Hola. Hola. Hola!

Hola! Hola! Hola!

It´s very hot here right now! We went to the river yesterday for about 4 hours. Beautiful! The currents were really strong and we got caught a couple times. Interesting scary fun time! :)

The constitution passed (I heard 60-40 percent) Who knows how long till things start changing. Could be a year, could be right away. Bolivia is very unorganized so they are not sure. Everyone at the mission has a lot of faith about the situation. It's encouraging to see how they are trusting God even though they are unsure of what is ahead. I'm reading Trusting God byJerry Bridges right now and am learning that trusting is just as important as obeying. "Yet it is just as important to trust God as it is to obey Him. When we disobey God we defy His authority and despise His holiness. When we fail to trust God we doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness. In both cases we cast aspersions upon His majesty and His character. God views our distrust of Him as seriously as He views our disobedience." Please continue to pray for this change in Bolivia!

Kids Camp during afternoon games.

Aww

I have been praying for vision for this trip and areas I can serve while here. God answers prayers! Angela just asked me to teach an English class to about 10 students (13-17 years old) Class will be twice a week and start next Tuesday. I´m really excited. It will help me learn Spanish and I will get to know the youth better. Everyone wants to learn English here. They also asked me to play the keyboard for the church service. I'm a little rusty (haha) but they don´t expect much. They only have Guido leading worship on the guitar right now. They have a real desire for the church to grow in worship! They would love to see the congregation more involved. They want it to be more than going through the songs.

This is Joas. :)

Sunday afternoon we went to the river to swim. I come outside to find the front seat of the Land Rover empty. They want me to sit up front so I can take over driving if I need to. If I need to?? Come to find out Guido doesn´t know how to drive. He´s only driven once and doesn't really have his license (shh ;). I'm not sure how many of you know the roads here but there isn't a lot of room mistakes!! Unfortunately (!) I don´t know how to drive stick so I couldn't help. It made for a hysterical drive to and from the river. We stalled numerous times, almost ran over several cows, and took about 15 minutes to figure out why several warning lights came on. We almost reversed too far off the side. I could only laugh but I was so scared. Mom and Dad, I am totally fine and safe here! ;)

Lovely little bug that I woke up to the other day!! (not funny)

Everyone at the mission cooks lunch once a week for everyone. They asked me to cook today so I made calzones. It's very different cooking here! We went to the market to get all the ingredients. We went to the butcher shop, the cheese stand, and the fruit and vegetable market. A trip to the market is not complete without talking to everyone you know. After about an hour and a half we got back to the mission. The calzones turned out great! Everyone liked them. Thanks Lydia for the recipe!! **By the way, my sister Lydia made this blog for me. Isn't she awesome! It's really nice to have a way to let you guys know what's going on over here. And it's so nice to hear from you! Thanks for the comments!** What I didn't know was that the word calzone is very close to the word underwear in Spanish. They were getting confused. I was trying to explain that it is full of different ingredients. So until Angela explained, they thought we were having underwear full of ingredients?!...

Tomorrow morning we are going to Potreillos, a village 6 hours away by bus. There are six of us going. We will be putting on a Vacation Bible School for the kids. We'll be gone till Saturday. It will be challenging. No electricity, no bathrooms, no clean water. Please pray for the kids hearing the gospel through puppets, Bible stories and crafts!

Miss you all and hope you are doing well!

Love, Julia

One day at a time!

Hola! :)

One day at a time. That´s something I tell myself very often! If I worry about tomorrow or the next couple months I miss what the Lord wants me to do TODAY. It's helped a lot!

Last night Angela, Macedonia (Geto´s wife. Geto is one of the Pastors here. They have a 4 month old son who is adorable.) and I talked for a long time. It was so encouraging being able to get to know Maci better. She is in her late 20's and is really sweet and fun to be around. We talked about Bolivians, the culture, how people think here, the youth, how the kids camp went, etc. I learned a lot more about the people here in Entre Rios. It helps me understand them more and helps me in how to pray for them. We were talking about some of the kids that came to the camp from some of the more remote villages (Las Abras, San Josicito). There is such a difference in how they act from the "city kids." They are almost expressionless. Maci said it's because they do not receive affection at home from their parents. It was so sad. We tried to love on them as much as we could. Some of them broke down because they have never felt loved. Wednesday night we took all the kids to the midweek church service. There is something about hearing Bolivian kids sing worship songs. Gets me like nothing else. :)

*side note* Sorry if my writing is hard to understand. I´m sure my mom and sisters are cringing at my grammar and how I am writing :). For one, it actually feels weird writing in English. I am constantly surrounded by Spanish. Two, I don't have a lot of time so I'm writing pretty fast. I hope you can understand what I am trying to say and this goes for all my posts to come. Oh, and for some reason the spell check isn´t working. SO sorry about that. :)

This morning Angela and I went into town to buy things to make pancakes. In America we would call what we made ...oh man, I just forgot. Pancakes are thick compared to what we made. The ones we made were thin and we rolled homemade peach jam in them. Crapes? Lol I know I spelled that wrong.

Angela and I just washed our clothes. They wash them by hand in a tub and them hang them on the line to dry. It took about an hour. I enjoyed it.

I think were going to go to the river today. It's the thing to do here this time of year. The water is clean, and people go swimming in it. I think we are going to go with Abby and Joas :) :).

Tonight we are going to try and make tacos and burritos! YES!!!!!! I'm bringing the Mexican to Bolivia ;). We have had rice, potatoes and chicken every meal. During the kids camp, that's all they make because it is simple to make in bulk. I have peeled so many potatoes and onions, oh my. I haven't really had an appetite this past week, but I am making myself eat because I don´t want to get sick. Everyone in the kitchen was laughing at me because while I was cutting the onions, tears were streaming down my face. I couldn't stop them. Then they tried talking to me in Spanish and I was trying to understand and respond while I couldn´t see. It was pretty funny.
Can you please lift up the following two things in prayer? One is huge, and the other is very small. The first would be a new constitution that will be voted on *this* Sunday. Pepe just preached to the congregation about it, telling them to vote NO on it. It would change a lot of things here in Bolivia, making it a lot more like Cuba. Some of the things it will change: Right now, Catholicism is the official religion in Bolivia. They teach it to the kids in school. The constitution will take that away and make the official religion one derived from the Incas. If the constitution passes, it will probably prohibit going to villages and preaching. This would be forcing religion. The mission goes to about 7 different villages, so I'm not sure what it would look like. It would legalize abortion (Even though it is illegal right now, a lot of abortions take place here by witch doctors). It would legalize homosexuality. It would recognize 12 year olds and up as "adults" (mainly for sexual choices). They can do whatever they want, they do not have to listen to their parents. You can only imagine... Angela said the effects probably won't be seen for a couple years but it would be a huge step in the wrong direction. She said just like the vote for the president, even though the majority might vote no, it might be rigged. Please be in prayer!! This is HUGE for Bolivia!

The second thing, it seems so small but I´m going to ask anyway. I have really bad bug bites. They are huge (like welts)! I can handle the pain, it's not that bad but they are definitely uncomfortable. Please pray they would go away quickly and that I would not be stupid and put bug spray on in the future! ;) Thanks!!

Love you all.
Miss you,
Julia

P.S. I will post pictures soon.

*Kids Camp*

Hola from Entre Rios,

It's been a long week. This has been the biggest kids camp yet! All the kids from all the villages were able to come even though the road from Tarija fell because of the rain. The last several days have consisted of getting up at 6:15 and going down to the basketball court. All the kids get there at 6:30 and we have half an hour of excersize. The goal is to tire them out... They have so much energy! We then eat breakfast, have worship time, a teaching, a snack, another teaching, lunch, workshops, games outside, dinner, family time and bed at 10:30pm.

At the start of the camp all the kids were split into families. Families do everything together. We have 20 kids in our family, 10 girls and 10 boys. Each family will present a drama on Thursday to end the camp. Ours is about the Parable of the Sower found in Matthew 13. I made construction paper "costumes" for the kids. We have flowers, plants, thorns, birds, and the sower. The kids seem to be having a blast.

To be honest, living this trip to the fullest is a lot harder than I thought. I have had to fight for joy. Please pray for me! I miss you all a lot! Until next time...

Chao!

Julia

Julia's in Bolivia!

Hey friends,

This is Virginia, Julia's mom. She called yesterday and sounded great! For some reason she couldn't log on to this blog from the Internet cafe, so she e-mailed me the following update just a little bit ago.

I also put a post on my own blog about her trip, which you can find here: To Bolivia With Love. It has some pictures from her last trip and a poem that I wrote for her the day she left.

Thanks for praying for her!

Here's Julia!

~~~

I miss you guys! I´m safe in Entre Rios. It was a very long ride from Santa Cruz. We got in around midnight on Saturday. I had a one year old on my lap most of the time. :). He didn’t exactly smell like a fresh baby but after a while I got over it.

The kids’ camp starts today and goes till Thursday. The major road from Tarija fell because of the rain so the kids from three villages will not be able to get here today. We don’t know if they will come at all. I´m in charge of P.E. at 6:30 in the morning (lol) and I´m a "mommy" for one of the families of kids. I´m also in charge of getting the kids ready and putting them to bed at night. It should be a busy full week! Please pray that we don’t become tired and pray that a lot of kids will be able to come even with the road down.

I´m picking up lots of Spanish! I can´t believe I am here for three months. It seems so long. Hopefully once I get more in the rhythm of things it will go by faster. It´s a big culture shock being here alone without a team. E-mail is much cheaper than the phone so I will be e-mailing you all most of the time. I hope you all are doing well.

Well, 21 kids from La Vilca just arrived at the mission. The two cooks from one of the villages aren’t able to come because of the road, so Angela and I are going to cook for all the kids. I’m going to be a pro at peeling and dicing potatoes and onions. :)

OK, I’m heading back to the mission. I miss you all and thanks for the prayers.

Julia

Just wanted to give you a couple of pictures!

Just wanted to give you a couple pictures of where I am going... <3

Here we GO!

*Well, I'm off today to Entre Rios Bolivia for 3 months! I fly out of Miami tonight and arrive in Santa Cruz Bolivia tomorrow morning around 9am. Then comes the 10 hour bus ride to Entre Rios, the place I will call home for the next several months. I am SO so so excited. I cannot wait to see everyone at the mission and hold the kids. :) I cannot wait to get off the plane...the feeling is indescribable. The smell, the people, the mountains, everything.

I'm not much of a blogger or writer for that matter, but I'm going to try and update every now and then letting y'all know what I'm doing and I'm sure there will be lots of prayer requests. :) I'm going to try and post some pictures too.

I just want to say thank you to all of you who have prayed with me, come up to me with encouraging words, donated stuff for the garage sale, slipped money into my hand, cried with me, and listened for hours/days/months of me talking about this trip, writing me letters to take ;)... YOU ALL ARE A BLESSING and I thank God for you SO MUCH!

Here are some prayer requests:

*Travel Safety*

Pray everything will go smoothly (flights, luggage, customs, VISA, ride to Entre Rios)

*Kids Camp*

This is an annual camp held at the Mission in Entre Rios where all the kids come from all the little villages and stay at the mission for a week of games, crafts, Bible school, etc. This starts Monday the 19th. Pretty much a dream. 100+ Bolivian kids staying at the mission. :) :) Pray for safety of the kids coming to Entre Rios. I lot of them hike by themselves. Pray that this week I would not get sick, have lots of energy, and pick up Spanish!!*

Well, I don't know what I'm getting into, but my intent is to live it to the fullest! I want to live like them for these 3 months. I don't want try and live in comfort there, I want to be open to what the Lord wants me to step out and do. It's ok if I have dirt on my jeans, no make up on, interesting food to eat, bug bites, etc ;) One of my favorite quotes is by Jim Elliot...
"Wherever you go, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

Here we go...;)

Love,
Julia

P.S. I would love to hear from you! juliagraceknowles@gmail.com