Please pray...

Hi Everyone,


It's late and I have to be up at 6:30 AM to head to the airport with our intern who's headed back to Canada...so this is going to be short. We're coming under some serious spiritual attack the past couple of days. It's been crazy. It's really affecting one of the guys especially. It's like he's had a personality change and his heart is definitely hardened right now. If you could pray for this young guy and for us in general, we really need it. Please pray for protection and for spiritual victory for us, as well as wisdom for me.

Thanks guys. I'll update you soon. As a side note, we still haven't heard anything about the truck. I'll let you know as soon as I hear something.

Thanks again for praying.

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Another close call...

Well...how about another story of God's amazing protection.  They just keep coming. 

One of the guys we work with (who doesn't live with us) was visiting the house today.  After hanging out for the day, he took off about six or so to head back to the room he rents.  About a half hour later, two of our guys returned home looking very somber and sad.  In all honesty I wasn't paying all that much attention since I was reheating Andres' lunch and complaining that someone ate a hard boiled egg that I was saving for him.  It was Pique Macho...it needed a hard boiled egg.

Anyhow, one of the guys asked if he could talk to me.  If I tell you the next part, you have to promise not to laugh.  Yea...I'm holding you to that.  As this guy took me aside to talk to me, I actually thought he was going to confess to eating the egg.  I'd been kind of ranting about it...

But as I looked at him, I could tell that something was upsetting him.  As it turned out, as he and the other guy were walking home, they saw our other friend.  As a joke, they ran towards him like they were after him.  Unfortunately, in the dark our friend didn't realize who they were and turned and started to run across the road thinking they were after him.  He ran straight in front of an oncoming car.  The car hit him and flipped him up over the hood into the windshield.  The last our guys knew, the driver was taking our other friend to the hospital.

At first I was like, "Whoa, why didn't you tell me this sooner?  We need to go see what's going on!"  But then this young guy started crying and shaking and I realized how upset he was.  He thought it was all his fault.  So we took a moment to pray and then he and I and Andres headed to the hospital.

So...if you're going to get hit by a car, it's probably a good thing to get hit by someone who's father's a doctor and the head of one of the hospitals in the city.  By the time we got to the hospital, the driver's father (the doctor) was there and checking everything out.  He took us to go get x-rays and make sure that nothing was broken (there wasn't).  Our friend was in a lot of pain but it seemed to just be from the impact.  There was no internal bleeding or, as I said, broken bones.  Amazing really. 

The funniest part was, when this doctor found out that we were Christians he had all kinds of questions for us.  Our young friend was sitting in the front seat (as we drove to another hospital for x-rays) and through his grimaces of pain, was explaining communion, baptism, what kind of church we went to...how it was different from Catholic churches...that we did, in fact, eat meat.  That was a relief to our doctor friend since he was orginally from Argentina (where they're famous for their beef) and he wanted to do a big BBQ for us.  It was all quite entertaining to me. 

The family was really upset (the girlfriend and mother showed up eventually) and doing all they could to help.  The fellow who had been driving was running around talking to doctors and even bought a bottle of pop for us to drink.  His father tried to set me up with one of the nurses at the hospital and was telling her (in front of everyone) that the gringo was single and that she and I should trade numbers and get to know each other better.  Yea...

At any rate, our friend will be spending the night in the hospital.  I'm going to head back there in the morning to see how he is.  I'm going to suggest (strongly) that he should be staying with us for a few days until he feels better.  When we left he was still pretty sore, but I think the pain medication was starting to work.  He was cracking jokes and being his usual funny self. 

Once again, thanks to God for His protection and mercy.  We're two for two.  =)  Thanks for praying everyone!
 
PS...I'll have an update on the truck as soon as I hear something.  =)

UPDATE:  Our friend is back in the house this morning and doing fine.  He's limping and in a bit of pain, but he's much, MUCH better today.  He's making jokes and telling me that the doctor told him that he needs people to take care of him and bring him pizza and pop, etc... 

So yea...I think he'll live.
  

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The next day...

Here are a few more pictures from the next day and a video of me explaining the accident.  The last part of the video is the tow truck winching the truck back onto the highway.  I still say that pictures and video really don't capture the craziness of this mountain.  It was stupidly steep.

Also...when you hear me puffing in the video keep in mind that we're up over 4000 metres.  That's above the tree line.  That's my excuse anyhow.  It was hard going...

The wind noise gets a bit loud near the end as well.  I guess the other thing to keep in mind was that we were basically going highway speed when we went off the edge.  Yimy had braked a bit, but not much...

Some of the damage....

Driver's side...

The big pile of rocks in front of the truck.

One of the tow truck guys rappelling down to the truck.

Winching the truck up the hill.

Some llamas down in the valley...

At the top...

One of the police officers.

You can kind of see in this picture why it was so scary.

It dropped right off and we couldn't see 

anything that was coming...

Back on the road.

The video...

   And now onto other news...

    

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Accident in the Andes Mountains...

"I'm writing this from my truck, at 2 AM in the morning, while perched two hundred feet down from the highway on the side of a cliff in the middle of the Bolivian Andes Mountains.  I know my life gets crazy sometimes, but I'm pretty sure I never expected to write those words!"

Those were the first sentences of a blog post I wrote while waiting for a tow truck to come haul my butt (and my truck's) back up onto the main road...which we'd left rather unexpectedly about eight hours earlier.  "Perched" and "cliff" were probably a bit of an exaggeration, but for sure I wasn't sitting where any normal thinking sane person would want to park their truck.  

So what happened exactly?  Well...

We've had a couple of Canadian gringo boys interning with us for the past four months.  Since their time here was winding up, we thought we'd do a road trip up to Cochabamba and then on to La Paz.  It would be an opportunity for the guys to see a bit of Bolivia and experience a part of the culture here that they hadn't seen yet.  My friend Amy joined us in Coch for the La Paz part of the trip, and Yimy (one of the guys from the house) went along as well to help with the driving.  He'd never been out of Santa Cruz before, so I was excited to show him a bit more of his country.

On our way to Cochabamba, I noticed that the breaks were a bit tough and difficult to push down.  They felt like when you have air in your brake-lines.  While we were in Cochabamba we went to a mechanic to get them checked out.  He bled the brakes (to get rid of any air) and told us he thought they were fine. They seemed okay, so we continued on with our trip.  There was one moment in La Paz when I felt like they had gotten stiff and difficult to push, but then they were fine again.  I just figured I'd get them checked out in Santa Cruz when we got home.

After a very entertaining and enjoyable few days in La Paz (we even went out to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world) we headed back to Cochabamba on Friday afternoon.  The first half of the trip is about as straight and flat a highway as you can get outside of Saskatchewan.  Then you begin to descend down through the mountains into Cochabamba for the last few hours.

Yimy was driving and doing fine.  He's a good driver.  The rest of us were reading and dozing and mostly just relaxing.  Yimy came up on a wide curve, behind a big truck.  The truck was slowing more quickly than Yimy realized at first (we were starting down a long, fairly steep hill) and so he braked more quickly.  Suddenly there was a pop and the brake pedal went right to the floor.  The truck lurched and the brakes failed.

Yimy swung out around the truck and started pumping the breaks.  Had there been no other traffic we would have been fine, but just as we swung out, there was another car right there in the oncoming lane.  We clipped the oncoming car's front end and Yimy lost control of the truck.  The next thing we knew, we were going over the edge.

Now you need to understand something here.  We were in the Andes Mountains.  They're big.  I mean...really, REALLY big!  They make most mountains in North America look like foothills.  To give you an idea, the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies is Mount Robson at 3954 metres.  When we had our accident we were well over 4000 metres.  So...yea...high...

Another thing, most places along this highway are pretty much straight up on one side and straight down on the other.  So when we went over the edge, we had no idea what was coming.  It turned out not to be straight down (obviously or I wouldn't be writing this), but it was pretty darn close enough.  Steep enough that it was difficult in places to climb back up and when they eventually hauled the truck out, it was hanging with it's back tires in midair for part of the trip up.

Yimy had the foresight to just keep the truck aimed straight down the mountain.  If he'd tried at any time to steer to one side or the other, we'd have rolled.  At one point we ploughed through a pile of big rocks, so they all started rolling down the hill with us.  There were also a couple of moments where we were not only pointed downhill at a fairly steep angle, we were also tipping to one side.  Michael, who was in the back seat, said that when he looked out his window all he could see was ground.

Eventually we came to a grinding halt and we all started yelling at the same time, "We're okay!  We're okay!"  Even now, as I write that I feel myself get a bit emotional.  It's really amazing to me how God protected us.  Every single person who saw the truck couldn't believe it when we said we all walked away from it.  Even the big, gruff Bolivian police officer who was there said, "Wow, that's a miracle..."

Right away I went around to the driver's side to see how Yimy was.  He started to get out of the truck, but then he kind of stumbled and started to go down.  So I grabbed him and sat him back down in the driver's seat.  He started to shake and cry, so I just prayed with him and kept telling him over and over that it was fine and we were all okay.

Meanwhile, Amy and the guys hiked up to see how the other driver was.  He and his wife were banged up a bit too, but fortunately they were mostly fine.  They were kind of grumpy at first but eventually we all calmed down and I started working on getting in touch with my insurance company and letting people know what had happened.

A couple of things that were cool (and/or funny) in the midst of the crazy...

Literally within seconds of the truck coming to a stop, Amy's cell phone was ringing with friends calling to see how we were.  They didn't know what had happened, but felt like they needed to pray for us.  Later I found out that a number of my friends had been burdened to pray as well.

We really were fine.  Amy got a bit of a cut on her forehead where her sunglasses cut her and my back has been a bit sore...but other than that we're all completely healthy.

When we went over the part where we were angle down and sideways, Amy appropriately yelled out, "Jesus!"  I'm pretty sure that's when everyone we knew started praying.  =)

Fairly quickly after the accident we were laughing and joking.  Even Yimy was laughing once he calmed down a bit.  At around 2 AM he and I were taking funny pictures of us with the truck 'cause we were bored.  Not long after the accident as Michael, Tim and I were looking at where we'd come to rest, Tim made the comment that it was a good thing God's angels had stopped the truck where it did.  I just kind of laughed and said, "God's angels and the entire undercarriage of my truck."  For some reason that made us laugh even harder.

During ride over the edge of the embankment, Tim dropped a straw boat on the floor of the truck that he'd bought up in La Paz.  As the truck careened down the side of the mountain he bent over to pick it up 'cause "...he didn't want it to get broken..."

Eventually the police showed up and we got in contact with my insurance company.  They also sent out someone to see how we were.  Amy and the two gringo guys caught a bus back into Cochabamba and Yimy and I settled in to wait for the tow truck.  We had a good conversation about God's protection and the importance of being in a good place with Him.

Around 2 AM the police decided to leave and take Yimy with them.  They wanted his statement and to make sure he hadn't been drinking.  The last I heard from anyone was that the tow truck would be there in about half an hour.  I was waiting down in the truck and kind of dozing off and on.  2:30 AM came and went and there was no sign of any tow truck.  When the sun eventually came up I hiked back up the hill to discover that the other car was gone and there wasn't a soul in sight.  It was a bit weird.  Finally around noon the tow truck was back and they started the process of hauling the truck up the hill.  I only had to wait 18 hours in the middle of nowhere.  Yea...that was fun...

Now it's just been the joy of dealing with the police and the insurance company and all the bureaucracy that goes along with that.  It's been a tiring few days.  Yimy was helping but had to go back to Santa Cruz for his classes on Wednesday.  My insurance company is still trying to decide if the truck is totaled or not.  It would be in Canada for sure.  But....here?  Maybe not.  Please pray that it is.

The insurance company has also not been very fair to the guy we hit.  He's been great about everything and it makes me feel bad that he's not being treated well.  So already I've ended up having to pay out of my pocket close to $1000.  So...that's kind of grumpy.  And the one other sad thing is that on the way back to the house with all the stuff from my truck, my friend accidentally left my laptop in the taxi.  It wasn't her fault...we were all tired and worn out and had a lot of stuff with us.  But...no more computer either.

All in all...an interesting few days.  Obviously I've been praying a lot about everything.  It's important to me that I keep everything in my life in perspective.  The things I own are just that...things.  I don't want them to control me.  What's important through all of this is, is how faithful God has been in protecting us.

Anyhow....here are a few pictures of the adventure....

A few minutes after the accident...

Looking down the hill towards the truck.  You can see

our tracks here.  Picture don't really do this 

justice on how steep it was...

The truck ended up a couple of hundred 

feet down from the highway.

What we were headed for...

Where we just came from...

Some of the damage...

Another shot of the truck...

Looking up the hill from the truck...

Yimy and I waiting in the truck (in the freezing cold) 

for the tow truck to arrive...

We got bored at around 2 AM...

so we decided to take some pictures.

This is Yimy's serious "I just drove down 

side of a mountain" look.

"...and survived to tell about it!" look.

This is my, "Maybe they'll consider the truck totaled

and let me buy a new one!" look...

This is what we looked at all night as we sat at a 45 degree 

angle inside my truck.

It was kind of a weird feeling.

I think that moment of going over the edge was the craziest, most surreal moment of my life.  I was pretty calm on the ride down for the most part (it was almost like it wasn't happening...I was just riding it out).  It wasn't until afterwards when I thought about it and what had happened that my stomach kind of clenched and my heart pounded a bit.  But we've talked about it quite a bit and I think for the most part we're all okay now.  We've all had our emotional moments since then, but God is good and any accident like this one that you can walk away from is all fine.

Once again...thanks for praying everyone!   =)

  

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My time in prison. Part One...

I remember the first time I ever went to jail. A young friend of mine had gotten in trouble with the police in Saskatoon, and he ended up spending a year and a half or so in the maximum security youth facility in Prince Albert. He didn’t really have family or anyone to visit him, so I figured I should go see him. Eventually we ended up having a weekly Bible study together while he was there, so I got used to the whole lockup scene. But that first visit was intimidating…being locked in one room after another as they led you further and further into the building. Then waiting in a little cubicle all by yourself. I definitely had a couple of “Why exactly am I here?!” moments. But then my friend arrived with a big smile on his face and for sure it was all worthwhile.

My recent visit to the prison here felt a bit the same way at times. I’ve been into both the men’s prison and ladies prison before, but always with my friend Corina who knew the system. This was my first time setting things up and making connections on my own.

Corina called her contact in the ladies prison and told her I’d be there the next Monday afternoon. My friend Murray and I took off for the prison after lunch that day and I told him I had no idea how it was all going to work out, but we’d do our best.

The building itself is intimidating…which I guess prisons are supposed to be. There are definitely no gardens or golf courses anywhere near this place. We made it in the front gate okay, only to discover that I’d forgotten to take my ID (which I needed) out of my wallet (which I’d left in the truck). I also had more money on me than I wanted. So Murray ended up making a run back to the truck. It was kind of funny ‘cause right off the bat I felt kind of flustered. I felt like I should have known better and been a little more on top of things.

After the pat-downs and the signing in, we headed across a big open field to the woman’s prison part of the jail. There are a number of distinct areas within the main prison, the woman’s prison being one of them. It’s not like anything you might imagine. It’s a little community of one room houses and stores and even a couple of churches.

After going through another round of security, we went through the gate into the ladies section. I wasn’t sure where our contact lived, but I figured someone at the church might know. Sure enough, they pointed us in the right direction and we eventually found her little house, knocked on her door and met her. Margot was her name. Right away I was struck by her friendliness and sense of joy. She took us to meet another lady and the four of us got permission to leave their part of the prison to go and talk to the head lady of the prison, Coronel Salazar. We wanted permission to bring in the group from the Christian School to work with the children in the prison. When a woman goes to prison here, her children go with her. They can leave to go to school, but when their classes are finished, they come back. There’s quite a crowd of them actually.

On the way to the Coronel’s office, the ladies had the idea of talking to the head social worker as well (that turned out to be a good decision…but more on that later), so we walked over to her office to meet with her. I explained who we were and what we wanted to do. She thought it was a great idea (one of the joys of working in a Catholic country…they like God) and was very supportive. After that it was off to the Coronel’s office.

We had to wait quite a while before we were finally let into (what I thought was) the Coronel’s office. We spoke to two young ladies there and afterwards Murray and I laughed because we both had the same thought, “Which of these two is the Coronel?!” But after getting the okay from these ladies we were allowed into the actual office of the Coronel.

Whatever you’re imagining just now, about what the Coronel of a South American woman’s prison might look like? Yep. Exactly. It was the most cliché come to life experience I’ve ever had. She was the toughest (I want to say broad for some reason even though I know that’s not a good thing to say…but…well… it fits) lady military Coronel person I’ve ever met. She sat there in her uniform, chain smoking her cigarettes just kind of staring at us.

Margot (our contact) introduced us and then quickly left us alone. That was an interesting dynamic to observe too. Murray and I had been talking and laughing with Margot and the other lady like we would any friend or sister in Christ. To see her suddenly in the relationship of prisoner/warden was sobering for me.

Coronel Salazar sort of gruffly asked what it was we wanted (in her raspy, chain-smoker voice), so I explained once again what we wanted to do and asked for her permission. She was a little reserved at first, but as I continued talking, it seemed like she loosened up a bit. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. At any rate, after I was finished, she said that we could have permission but that there might be a problem. There was a possibility of a hunger strike starting in the men’s prison that week and if there was, all visits would be suspended. I asked if we could phone to find out and she offered to give me her private cell phone number so I could call the morning of our visit. Okay then…

I left her office feeling quite pleased with how things had gone. When I called her a couple of days later to make sure everything was okay, she was positively chatty on the phone. It made me smile a little. She told me that a letter of permission was waiting for me in her office and that I could pick it up sometime before the team arrived.

Well…in my books, sometime before the team arrived meant arriving with the team and making them wait in the bus while I went in search of the all-important letter of permission. Imagine my chagrin when I arrived at the office of the Coronel only to find it closed for lunch. Yea…that would be a Bolivian lunch which meant until 3:30 in the afternoon. We were supposed to start at 2 PM. So…now I had a problem. Then I remembered our visit to the social worker and went looking for her. Thankfully she was having her lunch in her office and she was more than happy to help us. She came with me and talked to the guards and even got our bus into the prison (which didn’t actually make our bus driver all that happy since he had to sit on the bus the entire time we were there and wasn’t allowed off until we came back).

We ended up doing a program first for the women prisoners. By the time we set up, a crowd was already beginning to form. Then after the program and a bit of a break and a visit to the church, we continued with a program for the children. Somehow during the visit to the church (which I thought was going to be a fun little informal time with some of the ladies when we could visit and drink pop) I ended up translating for another church group who were there leading a service. We didn’t have an English Bible (way to go Saskatoon Christian School people) so I wasn’t even sure what passage we were using. I was fairly proud of myself afterwards when I did read the passage and discovered that I was fairly accurate in my translating.  Truth be told though, I did make a few things up along the way. I was the only one there who spoke both languages so who was going to know… =)  After the children’s program (and after a lot of goodbyes to a lot of cute kids) we packed up and headed back to our bus.

There’s a lot more I could say about what we saw and experienced, but this is turning (once again) into a novel, so I’ll close with something that struck me during the visit. Margot and another of the church leaders were both amazing ladies, so full of love and a quiet sense of God’s Spirit. Obviously God has changed their hearts dramatically. And yet they’re still paying the price for their sins. Margot may be in jail for as long as thirty years. The other lady has no idea how much longer she’ll be there. Margot has a young son who’s deaf and who she’s clearly being a great mom to. Before we left, some of the leaders of the team prayed for these ladies…that they would be at peace and know that God has a purpose for their lives. But it was very sad for me when we left, to see them waving goodbye to us from behind the chain-link fence of the jail.

That’s got to be a very difficult and painful thing…to be such a different person than who you were when you arrived…and yet to not be free in a physical sense…to still be faced with such harsh consequences to your sins. My heart really went out to them. And yet we serve a good God and we are not a people without hope. I could see that God was using both of these ladies to serve and minister to the other women around them. They were a bright light in a very dark place. And that at least, is encouraging.  But please pray for them.

I enjoyed the time we shared with these sisters in Christ, and the opportunity to encourage them, as well as the fun we had with the kids and the ladies of the prison. I hope to go back soon, now that I know what I’m doing.

Oh yea….and someone told me that as we were presenting our program to the children, Coronel Salazar was sitting outside the building listening, chain smoking her cigarettes. That made me smile too…

NEXT TIME: VISITING THE MAXIMUM SECURITY MEN’S PRISON A FEW DAYS LATER…
 

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Hey look...Ken's not dead...

My brother wrote me the other day and hastled me that I hadn't updated the blog in awhile.  The thing is, some days there's not much happening here that's interesting.  So updating the blog is a bit tough.  Unless you really want to hear about what I had for lunch.  Actually...come to think of it...I probably have blogged about that on occasion. 

Other times there's so much to write about it get's a bit overwhelming and I don't know where to start.  So I keep putting it off.  That's kind of what's happening this time...

So...I think I'll just give you some highlights and then fill in the details later as I feel led.  And/or have the time.

Once again I had an amazing time with the SCS (Saskatoon Christian School) kids (and adults).  Always a pleasure to visit with those people.  So many memories and excellent moments.  And the image of Seth dancing in front of the Mariachi band will forever be burned into my brain.

On that same note, a couple of moments that stand out.  I had the privilege of praying with a young guy at the drug rehab home we visited and helping him begin a relationship with Christ.  I didn't see it coming at all, but it was a powerful moment.  God was definitely at work.  This young fellow was quite emotional about the experience and it was great to be able to pray with him.  I plan to go back and see him on the weekend.  His name is Javier so please pray for him.

As well, prison was an interesting experience.  Three times in a week.  Visiting the ladies prison as well as visiting a young friend I know in maximum security.  More on that later.

On the more adventurous side of life (not that hanging out in maximum security isn't adventurous or anything), Yimy and I tried to drive into the waterfalls in the jungle.  I was thinking about going there with the whole group but I wanted to make sure the "road" was open (it's been raining here lately).  I just realized I wrote "tried" to drive in.  As Yoda once said, "There is no try.  There is only do."  Or something like that.  It's been awhile since I've seen the movie.  At any rate, there were a couple of moments when we both said, "Maybe we should turn around?", but we didn't.  We're like that you know.  Of course we nearly died for our efforts, but still...

Okay, well...we probably wouldn't have died exactly.  A second (literally) more and we have slid sideways off a eight or nine foot embankment.  The truck would have landed on it's side but I'm sure we'd have been fine.  It's a Toyota after all... 

However, we did make it (and my truck enjoyed a whole day of not being broken...before I broke it again) and we enjoyed a well deserved lunch by a beautiful waterfall followed by a somewhat cool (cold...very cold) swim.  But considering that most people I know were sitting in their offices...not a bad way to spend a day.

Here at the house there's been the usual mix of great, good and maybe not so good.  But honestly...mostly good.  God is doing some amazing stuff in the hearts of a number of the guys.  I can see a lot of growth.  Others are struggling a bit.  When I was home I'd been telling people that we had moved past the big problems like alcohol and drugs and whatnot...but it seems I spoke a bit too soon.  But you know...in the midst of the issues and problems we have, God is still at work bringing healing and freedom.  So...we're  moving in the right direction.  But by all means, feel free to continue praying for us.

Next week I'm off to Cochabamba and then La Paz with our two interns, Tim and Mike.  Their time is winding down here and we're going to do a bit of a trip before they leave at the end of the month.  It's been great having them here.  One of the guys supports a young guy in Cochabamba through Compassion and we're hoping to visit him.

And...that's all that occurs to me just now.  There's more for sure...but it's my turn to cook and the guys get...testy...if lunch is late.  Thanks for all your prayers and support!  By the way, we raised enough money on my trip home to buy land for our new house.  So that's the next step.  And it makes me happy!

Thanks everyone!

PS  Roberto just came into my room and said that his classes are too hard and wanted to know if he had my permission to just go sell fruit in the market.  That kid makes me laugh.
 

At the drug rehab home...

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