Monday, 8/17

Our first World Vision day! Whoopee! Up for a lovely breakfast buffet at our hotel. The food here is very good. I especially loved the lake trout we got at Titicaca. Then our faithful Ivar showed up, loaded up our myriad pieces of luggage and took the short ride over to WV headquarters. All the bags were off loaded and now we are WV’s responsibility! We said our good-byes to Ivar and our excellent driver, Victor, and walked in the door to the singing of morning devotions! I was home! Even though all the words were in Spanish, the message came through and the love of God was there. We were introduced briefly and then the morning talk began. A man named George was our interpreter and will be with us all this week. He is delightful, of course. I have yet to meet a WV person overseas who is not practically perfect in every way. A man spoke on the woman touching the hem of Christ’s garment and being healed. He then made it practical – why don’t we reach out with faith for what we need from God?
After devotions, we remained in the same room for a sponsorship meeting. Again there were warm greetings and expressed joy that we were visiting. It always amazes me how welcome we are when it seems like the blessing is all on our part. Gifts of God for the people of God.
The meeting began and Wow were we unprepared for all we heard. All of our meetings are always so informative, but they gave an excellent presentation on the nuts and bolts of sponsorship and then shared a new program they are just breaking out. It is amazing. These beautiful small posters to help walk the children through discussion points to share with their sponsors but also for them to have – the story of their lives. There are themed flash cards of animals, occupations, family and so on to spark thoughts and writing. And the best thing about these was the quality of the art work. I would hang these on my wall! We were all just blown away. It is just a brilliant program. We then enjoyed a quick lunch and then loaded up to head to the airport for a 35 minute flight up to Cochabamba. I was impressed with how rapidly the airline staff checked our group of 10 in and sent our bags on their way. But poor George, I’m sure he feels like he is herding cats – all these American women! But he is the soul of patience and tact. I always wonder about the stories they share with each other when we leave!
The flight went quickly but very bumpily! It smoothed out when we reached our flying elevation, but on such a short flight, that didn’t last too long. We are seeing a pattern here – hence today’s title. Bumpy boat rides, bumpy drives, bumpy flight.
We arrived in Cochabamba intact, quickly collected our bags and headed into the city. We are now only at about 2500 feet so we are all breathing easy. We were warmly met and greeted by staff and then drove to our hotel. Cochabamba is a lovely city – much prettier than La Paz, or least the parts we saw. It is fairly clean with wide streets and many green medians with trees and flowers. Our hotel is in the center of town.
We then walked the block to the Fubodo office. This is the arm of WV which handles micro finance and loans and is universally called Vision Fund. Fubodo is the Bolivian branch. We met the staff and then were briefed on the programs here and some of what we will be seeing in the coming days. We are always welcomed to warmly – like it is a very big deal that we are here and they are so grateful we have come. So humbling. I want to yell – “No! – we are the ones who are blessed!”
The day was winding down and we still needed to go buy groceries as tomorrow is Sponsorship Day!!!! Whoopee! We headed out to some trucks and waited for a couple of missing members, Alice and LuAnn. And we waited. We couldn’t imagine where they could be as they are not the type to keep anyone waiting. Our main interpreter was looking all over for them. Finally we heard that they were stuck in the elevator! We waited a bit more and prayed, hoping they would get out soon. Help was coming but we were told to go on and get groceries. It felt strange to leave them but there were plenty of staff with them. So off we went.
About 20 minutes later we arrived at a regular old grocery store. It was very crowded and a new twist – all purses and bags needed to be checked into lockers! Luckily my little pouch wasn’t noticed so I hung onto it.
We grabbed six carts and with 2 staff headed out to find some basics for our families. We made quite the spectacle – our train of carts following a leader until we reached an item we wanted. Then we all stopped, effectively blocked the aisle, and then moved on. After a number of stops, we headed to check out. There, one unloads the groceries and then backs out of line to drop off the cart, returns and pays, and then the bags are loaded into another cart! Go figure! But our trip was successful, the food stuffs were loaded into the trucks and so were we so back to the hotel for a late dinner.
I anxiously went into the restaurant, hoping Alice and LuAnn were there and they were!!! Great joy all around! They were stuck for almost an hour but made the best of it and even took a selfie to share the experience! We enjoyed our dinner and devotions and the first wine any of us had had here – no wine at high elevations for novices!
Off to bed and an early morning as we are driving about an hour and a half to Colomi to visit our kids! Can’t wait! Bolibia