho playing with Azul.

Arepas are a lot easier then I thought they would be.

Yhostine and his chicken.

I must filter water to drink anything and Leonardo loves to do it for me! Look at that smile.

First day off and first meal in 3 weeks that I didn't make for myself.

Sean and I in a Torito.

Coconuts must be cut. (Sorry mom)

The boys enjoy watching what happens across the river.

Carlo, Luis, Roger, Ricardo, Daniel, Joel, Leonel, Zacariah.

Our walk to the store.

Coconuts with Charlie

Otto trying to jump on my shoulders from the stairs.

Sunsets can be incredible.

Made Alfredo sauce and it turned out far better then I expected.

Banana hunting

Merinesas with Api, bread and a salad. The kids love this meal.

Sean in action.

Clinic set up!

Zoro's shelf fell in our room... broke all his glass stuff.

Writing this blog at hotel Takana.

View from Rurrenabaque, the town about 10 miles from Familia Feliz.

End:

I'd like to close with a short story. There was 2 nights in a row where everything that could possibly go wrong...went wrong. I had no time to pray, no time to sit, and no time to think. I put the kids to bed, but little Leonardo would not stop crying in his sleep. I sat with him and sang to him until he settled. As soon as he did I ran outside to take a breath and cool down before entering my home again. I walked back inside, hopped in the shower and stood under that freezing faucet. We all recommend songs to each other all the time. During that day Sierra mentioned a song for this very kind of situation. I queued up  "Desert Road" by Casting Crowns and listened to the lyrics. 

I don’t know where this is goin’

But I know who holds my hand

Its not the path I would have chosen

But I'll follow you till the end

Lord as long as I'm breathing

I will make your glory known

Even if it means I'm walkin’ on this desert road.

That night was a desert road I had not expected to walk on. I cried and thanked God for the peace he gave me. When my world felt upside down. He flipped it right back upright just from a few words in a song.    

Thank you for checking out this blog. It has turned into a sort of therapy to sit at Hotel Takana and write this. I am so happy to be here and have all of these experiences even though it can be tough. Stay tuned to see what else is happening down here at our Familia Feliz.

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28