It is July 2 (Happy Belated Canada Day!). I have 2 more weeks in Bolivia and 3 more weeks before I return home. Good grief! I have 1 more week of work left. It feels weird. I want to go home and see my family and continue on with life, but I don't want to be forced to say goodbye to Bolivia.
When I chose the url for my blog, I was thinking that when God says go, huge things always happen. I've been realizing this year that "huge things" aren't really what I thought they were. There were over a hundred volunteers for Orientation at the beginning of this volunteer year. Each and every one of them said "yes" when God said "go." (so check out ALL their blogs!!... or just a few... or not). Of course we all had different experiences, different ups and downs - but I'm fairly positive we all were forced to trust God this year, and when is that ever a bad thing? I learned lots of things: more patience (a lot more patience...whew... I'm doing pretty good now at lasting through 2.5hour church services and actually enjoying them!), more humility, greater faith in God, greater knowledge of God, and I'm sure lots of other things I didn't list or don't realize yet. God could've taught me these things in Canada, too, but I really appreciated the opportunity to learn them in Bolivia! That taught me more about the world, about great hospitality, about the value of different culture, and good conversational Spanish. See, that's what happens when you say "yes" to God's "go." :P
I love Bolivia. I'm [obviously] going to miss it a lot. I'm a little nervous about heading to Calgary for school in September. After the constant natural beauty of Bolivia (there are always flowers blooming somewhere here!...at least in this part of Bolivia) it's going to be hard to return to the cold, seemingly desolate Calgary landscape of early evenings and leafless trees. But, it can be done!
I realize it's been almost 3 months since I last wrote. Oops. And yet, I don't have much to write. Um... so how about that weather? The cold front I was warned about has failed to show up yet. Still fairly warm. Um... I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. How are you?
Heh...OK. One week left of work! I can hardly believe I actually did it! Wow... 9.5 months of changing diapers...OK, to be fair, I worked with the bigger kids for one month and had one month of holidays... so 7.5 of changing diapers. I still think that's pretty good. I'm going to try to calculate how many diapers I've changed.... bear with me... change the kids twice a week... on average about 15 kids each time... er... 17 (sometimes they go twice!)...that's 34 kids a week. Good grief!! that's 136 diapers a month! Multiplied by 7.5 months is 1020!! Now, that is a lot of diapers. I wonder what my contribution to the local landfill looks like.
I'm glad I only have 1 week left. I only have 34 more diapers to change. I will miss my coworkers and the babies, but, gah, it takes a lot out of you. I can hardly believe I spent most of the past year working at this job. I've never worked somewhere for so long before, and, to be fair, I would've quit long before if I hadn't realized that God put me here... or if MCC wouldn't have been upset at me quitting... or if it wouldn't have meant that I'd have had to leave Bolivia. I'm glad I stuck it out when it was hard. I learned a ton. I met lots of cool people. And maintained a good habit of getting up early. Er... well, we'll see how long that habit lasts when I get back to Canada. I'm also especially grateful that I was able to learn to be content. I don't think I've fully learned that lesson, but I got so much closer to learning it than I ever did before!
It's going to be hard to say goodbye to my host family here. They've been sooo amazing! I love them so much! I don't want to think about it. I want to spend as much time as I can with them. Soak everything up before I leave. It's such an odd feeling. I'm sure every other volunteer who has ever done anything like this knows what I'm talking about. After giving so much to my life here in Bolivia, after calling this place "home" for the past 11 months, and after forming great friendships with people here, how do you say goodbye to it all, realizing in two weeks that suddenly it's all going to disappear as fast as snapping your fingers and you're probably never going to see it again? How does something you've put so much effort into, so much love and sweat and pain and joy, just disappear? I suppose it can't. Heh... well, obviously it can't. That's what makes it so hard to leave it. And, I'm glad it's hard. If it wasn't, it would mean that I didn't get much out of it or put much into it.
Anyway, enough pondering. Actually, that's probably enough writing, too. I'm tired. :P
Possibly I'll write once more before leaving Bolivia or during re-orientation... or posibly not. So, thanks to all who've read my blog and prayed and supported me throughout this year. It is so greatly appreciated!
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