what? did someone say march?

hi friends,

honestly it's march today, how crazy. sometimes when i look back on the past two months it flew by and other times when i look at everything we saw, photographed and are now attempting to communicate through videos, design and writing it feels like forever! so that is basically what we have been up to this week. it has been a flurry of editing, making videos, writing and of course the souvenir shopping, which i must say went very well! but friends its time to put this trip to a close.

we have just two more days here in cochabamba. on monday morning we will fly out to santa cruz where we need to spend the night and then we fly back to the states on tuesday and spend a day in charlotte for debriefing and then fly home to good old cold iowa on wednesday evening. so its a full schedule. but these next two days are critical in attempting to do as much work as we can while its all still fresh in our memories. God is working in bolivia so powerfully as i have said before and we are just two kids trying to record that. it feels like a huge job to be honest with you.

one story from yesterday will stick in my mind forever. we were going with the ministry called "la red." la red is a ministry that works with the youth leaders of bolivia. they train, support and encourage them as almost all of them are unpaid, untrained, volunteer positions. the ministry also works at reaching out in the community by working with the people who live at the dump. thats right friends, the dump. so we drove to the outskirts of town to the cochabamba landfill. it was this HUGE pile of garbage standing at the base of a small mountain. and when we looked closer we could see people climbing on top of it. we got out of the car in a very small community and began to walk closer to the pile of trash. we got to the opening of the gate that surrounded it when a man stopped us and talked with us for a bit and asked if we would please not take any photographs because so many people had come and photographed this community and really put these people on display. we came to know later that this whole community works on this huge trash pile everyday sorting out things that can be recycled. from plastic to aluminum to electronics, they search it all and sell it to the recycling companies in the city for around $3 per kilo. we also learned that these people are ashamed of themselves. if you reach out to shake their hand they will give you their wrist because they feel their hands are too dirty and they will never lift their heads to look you in the eye because they feel they are not worthy. so there i stood watching these two women dig through a small pile of trash in front of me. reeking of everything nasty and flies buzzing all around me. its an image i wasn't able to photograph, but an image i will never forget. and behind me stood this huge pile covered with people sorting. it was something so hard i couldn't wrap my mind around it. this was their life. they woke up everyday and dug through other people's garbage. so what la red is doing here is trying to change their lives with really small things. the first thing they did was put a water tank in the community because they are unable to use the water from the area because of all the contamination. the second thing they want to do is build showers so that the workers can come off the pile of trash and wash themselves before going home. the homes there were about 8ft x 10ft for an entire family but contained no running water. also the homes used to be built out of trash but the local university donated money for them to build their homes from brick. so all around the landfill you saw these tiny little brick houses. friends, its hard to imagine but God is working here even in this community. it was amazing and left me speechless for a good part of the rest of the day.

it is stories like these that we desire to tell in these next few days and when we get home. we would love your prayers that we finish strong here and continue to spread God's stories from bolivia as long as we can. your support through this journey has made it all possible, i wish we could show you that. all the emails, msn conversations, phone calls and everything else is what kept us going. well i better be off to some more editing and tackle this huge list of videos i need to make as well. and don't worry we promise to have a little fun before we leave too. we will check-in with you guys if we can. otherwise we will see some of you very soon! adios!