Lemons

This has been a very sad week. First of all, my mom is very sick. She has not gotten sick for years, but this week she really got hit. We're thinking its bronchitis or something worse. I hate watching my mom suffer.
For the past few weeks, my grandma has been having health issues, and she went into the hospital earlier this week for surgery. After the surgery, she got some sort of infection and her health just went downhill for a couple days, and last night she passed away. Thankfully, I got to see her in the hospital before the surgery, and I also got to spend a couple hours there last night before she died, along with most of my extended family.
Later I found out that my mom's uncle also died today. His health has been bad for a while now.
Since my mom is sick, she called in to say she couldn't work, but they could not get a replacement for her so she had to work anyway. She didn't feel like driving, so I took her to Bellingham, as she coughed her lungs out and sounded awful. A couple minutes down the Guide Meridian, a policeman pulled me over....I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. Wonderful. I thought since this is the first time I have ever gotten pulled over, maybe he would give me a warning or something. But no, 124 dollar ticket. Is it just me or does it seem like policemen are just out to ruin people's day? Maybe they measure how well they did their job each day by seeing how many people they could get to cry, or how miserable they could make someone's life. Who doesn't get at least a slight feeling of dread when they see those awful blue and white cars.
Later at the doctor's office, I was in the car waiting for my mom, and I turned on her music, Roger Whitaker singing "Life throws you a lot of lemons, you've got to learn how to make lemonade or you'll be sour all your days." (I love my mom's oldies). Yep, this week has been very lemon-y. I guess I need to learn to make lemonade.

Thian

This week I got to meet Thian, who is a refugee from Burma living in Spokane. She came here with World Relief about a month ago. I signed up to volunteer at World Relief a couple weeks ago and now I got matched up with her just to help with stuff like setting up a bank account and getting a library card and things like that. I'm really excited about it, and I got to meet her for the first time on Thursday. We were going to get together today but something else came up for her so we'll get together next week instead. It will be fun to get to know someone outside of my normal circles at Whitworth and someone with a really different background. I will also probably learn more about Spokane in the process too.

Nostalgia

Last night as I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, I heard a dog barking outside and something about it just made me happy. It brought me back to my childhood because that's what I used to listen to every night when I would go to sleep. That and the distant cumbia music of chicherias playing until early morning hours. Those sounds were annoying to some people but they make me feel at home. As I lay there in bed, I started thinking about the other sounds of home for me. There's the clanging metal sound of the garafa truck and the trash truck letting the neighborhood know to bring out their trash or garafas. If we were in the city, there was the fruit vendor's nasally ..."naranja-mandarina-durazno-limoooon...naranja-mandarina-durazon-limoooon". And the trufis..."Villa Adela Villa Adela Villa Adelaaaa" And of course the endless chorus of honking buses and taxis. Funny how some random things can make you so nostalgic for home. The streets in the US are so strangely quiet.
Its not only the sounds of city life in Bolivia that make life there so much more interesting, but also just the unpredictability of every day life. You never know when the roads will be blockaded or when half the city will go on strike. Maybe you'll end up having to drive through a steep rocky riverbed in order to get home because the roads are full of protestors. Maybe you'll get caught in the middle of tear gas being shot off in downtown La Paz, maybe you won't be able to leave your house for several days...
Life is unpredictable.
To me, there's something appealing about the craziness of life in Bolivia. I know that Bolivia's social unrest is not something to be envied. Its more just the fact that the unexpected is expected, and simply going out into the streets of the city can be an adventure on any given day.

Lessons from Vintage

Ever since coming to Whitworth I've been going to Vintage Faith Community Church. Being a part of Vintage has probably been the most important and most wonderful thing about living here so far. Every single Sunday God challenges me again and my experience usually goes the same way every time. First, God uses Steve's sermons to make me painfully aware of the utter hopelessness of my cause without a savior. He brings up my most sensitive, most hidden sin and presses on it kind of like those deep tissue massages which I have never experienced by sound extremely painful. Just when I feel that I can't handle it any more, I feel the incredible immensity of God's grace pouring out on that sensitive sin and for a moment I am just awed at God's incomprehensible love for such an unworthy person as me. Being able to stand on Jesus' righteousness instead of my own is the most freeing and wonderful feeling I could imagine. And I worship God, truly from my heart. But soon I start thinking about what the people behind me will think if I raise my hands when I worship. They will think I'm a good Christian, right? Oh and maybe that person over there will notice me because I'm being so humble about my sin. The fact that these thoughts have run through my mind disgusts me. My sin really is everywhere. When I worship, there is sin. My thoughts and my desires and my motives are all polluted by the nasty sin that tries to destroy me. BUT praise God because there is absolutely nothing in me that can save me from hell and absolutely everything in Jesus that can save me from hell. The depth of God's love is greater than I can possibly know and for that I can do nothing but worship and adore him.