.y algunas mas.

We spent a whole morning this week baking bread. The smell of bread dough is such a happy smell. There´s a huge bowl of it that everyone digs into, pulls out handfuls, and you cup your hand in a very specific motion (which I have had taught to me 800 times and apparently still do it wrong) and roll it into a floury ball. Mmm.

One of the girls, post flour-fight :-), comes up to Lauren with her white powdery face: "Look, I´m from your country!!".

My potato peeling skills are coming back in spades. Heck yes. All in one strip baby. And that is called living in Bolivia.

I went with Hermana Tomi, one of the girls, and her 4-month-old to the baby´s doctor´s appointment. I carried the baby in a sling Bolivian-style the whole time. Loved it.

Did I mention pineapple off the street here rocks? It does.

I loved visiting my host parents last weekend (a post in and of itself): but I LOVE living at the house. It is much less stressful to be centered in one place for me.


"when i am afraid, i put my trust in You; in God, whose Word i praise; in God i trust, i shall not be afraid."I love that passage and have journaled it a bunch recently. I was thinking about it a few days ago in relation to my own life and fears; which was important and great. But I thought about it in a different way when one of the girls was scared to get into bed because she thought someone could get in the house.

I rocked a three-week old baby to sleep the other day. I prayed out loud over him, reading from a Spanish Bible one of my favorite passages to pray for someone, from Ephesians 1: "Le pido al Dios de nuestro Señor Jesucristo, es decir, al Padre maravilloso, que les dé su Espíritu, para que sean sabios y puedan entender cómo es Dios. También le pido a Dios que les haga comprender con claridad el gran valor de la esperanza a la que han sido llamados, y de la salvación que él ha dado a los que son suyos. Pido también que entiendan bien el gran poder con que Dios nos ayuda en todo." "I ask that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe."

I went to visit el Centro de Motivacion yesterday. That´s the first step of the Mosoj Yan process- it´s a day drop-in center for girls who are still living on the streets. They can come in, get lunch, a shower, do a craft, nap... there are Bible studies, art projects, a psychologist... and the staff just love on them, and talk to them about Mosoj Yan and explain that if they want to take the next step to change their life they can work on moving into one of the other centers (which involves rules and a basic commitment to following them, hence why some girls don´t want to).
I spent some time there at the end of my time in 09, and I interviewed girls there for my independent study, but I haven´t spent a ton of time there. But yesterday I had the same deep feeling in my heart and my gut that I always got when I was there last time too... there is just something so special about that center and those girls. That staff is in it. In it, in it, in it. We have girls (and I do mean girls, as in, 10-16 years old) who come in, hang out all day, then head for the bathroom mirror to do their faces up and go back out to work the streets. Yesterday I sat in the living room with them watching a movie as three of the girls slept on mats on the floor. They are dirty, I mean literally, there is dirt on their skin and faces. They have nowhere to go. They have no one. When they leave they go sleep under a bridge. No one knows where they are. Fourteen years old. I looked at one of them and just thought about myself at 14... and how many needs for safety and parenting I had (have!), and how different our lives are. I prayed and prayed but what is there to say?
The staff there are amazing. They love them and hug them and talk to them and find out their stories and make them feel welcome. They pray and pray and pray over them.
They (the staff) go out on the streets at night and early in the mornings- I´ve been before, once, out when they go searching for girls. They get to know the groups of kids at the different corners. The kids feel known by them. They just head out, talk to them, search for them, invite them to come, hug them and call them by name.
If I were coming back I think I´d want to spend more of my time with the Motivacion team and getting to know their work.

I´m going to be really sad to leave.