Update on our life.

Sorry we haven't written in a while, we have been pretty busy! Our work in the home for troubled teenage girls is coming to an end. Tomorrow is our last day. Our time with them was interesting. They didn't need our help operationally, so our time was spent helping with homework, teaching a little English, playing cards or doing crafts. The most important thing we did, was be emotional support for them. Being away from their families, having their friends leave, not being able to go outside, and just the fact alone that they are teenage girls, leads to a lot of tears. So we are there to comfort them and talk them through it. We are really able to relate to them in a way, being teenage girls ourselves and also having not seen our families for five months.

 Kelli was able to teach a fifteen year old girl how to read. It was really an incredible experience for Kelli and Jhovana! During the weekends we help out at an orphanage for little babies. They only have two women taking care of 18 children on the weekends, so we are very much needed. After this weekend we will be heading to Cusco Peru, through a few of the major cities here in Bolivia. We will arrive in Cuzco on or around the 10th of Feb. When we will begin a 5 day retreat with the Missionary Sisters of the Poor of the Third World. We are very excited for a break!
Please continue to keep us in your prayers! We are doing very well, except a short trip the the hospital the other night to get Andrea rehydrated and get the appropriate medicine to treat yet another gastrointestinal infection. She's doing much better now! We love and miss you all.
 Andrea and Kelli

Some picture updates!

Small house on our way to Siete Cascadas "Seven Waterfalls."  

The first and second waterfalls at Siete Cascadas! We swam in the second! To get there for us, it was about a 5hr walk that should have been 1hr. We went with the brother of our host mother, and we got lost about 4 times. It was so scary! We were afraid we were going to die a few times because of how steep the mountain we were trying to get down was! We were very grateful to God to finally arrive and get to swim! It was our first time swimming in 5 months! The water was freezing and really dirty but it was still great!

Waiting for the bus near our house.

The pigs near our house!

The donkeys near our house!

Carnival starts in March but they start throwing water balloons early... We got one thrown at us so far!

The market in Tarabuco!

Us with random donkeys!

Jhovana. the girl Kelli is teaching how to read!

Life (So far) in Bolivia

Hey everyone! So we have finally gotten into the swing of things here in Bolivia. It is a very interesting place and we are very excited to get to know the captial a little more in the coming weeks that we will be continuing our work here. As we said before we are staying with a host family, and so far it is going pretty well. They are very nice company and are very helpful when one of us is feeling under the weather. Their house is about a 30 minute bus ride from the main part of the city, where everything is. So every morning we get on a bus that takes us to the main park in the city and it's just a short walk from there to the home that we are working in.
The home is run by a Catholic organization, and it is for troubled teenage girls. Most of which, have gotten into drugs, drinking, stealing, or similar things. To give you a better idea, basically the girls are there, because they are too young to go to jail. The youngest is around 11 and the oldest is 17. They literally cannot leave the home unless they are under high security. So our job is to better occupy their time, by playing games, singing songs, and just talking with them in general. It is on our personal agenda to make sure that they know that God loves them no matter what they have done. We made home-made bingo cards, which they loved! And lately we have been spending a lot of time teaching each other different games that we know. Many of the girls are interested in learning English, so occasionally we will teach them a few new things. We go from Monday through Friday both in the mornings and afternoon.
After our time with them in the afternoon we head to a local language school where we meet two Bolivian children. We speak to them in Spanish and they speak to us in English, so that we all can practice! That is for an hour every evening.
The town of Sucre is very relaxed and we are really starting to love it. Its relatively small yet diverse community is very helpful and welcoming. We were really surprised when we arrived and no one was staring at us, like in Peru. Its very strange, but we definitely aren't complaining. We are about 9000ft above sea level, and it is very easy to notice. The clouds seem so close.
Every day when we're walking to get the bus we pass almost every farm animal you can think of! It's so weird. You can find them randomly walking in the middle of the road at anytime of the day. There are sheep, goats, cows, chickens, pigs and donkeys, the piglets are the best part! There are also tons of kinds of dogs all over the place too.
Please keep praying for us! The altitude can be very difficult at times, mostly if we don't drink enough water throughout the day to stay hydrated. Also, we seem to be doing ok with the food, only a few bad incidents so far.