Problemas

This is my fourth week of round two here at U.E.T.I.R.G. (pronounced “way-teer,” its an acronym for Unidad Educativa Technical Industrial de Richard Gates) the little school with a big name and a bigger purpose out here in the medio-selva of northeastern Bolivia. So much has happened since I wrote last: a building has gone up, another has almost gone up—in smoke — a lot of trees have come down, to cut into lumber to sell and to use here in construction.* Six students have been kicked out, I spent 36 hours riding the bus to Rurrenebaque and back to take another student home, trimester grades were due last Friday, we started a pathfinder club, one of the school’s motor bikes was stolen, we’ve had an outbreak of malaria at the school, and my visa has expired! I’m still working on all the paperwork to get legal again.

In my last post I mentioned the students who were kicked out. Well, one of the girls named Luzmar (Light-Sea in English) was afraid to face her mother after being expelled, and jumped from the truck while she was being taken home. Thankfully the truck wasn’t going very fast and she was not hurt, but she had to be restrained by two teachers for the rest of the ride to town as she kept screaming “I don’t want to go home, I want to be with Jesús” (I’m pretty sure she was referring to the boy named Jesús who she had been sneaking out with, but who knows, as she seemed intent on throwing herself out of the truck again.) Now we’re beginning to understand why she did not want to go home. Her mother was irate when she found out her daughter was expelled, and immediately threatened that we would be sorry. Since then, she has begun a campaign to shut down the school, coming up with all kinds of wild accusations, saying that we pushed her daughter out of the truck and that she was badly injured and had to go to Cochabamba for medical attention. She also claims that we mistreat the students here, even airing an advertisement on TV warning against our school. And all of this even though she is an Adventist sister who was previously very supportive, assisting with student accounts and paperwork, and helping to acquire documents for the students, many of whom came here from the primary/school orphanage Familia Feliz in Rurrenebaque. It wasn’t until recently we discovered that she was obtaining these documents in an illegal and fraudulent manner, but that is another story. At any rate, she promises not to rest until she has done everything she can to bring us down.

As a result of her complaints, the district officials for the department of education came to visit last week and interrogated us extensively on the nature of our school, what the program is like, are our teachers certified, how do we treat the students, how do we practice our religion… they also interviewed individual students, and toured the whole school. None of the administrative team was here that day, but Kaila and Lyli (two of our volunteer teachers from Mexico) did a good job answering their questions. To tell the truth, it was a great opportunity to glorify God to these men who were visibly shocked by the singular nature and purpose of the school. By the time they left, it seemed they were satisfied that the accusations against us are false. Even so, this is just the beginning.

The first court hearing was this last Tuesday. The Bolivian equivalent of Child Protective Services is kind of siding with the mother. There is a Bolivian law that says a student cannot be expelled for being pregnant, and they are construing it to mean that we cannot expel students for being out together at night, even though this was not the first offense, and the staff has been working with these kids for a long time to get them to change and follow the rules. Fortunately, God has blessed us with a good lawyer who has been very kind and helpful, promising to do everything in her power to help us — so far, without cost!

With all the rumors flying around about the school, we thought it would be good to clear the air a little bit, so on Sunday we had a general assembly with all the students’ parents as well as the local pastor and any church members who wanted to come. After a small musical program where the students performed some numbers and shared their testimonies about what the school has done for them, we had a question and answer session in which staff and students shared their side of the story. Noel, one of our third year boys, explained that he has seen Luzmar in town shopping after her jump from the truck. He talked to her and she said her mom was sending her away to the school in Cochabama. She showed no sign of injury whatsoever.

The meeting went well, and the parents and church members were all very supportive. Many of them shared what a blessing the school has been to them and their children. One non-Adventist mother was especially adamant in her support. That is another blessing: strengthened relationships with student’s parents and the local Adventist churches. So am I worried? No, not at all. This is God’s school. I’m just privileged to serve here and to see what great things the Lord is doing and to be a small part of it. We have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

Unfortunately, right in the middle of all this we had another crisis to deal with… To save time, I’ll tell the story here in present tense, as I wrote it while sitting up half the night. The first part has to do with the wood we’ve been cutting in the jungle, but it leads into the other story:

* 8/24/09 Mr. Dion, Ruan’s dad who comes here every few months to help out, cuts the lumber on a portable milling saw, and we’ve been carrying the boards out of the jungle on our backs. They’re wet and solid hardwood and my shoulder is still sore from two days ago when I helped carry out a load of 12 foot 2x6’s to sell in town. As the board cut into my shoulder, I thought of Christ and wondered how he ever bore the cross at all after being scourged nearly to death, not to mention staying up the entire night before, sweating drops of blood, carrying “the weight of the world on His shoulders” as we like to say, the salvation of the human race, the risk of eternal loss, and the pain of complete separation from His other 2/3^rds. Wow. And I, with nothing but the weight of half a cross, stooped and stumbled, and the in the end needed help bearing my burden the last half of the 500 meter-or-so trek between the fallen and milled tree and the lumber cart waiting on our unfinished runway. From there, we wrestled the over-laden cart another few-hundred meters to the school and the waiting truck.

(Here followed an explanation of the problems with Luzmar.)

On the other side of my hut is a young man lying on the top bunk, feeling a weight of guilt and despair that he cannot carry as easily as he carried the 2x6’s out of the jungle. His name is Marki (Changed for privacy), and I am here to watch him and make sure he does not try to harm himself like Luzmar did. It is going to be a long night. I’m watching my Manutata velas (candles) burn themselves down one at a time until the last centimeters of wick have nothing solid left under them and begin to tilt and finally fall, extinguishing themselves in the plastered mess of their own melted bodies. But it does not happen all at once. Each candle starts out tall, with a strong blaze, each one’s melt drips slowly down the sides, hardens, and is overrun by new streams of displaced wax. Sometimes the sloughing sides seem to rise on themselves, the fresh drips building upward on each other, on the backs of congealed burrs that jut out just enough to hold them up and let them rise like liquid elevators, like barges in dam locks, until the overpowering volume of cascading wax spills over the ascending drops, engulfs them, and carries them back down to help bury the remains of the fallen: four black wicks, soon to be joined by another, their charred carcasses held fast in a molten lake that ices over from the outside, entombing them alongside two moths and a score of scorched gnats that lost their wings for a joyride through the flames. Even as I write, one comes winging in too close, and lights up like a match-head, with a poof, more like a miniature Hidenburg, and spirals against the base of the wick where he looks like a martyr, pegged to the stake, his burning abdomen snaps and crackles like popcorn. But he is no saint, or hero, he is a suicide: a moth worthy of the proverb that tritely symbolizes the self’s attraction to the wicked lights of destruction. How many must die? Is it really so fun to fly by fire? Don’t they see their floundering comrades below, squirming vainly to free themselves from the gel that thickens about their treading legs, sets their wings still as concrete?

I hear Marki turning in the bed across the room, and I know he must feel absolutely mortified. He told us he felt like this was the end for him. It was his flip-flops we found behind teacher Kaila’s house… I was over at Ruan and Tara’s when we heard her scream “someone is behind my house!” Ruan, Paeter, and I grabbed our lights and rushed out to see if we could catch the culprit. This was not the first time the girls thought they saw someone spying on them. This time it was unmistakable. Lyli was showering when she looked up and saw the silhouetted of someone standing on the top of the wall under the thatch roof. When she looked up, the head ducked back into the shadows. “Kaila, come here!” she called, and the shadow immediately leaped down behind the house and took off running. That was when Kaila called us. While we searched behind the house, someone else checked the dorm. Two boys were missing (one was just overlooked under his mosquito net.) Marki was already suspect, but when he showed up unexpectedly and without reason and hermano Mamerto’s house, he appeared barefoot and very serious. Meanwhile, Juaquin, Max, and I found his chanelas behind Kaila’s house, and that was the clincher.

We had another fire today. Ruan was burning the chaco just up the driveway, and the blaze started to get away from him. Mamerto, Gabriel, the boys and I came to the rescue, cut and wetted a line through the chest-high grass, and steered the fire away from Enrique’s house toward the creek. It burned quite a large area, but we saved the nearby banana trees and pineapple patch. With the fire out, we all went back to what we were doing before, only to see smoke billowing up a few minutes later. Some smoldering logs along our firebreak had burned like fuses, bridging the line to ignite the grass and call us back to the fight. Why is it that destructive fires are so tenacious, but the light of a candle is so easily snuffed out?

8-25. After class this morning, Ruan and I had a talk with Marki. Usually it would be the whold Ad. Committee that would talk to him, but most of them are gone today. Ruan is feeling bad because he’s spent the whole morning dealing with Rodolfo and Paulina’s parents who arrived last night to visit their kids and ask for a mountain of things including rice and a guitar (the latter which we could not give them, of course. But I guess they figured, “you have not because you ask not”). Ruan finally got them taken care of, only to have the Marki situation to deal with, and no ad-council members to support him. Kaila would be a good one to talk to him if not for the fact that she was one of his victims and he couldn’t bear to face her. So I told Ruan I would be happy to try to help him. Kaila, Ruan, Helen, and I had a prayer together, asked God for wisdom and the right words to say, and reminded ourselves that this is God’s school and Marki is God’s child. Then we went down to have the talk…

“What do you think we should do?” Ruan asked him.

“I want to leave,” he said. “I want to start over new.”

“What do you mean when you say ‘I want to start over new’” I asked.

“Go somewhere else” he said.

“And what happens next time you have the same problem? Will you go somewhere else again? Run away from your problems? You know that’s not the way to start new. The only way to truly have a new start is to realize what you did was wrong, feel sorry you did it, and ask for forgiveness, first of those you have wronged, and then from God. That is the first step in starting new.”

The anguish on his face was evident as I talked. I could see his pride fighting the conviction. “Lord, please give him the desire and the courage to make things right!” I prayed silently.

“Of course, it has to be your choice” I continued. “We can’t, nor do we want to force you, but you do need to know that whether you go or stay, that first step to start anew is the same.”

“Just know that we care about you, and we want to help you work through this” Ruan said.

I know God gave us the words to say, just as we had prayed.

Still, Marki remained intent on going home, and he could not bring himself to make things right before he left. With the whole ongoing Luzmar fiasco, we knew we couldn’t just let Marki go home by himself, especially since he is still a minor. Ruan asked me if I would make the 20 hour bus ride to Rurrenebaque where Marki’s father Carlos lives. I didn’t particularly want to, but someone had to do it, so I said “why not?” Besides, I’d get to see more of the country and have a chance to catch up on my writing. My trip there and back is another whole story, but I’ll just say that God really blessed and worked everything out. We missed our bus when it went past the school Tuesday morning, but after waiting about ten minutes at the end of the school driveway we got a free ride on a pickup truck to Riberalta where the bus stops again, and from there we booked passage to Rurre. Ruan had given me money for the bus fare, and said it should cost 120 b each, but they ended up charging us 140 ($20). Marki said it was “Gringo tax.” On my return trip when I was by myself, however, I got my ticket for the normal rate, so apparently the original rip-off was thanks to Marki con su cara tan de gringo.

Right after getting on the bus, another passenger who was arranging his luggage handed a notebook to Marki to hold onto for him. I glanced down to see that the front cover was plastered with a scantily clad woman. Marki quickly turned it over, looking embarrassed. “Tentación” he said. It made for a good segue into a conversation about the importance of guarding our thoughts.

We arrived at 11:40 pm in Rurrenebaque. Ruan was never able to contact Carlos and let him know his son was coming home, but he seemed to take it all in stride. Fortunately, Ruan was able to talk to Jerry, one of the volunteers at Rurre, and when I called Familia Feliz to let them know I was in town, Jerry was already on his way to pick me up. Originally, I had thought I would stay at Familia Feliz for a day or two, since the kids had off this last weekend and there were no classes anyway. Also, the bus for Guayara leaves Rurre early in the morning, and since I hadn’t gotten to bed until after 1:00 the night before, I wanted to sleep in a little. But when Jerry called from Rurre and said there was another bus that was leaving in half an hour, for some reason I felt like I should go. At the time, I thought it was because I needed to get back and work on the paperwork for my residency. It is 13 km of rough, muddy road between Familia Feliz and Rurre, and about halfway there I realized that there was no way I’d make it there in time. “Oh well, I guess I’ll stay here another day like I originally planned” I thought. But as we rolled into town, there was the bus, stopped on the side of the road as if it were waiting for me. Twenty-two hours of mud-holes and washboard later, I made it back to the school, just in time to come to town and work on getting my papers. Now here I am, still “working” on my papers. The first step was to get some pictures taken and send them along with a copy of my passport to Santa Cruz to get an Interpol background-check from the international police. I’ve sent for it twice already, and still no luck. Until I get that, I can’t really do anything else except pay the $2/day fine for my expired visa. It’s not just me that is having visa problems either. There are four or five of us right now who are all having the same problem.

Anyway, there is still more I have to share, but I’m running out of time. I just want to ask for your continued prayers. I’ve already seen God at work, using these trials to bring the staff and students closer together and closer to Him. I know that as we continue to seek Him, God will use all these trials to strengthen our faith and to bring honor and glory to His name.

Que Dios nestro Padre y el Señor Jesucrsito les concedan gracia y paz.

Water, Smoke and Fire

The highway out to the school cuts through the jungle like the Israelites’ path through the red sea. Passing traffic paints the trees a brownish-orange that makes them look dead, but in a growing death that closes in over the road to block out the sun and hinder the passing traffic.

How easy to be like one of those trees, planted just outside of the way, pretending to be dead to the world while underneath the self is all alive. Fortunately, there are other trees I saw, stripped of foliage, standing straight as arrows toward the sky, at the top of each a knot like a fist, from which protrudes a single branch, like a finger pointing to heaven.

Last week we were having a problem with the water system, so I climbed the water tower to look in the tank and watch the water level as Mr. Clint tested the different valves. At the top of the tower he boosted me up onto the tank where I removed the cover and looked down into 5000 liters that rippled behind my reflection, oscillating between concave and convex distortions of myself. And I thought, that same substance sloshes in my heart and head, so how can I avoid such instability? That shifting aqua-map of me is perhaps more accurate in its uncertainties than any glass mirror that shows me clear, steady, and better looking. But the most accurate picture of me is the one that God presents in His Holy Scriptures. I am created in His image and bought with His blood. I am worth the existence of worlds, galaxies, the very life of the Creator who sustains everything. And all of this despite the fact that I am a sinner, a transgressor of the Holy Law with a stone-hard heart and a head that’s thick between the ears, a dirty-dog of a wretch who deserves to die and be lost in the dust of the eternal ages.

But here I am, gracias a Dios. I wish I could share everything with you. A lot has happened in the last week and a half.

All the walls on the girls dorm are up, all 24,000 bricks of them. The construction was well organized, everyone had their appointed duty. The students and the volunteer group from Texas all worked hard, and we did in five days what we had projected would take seven.

As I was mixing mortar for the bricklayers on Tuesday, I heard the crackle of burning foliage and looked behind the dorm to see a large column of smoke rising. Whoever had been assigned to burn trash had let the fire get away from them. Someone shouted to bring water and shovels. The fire was moving away from the dorm and toward our water tower that supplies the entire campus. It had already melted a hole in part of the two-inch main line, right next to an uncovered valve, and water was shooting out in a wasted geyser that was of no help to us, as the fire had already moved on to some thick grass and small trees. I thanked God we weren’t in California as we beat down the fire with our shovels. Ruan brought a hose, and we were able to extinguish the fire right before it reached the water tower.

After work in the evenings, we held a short series of meetings in the nearby village of Yata. One of the volunteers from the group is a young doctor from Mexico, and she preached from the book of Daniel. On Sabbath we had church in the campus chapel. There are several families that come from Yata. Every Sabbath afternoon we go there with the students and go door to door visiting families, singing hymns, and sharing the Word.

The missionary group is gone now, and classes have resumed. My teaching schedule is actually not too heavy, but I am also a work supervisor, pathfinder counselor (for our new club) and half-time boy’s dean. A good share of time also has to be devoted to activities that take a matter of minutes back stateside. For example, after my morning class yesterday, I carried in a couple 20-liter jugs of drinking water from our natural spring about half a kilometer behind the school. Washing laundry in the creek followed, and later I went to help cut lumber in the jungle. Remind me to tell you more about that later. I’ll just say, I thought of David Livingston and other missionary pioneers who hauled their stuff for thousands of kilometers over jungle trails, and I wondered how in the world they ever did it.

I worked with the voice choir for the first time yesterday. Many of them are having trouble matching a pitch, and so I worked with them one at a time at the keyboard, singing along with them until they could match my note. I saw a little progress, which was encouraging. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I think it will be fun. We also talked about proper breathing technique, and I had them practice inhaling and exhaling using their diaphragms.

On Sunday we suffered an unexpected and painful blow. We had to expel four students (two couples) for sneaking out of the dorm and meeting down by the creek. Apparently it wasn’t the first time they’ve done this. Worst of all, two of them were our only 4^th year students, leaders in the school who have been here since they were freshmen. (They were the only students left at the school who I knew from last time I was down here.) The whole process took most of Sunday. It has been very difficult for the school, but God is good, and I think everything will turn out to His honor and glory. Please pray for the students who had to leave, that they can learn from the experience and won’t turn their backs on everything they’ve learned.

Waiting...and more waiting

I’m still waiting in Santa Cruz. Patience and longsuffering are usually the first fruits to get plucked when one is a missionary. Last night a sur blew in, one of these storms that sweep up from the south, bringing wind, rain, and colder weather, and complicating life in general, including the movements of small aircraft. The plane that was supposed to take me to the school is stuck in Rurrenabaque to the northwest, waiting for the storm to pass, so it looks like the soonest I’ll be able to fly out will probably be Tuesday morning early. My other option is to take a bus to Trinidad and get a commercial flight from there, but I have no guarantee that they are flying right now either. So here I am waiting and asking God to grow me some more patience. I hope that the current slug-like operation of my computer is not supposed to be the answer to that prayer.*

On Friday I rode with Jeff Sutton, the aviation director, out to the property for the new TV station and sanitarium. It is a beautiful and sizable plot of pastureland just south of Santa Cruz toward La Guardia. They had just gotten the pump going on the well, using a diesel generator. The only structure they’ve started building so far is the guardhouse, but they are beginning to collect materials for the station facilities. I was able to see and visit with Luis Alfredo, Victor, Elizabeth, and Carina, some of my students from the last time I was here. They are now graduated and either working or studying here in Santa Cruz.

En sabado we went to church in Barrio Lindo, which means beautiful neighborhood, and the garden in front with its cypress and lilies and pristine shrubberies seemed to validate the name. As is typical, however, the compound walls are topped with razor wire and broken glass, which I hope is not symbolically significant.

Sometimes one can learn from the simplest things. On our way to church yesterday I noticed a number of people working in the street. Some washed the windshields of the taxis, some sold oranges, crackers, picolé, or newspapers, while others rode unicycles and juggled batons in front of stopped traffic at an intersection. They don’t wait around for some grand work, something that seems important. They take what they have, go out in the street, and make the most of it. Jeff told me they can actually make decent money that way.

In the afternoon we went to visit a grandma from the church named Fructuosa. She is dying of cancer, yet she was happy to have a house full of visitors. Her daughter was there, and she showed us a beautiful tablecloth her mother had just finished making. “When she is hurting she just sews faster,” she explained, going on to share that when the pain is the greatest is when she sings the loudest. Grandma shrugged and said simply, “the hymns are a great comfort.” And so we sang. I played their little electronic keyboard with no pedal that sounds like a kid’s toy in the aisle at Walmart, and she was thrilled.

In the back was a beautiful patio and fruit trees that she had planted, but she mentioned nothing of this to us. She was much more happy about Veronica, the young woman sitting by her side who she met in the park and brought to the Lord.

When we left, she asked if I would come back. “I hope so,” I said. “That’s a good answer” she replied.

This morning I helped Jeff and his wife Fawna and their two little girls move from their apartment next to the TV station here in town to a house outside of the city. It took two trips in the van, and Jeff and Fawna both commented on how annoyingly easy it is to accumulate stuff.

On my way to help them, about a block from their house, I was hailed by what looked like a taxi, and I thought, this is backwards. There was a driver and an old man in the back wearing glasses. “We are with the national police” the driver said, and leaned across to show me his ID. “Here, look at it” he seemed proud, though to me it seemed hecho en casa. “We just have some questions for you because there a lot of people carrying false passports and papers around here lately” he said. Yeah, and you’re one to talk I thought. “Do you have your passport?” he asked.

“No, I don’t carry it because it’s not safe. A lot of people get robbed,” I said, thinking of all the stories I’ve already heard from the Suttons and the other volunteers, most of whom had been accosted at least once during their stay here, one even as close to the station as the front gate.

“That’s okay,” he said “where are you staying? What hotel?”

“Ninguno” I said. “Me quedo con amigos no más.”

“Where?” he wanted to know. I made a vague motion with my hand. “Can you show us?”

“Mejor que no” I told him. “If there is a problem, give me a telephone number where I can call you.” I kept waiting for him to pull out an arma and tell me to get in the car, or at least to give them everything I had, which was only 14 bolivianos (not even $3.00) but he just smiled.

“No, that’s okay.” He said. “We’re just asking,” and he motioned for me to go.

That’s about all the adventure I’ve had so far. It’s so much more fun this time around to be able to communicate more with the people. I’ve also been able to visit with Victor, Luis Alfredo, Carina, and Elizabeth, four of my students from 2006 when I was here last. I asked the Lord to give me an opportunity to be a blessing here and not just be sitting around waiting, and so I’ve kept busy enough. Today I helped one of the brothers with some maintenance projects at another volunteer’s apartment. And the good news is that they just told me not to buy a bus ticket because I’ll have a flight out tomorrow!

*P.S. 8/3 My computer was so bad I couldn’t even finish this or send it yesterday. I couldn’t do anything. I would click on an application and have to wait five minutes for a response. I tried restarting the computer a few times, among other things, but nothing worked. I told Eliazer, one of the volunteer technicians here, that my computer was slower than a tortoise with its legs cut off, and he was kind enough to help me clean up my hard drive and my computer is doing MUCH better now.