Welcome to Santiago

As of today, Saturday 7 July 2018, we have been in Santiago de los Chiquitos for one week. Even though we are hoping to make this place a home for our family, I nevertheless feel like a tourist.

Our friends here in Bolivia, the Whitakers and the Bravo family, hosted a welcome party for us. The Whitakers slaughtered one of their cows and invited the village to their farm for a barbecue. 

Sadly, the weather turned extremely cold the morning of the barbecue. The temperature at one point read 66 degrees Fahrenheit, but it felt nothing like a spring day in Utah! We had left the house in the morning, not realizing what it was going to be like. As quickly as we could, we went back home and found our jackets. I put on two layers of pants, a down-filled jacket, and wool socks and I was still cold!

The turnout for the barbecue was smaller than we'd hoped, because of the cold weather and rain misting through the trees. The fire was a relief, as was the wood burning stove inside the house. Unfortunately, Juliette forgot the stove was hot as she ran past it as the party was winding down. Thankfully, our friend Rachel reacted almost as fast as Juliette did. 

Before I even knew what was happening, Rachel had JJ in the kitchen running cool water over her hand. The local doctor also was at the party, and the two of them administered first aid, including a balm the people here use all the time. By the next morning, she was back to normal, with only a mark on the skin to show for it.

Jon and I joined the choir this week and participated in a concert on Saturday evening. The musical tradition of Santiago and the surrounding villages is tied to the Jesuit priests who came several centuries ago. The priests did not have much success converting the natives to Christianity, but when they introduced music to them, the hearts of the people softened.

Now there is an international music festival held here every year. People from around the world come to celebrate Baroque manuscripts written centuries ago by native Bolivians in their own language. The region and its dialects are called Chiquiteña. The Chiquiteñan Baroque music is a fascinating juxtaposition of the so-called “civilized” Christian and the mis-labeled “savage” natives.

Another fascinating juxtaposition I experienced this week was Santiago’s equivalent of pumpkin pie. The girl who made it is the daughter of two Quakers from Indiana who own a dairy farm here in Santiago. The squash she used is called joco (ho-ko) and the locals apparently feed it to their animals. But the pie she made with it was the most delicious vegetable pie I’ve ever had. I don’t want to call it pumpkin pie, because to do so might give you the same impression of pumpkin pie that I have, which is mostly unfavorable but with a willingness to see if this time it might be different.

Jon, sadly, missed the joco pie, since he had to go to Santa Cruz to take care of our residency paperwork. When I told him about it, he said I should have demanded to have pie making lessons. I think he’s right. If I could make pies like that, I might be finally converted to the tradition of cooking as a way of nurturing others.

What is Bolivia most famous for?

What is Bolivia most famous for? I naturally have chosen things that are similar to what I know. It's not necessarily that Bolivia is all that similar to Utah, it's just that that's the filter I'm seeing through at the moment.

For pictures, please see links at the bottom of the page.

1. Salt flats - Salar de Uyuni
2. High mountains - La Paz & Cochabamba
3. El Dorado, lost city of gold, new archaeological findings in Bolivia about this legend
4. "The Lost City of Z" book - highly entertaining. You can try watching the movie, but take my word for it, the movie was boring and the book was super fun!
5. "The Jungle" book and movie with Daniel Radcliffe. The movie is almost entirely true, based on a book by an Israeli backpacker who became lost in the jungle and survived for 3 weeks, alone, before he was rescued. Again, I'd recommend the book over the movie, though the movie was good enough.
6. Lake Titicaca - highest navigable lake in the world.
7. Red Rock formations covered in jungle
8. Death Road, one of the world's most dangerous roads
9. Jesus Christ statue that is taller than any other statue of its kind, except for one in Poland.
10. Butch Cassidy, born in Beaver, Utah, died in Bolivia.


PICTURES
1. salt flats -- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/08/03/bolivia-salt-flats-photos_n_4689867.html
2. red rock  -- http://www.periodicolaregion.com/paso-a-paso-hacia-un-robore-sustentable/

Good Choices

With the troop of kids and the piles of baggage, we of course get a lot of looks and an occasional question. Why are we moving to Bolivia?











No answer ever really seems to satisfy people. In the end, it's really just because we *can* go and because we want to.

Another important aspect about the decision to go is that I feel good about it.

It's a blessing to have a good feeling about what you're doing with your life. There are so many opportunities to choose from, and often, in comparing your life with someone else's, it is easy to feel that you don't measure up. This is how I feel a lot of the time.

Now -- though the idea of moving to Bolivia is really an arbitrary choice -- I feel confident. I feel supported by a Father in Heaven who knows the end from the beginning. He knows we could choose some other path. And if we went another direction in life, He would be happy with that choice.

This is the path less traveled by. Doubts and anxieties nip at the edges of my thoughts. It is a great comfort to know and feel that God approves of this choice, to feel faith overcoming fear and strengthening my resolve for the difficult times that surely lie ahead.

It's just STUFF

It's Thursday. Most of the furniture is gone, and most of our belongings are still sitting on the floors, every room with its own gradually diminishing pile waiting for the random movements of various family members to get it, eventually, to its final resting place.

The last 2 months for me have been overflowing with concern about what is going to happen to all the STUFF in my house. Some of it has financial value. Some has sentimental value. And some of it has pure practical value.

Many people have said, it's just STUFF. And it is. So why is it so hard to put it in the landfill, or give it to the second hand store?

Maybe God can use even my seemingly silly desires to reduce, reuse and recycle to bless the lives of people in my community. As I have changed my perspective from the financial and practical value of the STUFF, and started thinking about the PEOPLE who will benefit from it, I find peace about it all. Even the things that will go in the garbage.

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I visited a very old friend yesterday, under the pretense of giving her some of the STUFF from my house. As I climbed the front steps, thinking about how many things are still left on my To Do list, and knowing that she is anticipating a loving reunion, I thought to myself:

This isn't about YOU.

It's not about the STUFF you have to move out of your house.

Those thoughts were like a burden lifting off of my shoulders and I cried a little. What a relief! It's not about me. I can be free to do whatever the situation needs me to do, because I'm not burdened with an agenda or a To Do list.

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I read this today: "We all love when our vehicle is clean and shiny. But the car's purpose is not to stand out as an attractive machine; it is to move the people in the car."

While we may debate whether or not the car can have two different purposes, it is nevertheless the case that a car moves people. And it is up to us to choose what is most valuable, to decide where to spend our time, and who to focus on as we perform whatever mundane responsibility we have to perform.

Faith, part II

Some people say they know God is real because He answers their prayers. Or they say, God knows what I need because some person came to help me with something but I didn't tell anybody that I needed it, so how did they know? It had to be God who told them.

I've had these experiences as well. And it makes me feel good, and at those times I want to say, "Yes! I *know* God is real!"

The truth is, I believe God is real. My experiment isn't complete yet and I feel insincere when I say, "I know".

I'm trying the "faith" experiment. I've had moments of prayer where the ideas that came to me seemed to be different than what I normally think. They seemed out of place in my head, as if someone else had put their ideas there.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if an idea is "yours" or not. But sometimes it's pretty easy. It's like this:

Free image from pixabay.com

That's my actual house. Notice the doll upside down in the mixing bowl? If it's not obvious to you, I'll tell you: the dessert definitely did not originate from this kitchen.

So then what happens after such a thought enters my head is ... YUM! 

And at least once, the idea that has appeared in my head has been something I had never thought of before. Like seeing a UFO and you can't describe it because it's literally like nothing you've ever seen. Yeah, like that.

So I act on the thought. And I like the outcome. And then I think, maybe there's something to this religion thing. If "they" were right about the effectiveness of prayer, what else could they be right about?

So I give it a go. And I think, "Maybe it isn't necessarily God who set this all up, but it works." So my faith, as it always has been, is practical. "It works, so I'll believe it."

One verse of scripture that has made a big impact on me is John 14:11, where Christ is speaking to His disciples about His divine nature. All the stuff that comes before this verse is all well and good, but when Jesus says this to his disciples, it hits me hard: "Believe me that I am ^ain the ^bFather, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake."

The "work", in my understanding, is to bring people to a higher understanding of their own potential for goodness. That's something I believe in. So I'll do what Jesus said. I'll do the work He asks me to do, because I believe in the work. 

Faith

A push pin on a bulletin board outside my college professor's office pierced an essay and secured it to the cork. The main idea of the essay was very clear: matter and energy and forces are all there is to life. Furthermore, the author proposed, emotions, consciousness, and perhaps what we call spirit are all chemical and electrical phenomena.

At the time I read those ideas, I used the concept of an "aha" moment to refute them. If all there is are chemicals and electrical signals, given the same input (words, visual stimulus, etc.), how would you get a different output? To specify, when the same words and other ideas are introduced to you, and you hear and understand on a certain level, what is the explanation for that experience turning suddenly in to an "aha" moment?

My answer, initially, was that it is the Spirit of God which delivers the "aha", when all the other variables remain the same. Of course this deus ex machina thinking isn't satisfactory, so the idea has been sitting on a shelf in my brain for some time.

Recently, on a related issue, I have realized that I have difficulty with the idea of faith. Believing something that you don't know to be true sounds a bit risky. Though scientists experience this on a regular basis as they conduct experiments, it becomes more problematic when the thing you are studying resists being knowable.

This is the case with the idea of the existence of God. To have faith in God is problematic for a scientist, for whom the data is inconclusive. It may be that an "aha" moment was mediated by the Holy Spirit, or it is equally probable that there is a mechanism of thinking that produces the same effect.

Of course, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Why can't the mechanism which produces "aha" moments be the tool with which the Holy Spirit speaks truth to our souls? What if, when our brains "hear" the language of the Spirit, it triggers the exact chemical electrical process that results in "aha" moments?

I want to be able to say, "I know." At church we bear testimony and say, "I know God is real." I've said this in the past, and I sometimes think it to myself. The reality is, I choose to believe that God is real. I am testing that theory the same way a scientist must choose a hypothesis before she can conduct a meaningful experiment.

Everything I know supports the idea that God is real. What makes this difficult is, everything I know can also support the idea that there is no God. So why do I choose to believe? The answer is simple, and somewhat childish (or maybe child-like?): I want to believe it is true. I like the idea of a Being who uses reason, who loves, and who can miraculously balance justice with mercy. These are attributes that I value. I like the idea of a divine Being who has a physical existence, because I am continually aware of the joy associated with having a body.

I like the idea of a God who uses chemistry and electricity (aha moments) to bring a sense of order (science) to our physical existence. I believe in God because I want to, it makes sense, and I believe that if everyone believed in God the way that I believe in God, the world would be a kinder, more justice-filled place full of learning and love and joy.

A Place for Everything and Everything In It's Place

At the yard sale last week, I put a stack of CDs in a small plastic tote. I didn't expect anyone to be interested.

Things got busy with the selling and answering questions, and I noticed a few people walking around with a couple of CDs. Finally, I saw a man carrying around the whole box. Two thoughts came so closely together that I don't know which was first.

One thought was: Wow, I didn't realize those would be so popular; I should have put a price on them.

The second thought was: I don't think I put the lid for the box out there. Now I have an extra lid!

Even though that was 5 days ago, that thought still plagues me. I'm going to have to collect the boxes at some point. Boxes with no lids, or lids with no boxes ... How can a person live with such asymmetry?