La Paz, Bolivia to Cusco, Peru

Once again i am in Peru!!! Right now it is one week untill we graduate. Last week we were in La Paz, Bolivia. The church that we stayed with was great. I stayed with a family in a house which was a wonderful experience. They really made me feel at home and they spoke English which made it easier. The church was very modern and they really encouraged us. They really had a heart for missions, which is something that you dont always see in churches. Now we are in Cusco, Peru. For the first night both teams, red and white, stayed in one and it was a little tight, but i enjoyed spending the time together. Now we are living in an orphanage and working with the church that runs it. I will try to update my blog later this week when i have more time. Thank you, love Christopher.

Finally in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

I just wanted to update people on our travel in Bolivia. I asked for prayer for that and for prayer for the sick people on our team. Emanuel is better but most of us have colds of some sort so pray for our health. So we started out in Sunday by traveling from our church to the other teams church because it was about forty five minutes closer to the bus station. We slept at their church and then got up early in the moring to catch a bus to a Argentinan, Bolivian border town where we could cross. We were sort of nervous about crossing because we herd they were strick if people were sick. Americans had to pay $135 vengance tax to enter Bolivia, beacuse that is what the US chrages for them to get in. After we go the finances worked and and applied for our visas we were waiting in line and one of our girls passed out. It was high altitude so they said that that kind of thing happens so they still let us into Bolivia. We could not but the bus tickets in advance because you have to be in the country to buy them, so all the buses were full. So we had no place to stay in this little border town. So some of the leaders started looking for churches and we found one that said we could sleep there. The people who were really sick stayed in a hostel because it is cold and they do not heat their churches. Then we got up early again to catch a bus and it was an hour and a half late. We started driving and it was a really rough dirt road through the desert. People we getting motion sick and all that good stuff. It was about a ten hour bus trip. Then we made it to where the other team is staying at about nine oclock at night and we had to hurry to catch another bus. We road on that bus untill three in the morining and then we go on another bus and we arrived here in Cochabamba, Bolivia at about eight thirty in the morning. All of us are pretty tired but the church seems like it is going to be good to work with. I just wanted to share that travel experience we had. We arrived safely which is all that really matters. I would appreciate your continual prayers, we only have three weeks of outreach left and i am sure that they will go very fast. Thank you, Christopher.

Jujuy Argentina

Hey, i just wanted to give an update on how things are going. Sorry that i did not get to update last week. I will try to cover last week and part of this week. Things have been difficult to do outreach for the past two weeks in Argentina. Right now there is a federal ban on meeting in public places such as the plazas. This is due to the swine flu, there is a really big fear of it here. I am not sure how it is back home. Because we cant do outreach on the street we have been working with the churches more, doing services in the church. Last week we painted the outside of the church and did one street outreach before the ban was put in place. Schools have been cancelled so we get to spend a lot of time with the youth from the churches. This week we have a service every night, during the day we go door to door and invite people to the services. This culture is different from many that we have experience already. They like to stay up late, last week it was common to not go to bed untill two or later, this week it is not so bad ushually we get to go to bed by one or so. But they dont get up early in the morning so we get plenty of sleep. Onother cultural thing here is when you greet you kiss on each cheak and also they drink mate here. Mate is a strong tea and it is a social thing that they pass around and everyone drinks, i like it. I think i am preaching tonight. I have some prayer request, that i would appreciate if you pray for. The first request is that we might have trouble crossing into Bolivia on Tuesday so, just pray for that. There are a lot of rumors that the borders are closed and so on. The second request is for a girl on the other team, she is twenty-three and has the chicken pox for the first time. I guess it is pretty bad so just pray for her. The last request is, there is a family on my team and they have for children. The youngest one is three and he is really sick right now. They took him to the hospital at least two times for i.v.s and it does not seem like he is getting any better. They did blood test and hopefully we will get the results back tonight. His name is Emanuel. Thank you for all your prayer support. Love Christopher.