Well time to go have lunch prepared by one of four of my personal lunch chefs. Take Care!
WE
STARTED CONSTRUCTION! Hey! My little endorphins are hopping around
like
cheerleaders! Monday was the official start of construction. A truck
arrived for us to unload full of scaffolding, forms, tools and misc
stuff. So unload it we did.
And as is the case with such things, we
unloaded it and set about moving it from one spot to another to get
organized.
Later more supplies in the form of rebar came and some of
what we had unloaded was loaded again onto another truck to go to
storage till it was needed or to the various accommodations (beds and
luggage for the 18 members of the regional building crew).
 |
| Base for our tool shed and our new shed... |
More stacking
and sorting work was done to set up the tool shed
and we cleaned
and then dieseled cement forms. Then we moved tools from one place to
another and then into the shed. There were 7 of the regional crew and
another 13 of local friends.
 |
| Our supervisors for dieseling forms |
Next
day we set about turning rebar into some sort of forms.
There were about 17 on site.
A brother who has a farm filled with
different types of fruit wanted to have me take him there to get fruit
for the kitchen. So off they sent me since I had a car. We drove and
drove and drove (mind you it probably wasn't very many miles but because
the roads are dirt and have many pot holes because of rain it took a
while). We had a horse in front of us that didn't want to get out of
the way so we followed it for a couple of miles till we caught up with
its moma and it got out of the way!
The
brother has quite a farm of 15 or more different types of fruit that
produce through out the year. We picked mandarines, star fruit, a type
of lime and some other fruit I don't know. He picked us a couple of
coconuts and macheted them up and we had coconut water to refresh us.
Yum!
The kitchen has been serving awesome
food. It's quite a production
and they use real plates and utensils and glasses. Fresh squeezed
juices and everything made from scratch. The girls have been working in
the kitchen this week and they've done a great job!
We
have fabricated rebar forms, dug ditches, dug out a section that will
be a drive and walkway, compacted sand and rock (actually had a power
compacter for this, all other jobs are done my Jehovah's fantastic
creation - sisters!). We have moved piles of rocks from one spot to
another and back again. (I kidded the brother about if he only had a
little faith he could move that pile just by saying to it move, someone
else said that he did say to the pile move and we sisters did move it.)
Doing
laundry by hand on clothing dirtied by construction is almost as much
work as construction! The days seem to be going quickly and we are all
getting to know one another better. One brother in the Buena Vista
group asked if I liked Bolivia. I said yes but was a bit frustrated
with not being able to talk and understand as much as I would like. He
said I needed to stay for a year. I said I was too old, this group were
so young. Well I walked into that! He said they needed a mother for
the group! Grrrr!
My name continues to be a
problem for the friends. Constantly they are calling me LG. One
brother, Simon, who is an elder in Buena Vista, so I've known him for 7-8
weeks now and he is still calling me LG. So all yesterday on site I was
correcting him. LJ, not LG.
 |
| LG! |
 |
| LJ! |
He
has to really think about it and pause between letters. He is buying
the car I've been renting and leaves next week for his next assignment.
We gave him a ride home last night and found out that he has picked out
a name for the car. Yup...LG. :)!
Well greetings and hugs to all! philea, lj
Oddities Date: June 24, 2008 - Not much happening on the construction front. They were finishing up
walls yesterday and working on some concrete flooring today. Have been
sick for the last 4 days and trying to get my strength back.
Some oddities that I don't think I mentioned before:
If you need to get more gas in your car, just shake the car so that the
gas will settle (that's what the gas station attendants do)
If you are wearing a dress and need a motorcycle taxi, not a problem
ride side saddle. Children, no problem, put them on the handle bars
Too many people for the car, just open the hatch and let the people hang
their feet out the back while you drive 60-80 kilometers down the
road. But a 5 passenger vehicle can easily hold 10 with out doing this
(just hope you are the
driver and it really is much easier).
No trailer for animals? Just tie them upside down to the top of your taxi. Also works for beds, furniture and whatever.
No lawn mower, no problem, your neighbor will tie there horse, sheep, cow or whatever up to eat down the grass.
Just a few of the interesting things here! love, lj
I love Fridays! Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Fridays on the construction site are my favorites! Everyone is tired and goofy! Even though a great majority of the construction group are off on Fridays, only 4 or 5 work that day, we seem to have a more relaxed atmosphere and take things a little slower and joke around a little more.
I'm often asked ow learning Spanish is going, and everyone gets a big laugh at my muff ups. One sister has picked up on the fact that many of the problems involve men! Yo tengo hombre, instead of hambre; me gusto instead of mucho gusto; I am married for 23 days now (did I forget to tell you all that?). She brings it up every chance she can.
It really makes me aware, again, of what a wonderful family we belong to as Jehovah's children. The more we work together the more we get to know each other and the more joking around there is. We have our regular crew of construction workers, about 18 or so, and then the locals and each week a few additional friends from a "congregation of the week". Letters went out inviting neighboring congregations to help butt are assigned a specific week to do so.
Yesterday the trusses started going up. Even though there are only 15 trusses, they are very heavy compared to the ones in the states. The wood is not pretreated, so we had the job of painting them with anti termite stuff, yuk!
The finishing cement is going up also. It's quite a process. It involves slinging cement at the wall. A task I flunked at learning. The force of this process causes persons on the other side to get a splattering of the cement even through they are 15 feet away!
So, I have three weeks left and the girls are coming up with a plan to prevent my leaving here. My heart is already torn. It is no longer "I'M IN BOLIVIA!", it is "This isn't much different than Montana."
See ya all soon! love, Lj
Last email from Bolivia! Date Saturday, July 19, 2008 - Well in a few days my time is up for my stay in Bolivia! It is with mixed feelings that I leave. On the one hand there are things I will be glad to leave behind, like frogs, lizards, ants, bathrooms with only showers of luke warm water, hand washing the laundry. But there are many things that I will miss, the slower pace of life, saltenas, not having to make a choice of what to order at a restaurant, the car being shaken to get more gas, the Bodie girls, and the peeps.
The girls wanted to have a going away party, which of course I was adamantly opposed to for a variety of reasons. We decided to have a welcome to Bolivia party for a sister's sister who is here from Austria, but of course all that know the Bodie girls, know that it did not go unmentioned that it was also a going away party despite that vows and oaths that were laid upon their heads.
We danced and ate and laughed until midnight and ended the night with a group photo of which took 15 minutes because of all the cameras that needed to have a picture, or two, or three.
WARNING! MUSH ALERT! THE FOLLOWING MAY CAUSE A REACTION:
This morning I was overcome once again with what Jehovah has created with this earth wide family. I thought that the fullness of it had been completely experienced already with all the peeps back home, but...it truly is like a diamond with endless facets to experience. To be able to belong to a group of people because we serve the same God and share the same beliefs and have the same hopes and yet at the same time not be able to completely understand each other and still have this bond of philea that inspires awe?! Having a little heart to heart conversation, a warm embrace with words equally as warm (its ok that the words were not understood), an expression of appreciation for coming, an invitation to dance, a game of hide-n-go-seek with the camera, people who want to have a picture of you, a group of people singing to you (who knows what, its in Spanish), ask when you will return...
The girls say that geeks who come to Bolivia are transformed into "all that and a bag of chips". (This I can attest to as several are actually impressed by my so called dancing and laugh at my attempt at humor.)
There is a conclusion that I have come to though. It is that, in the world's eyes, all of Jehovah's people are geeks. But when we come into this wonderful creation, this universal family, we all become "all that and a bag of chips".
See ya soon! (and yes I did call you all geeks) Philea, lj
Got into a fight today. There was yelling, screaming, name calling and tears. The reason for the fight? My TomTom sent me to the middle of nowhere!! I plugged in "Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri" and off I went. when the pavement ended and the directions where to go down a road that looked like it might require 4 wheel drive the yelling began. 
