Life at Fundacion el Sauce

I'm living in the orphanage for several weeks now and I'm enjoying my time here. There are about 20 orphans distributed in two houses. In the house I'm staying, most of the children are already between 13 and 16 years old; there are only two younger girls age 8 and almost 3. The youngest, Angelina, is one of the children I've been supporting. She is here with her mother Virginia who had her at age 13. Most of the orphans went through very difficult times in their young lives. When I read about some of their backgrounds, tears came into my eyes. These are very sad stories - stories of abandonment, abuse, and neglect. Usually, they all do have parents, but have been left behind by them. But this place is a true refuge for them, where they can thrive and grow.

The "parents" in this house are Merce and Lito, a couple from Spain. I haven't met Lito yet though, as he had to go to Spain for a while for family reasons. But from what I can see, they have been doing a great job with the kids.

In the mornings, I usually help out on the farm. Lots of produce is groing here, especially vegetables. The project has a base of customers in Santa Cruz, and every Wednesday, the produce is being delivered there. Although it's sometimes getting strenuous when the sun is shining hot, I appreciate that I can work in the garden. In the afternoons, I spend time with the children. My little friend Angelina likes to go for walks and look at books. I've also been teaching English to the children. The level is very low here, and they are obviously having a hard time with this language, nevertheless they seem to like it.

Last week, I caught a belated "Welcome-to-Bolivia-Bug", which put me out of order for three days. I made the mistake of eating an unwashed fruit at the market, and I think this is what caused my misery. It wasn't pleasant indeed, but Merce took great care of me. Other than that, we had to deal with mice in the house, and at one point I even had one in my room. You may imagine that I was not amused! But these are minor nuisances. All in all, I'm glad to be part of this little world, and I hope I can make a difference in the lives of these precious children.

Below are some every day life pictures of the project. I will upload more in a later post.

Angelina & Ximena - the two youngest in House 1

Angelina with two of her friends of House 2

The children are always discovering something

Jhonny & René

On the farm

Long rows of vegetables

Beautiful views

Bolivia and Beyond

It's been a couple of weeks now that I made it to Bolivia, and my time here has been quite eventful so far.

I'm in Samaipata, a little place with about four thousand inhabitants, beautifully situated in the mountains (about 2 1/2 hours from Santa Cruz). The days are usually warm and sunny, and the nights are pleasantly cool. It's quite a contrast if you come from a Western European country to the poorest country in South America. Some people here live in shacks that we wouldn't even use for cattle. A monthly income of about 100 Euros is quite common here. In this particular place, there is quite a variety of inhabitants: indigenous people, as well as foreigners from all over.

Since my arrival, I've been with the Mester family from Germany. Kai is the editor of our hoffnung weltweit ministry, and they have lived here for the past three years. After a few days of recuperation, I went with them on a long trip to the Iguazu-Falls in Argentinia. And if I say it was a long trip, I really mean it. We went by bus for over 30 hours, which included two nights in a row. Part of the journey was through unsealed roads in the semi-desert of Paraguay, and the dust of the road just blew into the bus. It was not pleasant, to say the least. So after this torture, I decided that I wouldn't do this a second time, and was thankful that I found a reasonably priced air ticket for the way back.

Nevertheless, the trip was really worth it. These waterfalls are rightly declared as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We both went to the Argentinian and the Brazilian side, and we were even able to take part at a moonshine walk at the falls. We were blessed with beautiful weather throughout the whole time.

Right now, I'm still staying with the Mester family, but in the next few days, I'm going to move to the project, which is situated outside Samaipata, about a 30 minute walk from here. We already got to visit the orphanage, and from what I can tell so far, the children are very affectionate. Also the agricultural project looks good. I'm going to share more about my work there in my next post.

And finally, here are some pictures of our amazing trip:

185 Years

I'm in Germany these days celebrating the birthdays of my two precious grandmothers. Monday last week was my final day at work, and before going on my big trip, I didn't want to miss these special occasions back home.

So my grandmothers are alltogether 185 years now - what a blessing! Last week, we had a nice celebration with my maternal grandmother, who turned 90; and since Wednesday, I'm staying with my 95-year old paternal grandmother. I'm grateful that I still have both of them, and it's a blessing that I was able to see them before my departure. Tomorrow, I'll be headed back to Brussels, and after two days of preparation time, I'm going to take off for Bolivia...

With grandmother number one...

and number two!

From the Hillside to the Coast

I'm dwelling at the Belgian coast as I'm writing this blog. I spontaneously travelled out here yesterday. Originally, I had planned to come here for the weekend, but since the weather forecast for these days looked much more promising than for the weekend, I decided to extend my vacation until Thursday.

So here are the last couple of weeks in a nutshell:

On Monday, I returned back from our camp meeting in Germany. It was a blessing in many ways. I'm very thankful that this was indeed the first one in three years where I was able to get some decent rest. It made such a difference to be able to follow at least part of the programme. Of course, it was still a busy time, but I'm learning little by little to delegate tasks. Our speaker-couple was Alan & Lorraine Humes, my "adopted parents" from Tennessee. I had them stay with me in Brussels for a few days before the camp meeting started. It was a blessing to have them over and share at the camp meeting. The other speakers were Tim Risenberger, Sylvain Romain, and Emiliano Richards. We had many decisions for baptism, and a lot of participants were thankful for spiritual renewal and uplifting seminars. This time, more members of my church participated, and I'm grateful that they gained a blessing as well. Of course there are still things that can be improved, but with the Lord's help they will!

Anyway, I'm thankful for this little break before going back to the office. Today, I took a long walk at the beach. It was invigorating. From Thursday afternoon, I will be back to work for another 3 1/2 weeks - and then I will be off for about a year...

Evening meeting 

Tim Risenberger speaking

With the Chilimboyi family and Sister Alice  from my church

And here are some impressions from the coast

June Events

This past month has been quite eventful indeed.

Yesterday, I returned from a weekend trip to the city of Aachen in Western Germany. My friends Tanja and Ilja were there to do video recordings for the local church. They had organized a series of meetings with Lewis Walton, an Adventist lawyer and author of several books (like "Omega 2", which is probably the best-known in our church). He spoke about endtime prophecy, and I found it very interesting and relevant.

The weekend before, my parents and grandmother came to visit me in Brussels. This was quite special to me, as my (almost 90 year old) grandmother had never been here (at least not in the past 20 years), and thus she finally got to see how I'm living here. They arrived already on Thursday, and we spent the whole Friday in Bruges. It's a quaint little place indeed; it's only a bit crowded at this time of the year. We did a lot of walking throughout this little city and both my grandma and my dad did very well.

Other than that, we are busy with the preparations for our German camp meeting, which will take place from August 11-17. I'm praying for guidance for all the organizational and logistical issues that still need to be worked out.

What follows are a few impressions of Bruges:

picturesque

At the monastery

boat ride in the canal

Chariot ride 

My parents and grandmother

Changes

I've spent this past week with my folks in Germany. After having visited the last time about six months ago, there have been changes, big and small.

The most unexpected one is the fact that my father has been diagnosed with a debilitating disease which has slowed him down considerably. Back in April, his health condition was quite acute, but he is doing much better now. My mother is taking care of him very well and I hope and pray that things will further improve.

As usual, there have also been changes in my home city. They have been working for several years already on the tunneling of the tram system on the main shopping street. It's a huge project, which became necessary as the number of trams going through the city centre increased considerably over the years. Thus, there have been big construction areas all over. I couldn't recognize the market square anymore, which is right in the heart of the city. This is how it used to look like:

As you can see, there is a pyramid in the middle, but now you can't recognize it anymore:

It's obviously an enormous project, but let's see how it's going to look like when it's done.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the greener setting around my parents' home and the fact that there are more birds singing here. I also went with my parents and grandmother to the Rose Society Garden in Baden-Baden (Black Forest). Although it isn't peak season yet, there were many beautiful roses already:

A rather unusual color for a rose

Two different colors in one bush

Nice gates

We also saw a heron

On Monday, I'll be headed back to Brussels. So let's see what the coming month will bring...

Lively Weekend

This past weekend was a lively one indeed. Sonja, a friend from the German ministry team, decided to visit me together with her two small children, Arnold (5) and Katharina (2). Sonja's husband passed away in the summer of 2011 following a short battle with cancer. It ws only a few days after the birth of Katharina. Of course this was a tragic loss, and raising children as a single mother must be quite a challenging task. How to answer every one of Arnold's questions? How to react if one of them throws a tantrum? It certainly takes a village to raise a child!

Anyway, we had a fun time overall, and even though we didn't have a stroller for the little one, we did get to see some sights in the city as well as some of the surroundings where I live. It was a bit challenging at church though, as the children couldn't really relate to all these people who didn't speak their language, but the time spent on different playgrounds and frolicking around at my home certainly made up for this experience.

Now I'm thankful for our Easter break. I'll be off still until Monday included. This coming weekend will be much more quiet!

With Sonja & children at the Grand Place

Katharina

Arnold

They obviously enjoyed the playground

First Signs of Spring

The weather has been beautiful lately. Today it felt almost like summer, and I really enjoyed going spending some time in the park. It feels so good after this long period with hardly any sunshine!

Yesterday, I preached for the first time at Brussels International Church. I was asked to do so for our special Women's Ministries Sabbath. I decided to give a personal testimony, entitled "Transformed in Christ". I once gave a similar talk at Uchee Pines. It was blessed, and I'm thankful for the outcome. In two weeks time, I will give another cooking class at church. I hope the turn-out will be good.

Lately, I have made plans for my next adventure. Yes, I have decided to take another leave of absence from my work! As of October, I'm going to leave Brussels for about a year, in order to fresh up my skills in medical missionary work and agriculture. So I'm planning to spend some time at Uchee Pines and Eden Valley in the first half of 2015. Before that, I'm going to help out for a few months at an orphanage project in Bolivia. In fact, I have two godchildren there :-). Thus, I'll be able to meet them and at the same time improve my Spanish. Quite exciting, isn't it? In fact, it's almost five years now that I'm back to Brussels, so I think it's time for a change. And when shall I do this if not now?

So nice to see the trees blooming

Even the forget-me-nots are already blooming