Finale


4/6/22

I guess this is the last month here… wow.

 

April has just begun here. School is still grinding along. I am becoming more and more accustomed to the routine.

 

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I had to sign up for classes last week and it snapped me back to my reality that I have school starting this summer and that I won’t be here forever. Every day, no matter how tired or homesick I am, I pray that God would give me the energy to finish off the year strong, to be present, and give these kids what they deserve. And without fail, he has always miraculously supplied it. It’s weird, sometimes I feel like the more I relish the present, the more it feels like I’m looking back at the past. Almost like I’m anticipating my memories…

 

4/26/22

I have about 9 days left! I can’t believe it. It feels like so much time has passed, but also like I just arrived last week. I have bittersweet feelings about leaving, things I’m still processing. While I am a little homesick and I’m missing the way of life back home (don’t get me started on those chickfila runs late at night), I’m also going to miss all the kids here. It’s hard to think that this chapter in my life is ending, and I will never be able to interact in this precious time of their childhood ever again.

 

While I have had super hard points here, I have also learned to love and thrive in this niche. I know that life will never be as simple as it is now. I wake up, make breakfast, teach classes, prepare for the next school day, hang out with the kids in the afternoon, sleep, and then do it all over again the next day. There is barely any cell service here at Familia Feliz, so I also feel very out of touch with recent news, family, and friends. It is nice in a way to have a valid excuse to check out and only care about your current situation, but I also almost feel like I’m stuck in the past and the rest of the world has moved on without me. With summer plans around the corner, I am remembering what life used to be like in the states. And it’s already stressing me out! I am going to miss the quiet life here.

 

We had Día del Niño a couple weeks ago. It’s a national holiday that celebrates the specialness and preciousness of children. Legally as a school, we are required to do something for it. But I think we would have done it regardless. It was fun in and of itself just planning it! We had rotating field games, cake, water balloons, and a big slip-and-slide. The kids absolutely loved it. Then in the afternoon my kids and I went to the river nearby. Each kid found something to keep themselves occupied, whether making little rock dams or catching tiny fish with an old mosquito net. After a fun couple hours, we sauntered back to the house all wet and sandy in the light of the welcoming yellow afternoon sun shining through the trees. Rolando, the three-year-old boy in our house, held onto my index finger with his chubby little hands as he relied heavily onto me for balance. The older girls and I were laughing, making little jokes on the way back… it made me feel so… soul nourished. It's these moments that make me really enjoy my time and my life here.

 

4/30/22

Four more days here… what!

 

I’ve been here for nearly nine months (well, eight I guess if you don’t count the vacation time). When I was first thinking about coming here, I was a bit scared about not knowing much Spanish. I called a friend who had been a student missionary here a couple years prior who hadn’t known Spanish before she came down here. She told me that by the time she left Bolivia, she considered herself almost fluent. “ALMOST?!” I remember thinking. I thought that surely after so much time immersed in Spanish you would be well above that level. Well, after being here, I will just say that she is very talented, and I am impressed. I thought that I would be so much better at Spanish after this many months, but to be honest, I still feel very much a beginner. I usually ask people to repeat themselves or just nod and smile (when I honestly have no idea what they are saying). While I do feel like I have increased my level of understanding a lot, I think I would need to stay here another year or two to fully grasp the language better.

 

5/2/2022

I have this shirt I bought a couple years ago. It’s from a Christian company called Ragamuffin Co. (now renamed Gladhat) that I have been a fan and customer of for a while. It’s white and has big green letters on the back, “you matter to me.” I love shirts like these because it’s such a powerful message, yet so simple that anyone can read it and feel touched. For example, my sister once wore it to the grocery store, and someone actually came up to her saying that it really impacted their heart. However, I was quite apprehensive to wear it around school last year. Sometimes I would see the shirt in my closet and think, “that’s cute, but I woke up in a bad mood today” or “I’m too stressed from school right now. I won’t be able to show the message of the shirt with my actions.” So, I left it to collect dust in the dark wardrobe. It was a little bit of a wakeup call for my conscience though. How can I call myself a Christian that shows Christ’s love to everyone but only on the days that are convenient for me? Jesus always made time for others, no matter how tired or annoyed or burnt out He was, because God the Father was with Him.

 

Fast forward to when I went home for vacation. I received a really awesome shirt as a gift for Christmas from the same company. The shirt is light yellow and has the words “you are loved” on the front with a little mountain doodle. Once again, I felt the apprehension rise in my chest. Why did I feel that this was a controversial message to wear out? I felt that I needed to take a leap in faith and just wear it, no matter how I was feeling and just pray for God to change my heart. When I was packing up to go back to Bolivia to finish out my SM year, I felt that I needed to bring this shirt with me. I was against it at first because everything I brought to Bolivia before was thoroughly destroyed by either the intense hand washing, the bleaching sun, or the stains from all my kids. But I felt that it would also be the perfect shirt to wear as a student missionary. One, to remind myself of why I am here but also as a sort of evangelism when the kids would ask me what my shirt says. So, I brought it down with me. The first time I wore it, I was careful not to get it dirty and put it gently in the hamper to wash the next day. But when I took it out the next day, I kid you not, there were several brown/red stains all over it. How in the world did they get there? It wasn’t stained when I put it in the hamper! I tried vigorously to scrub out the stains using soap and bleach, but they wouldn’t budge. “Well, it is what it is,” I conceded. After a couple more incidences like this, it suddenly hit me—this is the cost of loving. You get stained.

 

Let me explain. There’s this book that I really like, it’s called Love Does by Bob Goff. It was recommended to me by a good friend, and it actually inspired me to be a student missionary. The whole theme of the book is that to love like Jesus did (and how we were made to) is not by sitting on the couch without lifting a finger towards the needy. You can’t truly love from a distance. You love by rolling up your sleeves and doing the work. To “pick a fight” for the oppressed. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book:

 

I want to pick a fight because I want someone else’s suffering to matter more to me. I want to slug it out where I can make a meaningful difference. God says He wants us to battle injustices, to look out for orphans and widows, to give sacrificially… God wants us to get some skin in the game and to help make a tangible difference. I can’t make a real need matter to me by listening to the story, visiting the website, collecting information, or wearing a bracelet about it. I need to pick the fight myself… then, most important of all, I need to run barefoot towards it… because it’s holy ground and because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference. That’s what love does… Picking a fight isn’t neat either. It’s messy, it’s time consuming, it’s painful, and it’s costly. It sounds an awful lot like the kind of fight Jesus took on for us when He called out death for us and won (Goff, 195).

 

This is why I think it’s perfect that the shirt that proclaims "you are loved" is stained. You can’t love without getting a little dirty.

 

5/3/22

Ahhh! I’m going to miss my kids so much. It’s really the little things. For example, this girl Milenca is one of the closest girls I am with. She is always finding me and starting fun conversations with “can I tell you something?” Her questions aren’t super profound, but they are packed with beautiful childish curiosity, like “why is your hair curly?” or “how come your nose looks so big?”

I am really going to miss her.

 

A couple things just happened a few minutes ago that made me smile. While making hot chocolate on a cold, wet, and windy day, I spotted Maribel, one of the older girls, walking across the backyard with something white and plasticky sticking out of her shoes. She had put some trash bags around her feet and then stuck them in her shoes so as to not get her feet wet. Her face was as serious as could be though, as if this was a normal thing to do. I laughed to myself and told her “te quiero” when she got closer. “Why?” she responded. “Because you’re Maribel!” We hugged.

 

I have this wonderful kid in class, her name is Yamile. She isn’t my brightest student, but she’s a hard worker, fast learner, and loves to learn. While I don’t normally give homework in class, she still takes the in-class work to do at home. While I was making hot chocolate, she came up to me and asked if she could use the calculator on my phone to check her math answers (not for cheating I hoped). While I finished up what I was doing on my phone, we warmed our hands together above the gas fire stove, laughing about how our little arm hairs smelled a little burnt. After I gave her the phone, she skipped away to do her homework. A few minutes later, I walked into the living room where Yamile and a few other girls were crowded over the “magical” calculator as she checked her answers. It was so cute and wholesome.

 

Friday night vespers are some of my favorite times. All the kids clean up and wear their best and stroll over to the church to sing some spirited, albeit off tune, praises to the Lord. After the sermon and some more hymns, each house takes turns saying “The House of the ____ wishes you a Happy Sabbath!”  Then the whole church vacates within a matter of minutes, kids running back to the house to satiate their hunger with a freshly cooked dinner. The volunteers are usually the slower ones, taking time to greet the other volunteers, talk, and fill their social battery. This last Friday, I was walking out slowly with the other volunteers when I spotted one of the older girls, Jessica, standing at the entrance. I only had her in my house for a temporary bit, but we had a connection based on a lot of jokes and laughter. “Hey what’s up?” I asked. “Can I talk with you?” she said. We walked back to her house holding hands. She started to cry and begged me not to leave. All I could do was hug her and tell her how much she is loved. I felt really touched, because it felt like she really liked me, even though we didn’t have that much contact. It made me realize that sometimes even when it feels like you’re not making a difference, you really are. Even your presence makes an impact. It also broke my heart a little bit. I get to leave on a flight out of Bolivia, whereas she doesn’t have that option. Like all the kids here, she just gets tossed around from one caregiver to another because she’s an unwanted minor. It doesn’t seem fair, and I don’t know what to do about it. But I am glad they are at Familia Feliz, getting the best care that they can right now. It is far better than whatever situations they came from to be sure… 

 

5/5/22

The last day. The SMs woke up early to finish packing and get on the bus to the town’s airport (recently opened, thank God; no more death road!). All the kids groggily mozied out of their houses to say the final goodbyes. We were in a time crunch to make our flight, but I managed to squeeze in some pictures and lots of hugs. I really didn’t think I would cry, but it was when I hugged Jessica (the older girl who waited for me at church) when I actually started to cry. After that though, there was no stopping the water works, even the entire flight back to La Paz.

 

This mission year has come to an end. It’s actually in the past now. I’ve been writing here to keep a record of how I have changed as a person, and to inform my friends and family of how things are going here. I hope it has been as fun for you to read as it has been to write it. Thanks for virtually coming along with me on this adventure. I will miss Familia Feliz, the children, and the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. But I will also miss the “Familia Feliz” version of Kristen that was born out of the crushing and pressing of this year. I hope I carry her with me all my life—she’s pretty tough.

 

It’s been a hard year, but it has been the most rewarding one of my life, hands down. It’s been full of learning, growth, change, pain, joy, happiness, and surrender. I wouldn’t take back any of it for the world.

If you feel God’s calling to serve somewhere as a missionary, I encourage you to take a leap of faith. Your life might change forever.


I know the title of my blog is called The Year I Gave to Him, but after all the lessons I've learned and all the experiences I've gained, I think it should more accurately be called The Year He Gave to Me.






The last sabbath. All the student missionaries in one picture--what a treat!

My class playing Uno during recess, one of their favorite games

A quick pic with some of the primary kids. Love them!

Meet my class, the girls of 5th and 6th grade <3. I had so much fun with them this year


Learning about primary and secondary colors with finger painting in Adventurers! 

These boys are the most fun to take silly, spontaneous selfies with 

This girl never fails to give me the biggest hugs. I miss her already

Yummy mud pies my kids made me for my "birthday." They even sang me the birthday song too!

Wheelbarrow races for Día del Niño. There was so much laughter this day. 

Little Ruby hides behind me as I take a picture of the cat face painting she did on me.

The very last day at La Casa de Las Lilas. Don't zoom up too much on my red, puffy face... 









Thanks for reading! Much love <3









Citations

Goff, Bob. “Skin In The Game.” Love Does, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN, 2014, pp. 195–196.



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