There is always a lot to say but here are a few things I have enjoyed over the last couple weeks:

1. The Bolivian people. They are incredibly generous, hard-working and always seem to have time for others. We only have to walk by before we find ourselves being invited over for food and conversation.

2. Our team. We´ve managed to not get on each other´s nerves despite being together most of the time and sometimes being very close, whether stuffed in our 5-seat vehicle with 7 people or sleeping on each other.

3. The food. Can´t say enough about it. Carla is our hired cook and her cooking is incredible. I time my mornings so that I can get tucumanas from an outside merchant. They are spicy little samosa-like numbers and I can´t get enough of them.

4. The isolated and untouched beauty of Bolivian wilderness.

Love you guys, take care and fire me off an email to let me know how you are. Enjoy the pics

Yesterday we were still in La Paz and Dwayne & Emigdio from CBM (Canadian Baptist Mission) brought us to El Alto to show us how micro-credit loans were being given to help locals start businesses so that they could provide for themselves and their families. One woman we visited, who was able to purchase a sowing machine with her loan, told us how this literally changed her life and has helped her provide for herself and her family. I want to tell you more about this when I come back home, I got to see first-hand how these projects have really helped people. Check out the meaning of integral missions when you have time.

Yesterday, while heading to Oruro we, and the rest of the traffic (I counted at least 35 other trucks/buses), were blockaded by university students who were unhappy about something (we didn´t find out what). Protests like this are apparently commonplace in Bolivia. Interesting!

Being able to communicate in Spanish has been an asset. Love it! The food here is insanely good. I just ate llama now and have exhausted the use of most Spanish superlatives to compliment it and now I feel at a loss for words.

Andy, Dave Redekop and myself all caught something, they{ve been throwing up and I have been enjoying some TD (Andy & I are doing much better now). We think it{s a combination of many things, altitude sickness, fatigue, change in food and climate etc. But probably it was last night{s meal. Fortunately, David got us to a doctor and we are on the mend, Dave is quite weak still. Interestingly, this has been a unique way for us to bond together as a team as we have all been taking care of each other.

Tomorrow, provided we are feeling better, we will go to El Alto (The heights) close to La Paz to learn about the various projects that the Baptist churches are involved with there. I think I am going to go down a Bolivian bun from the outside market and experiment more with TD, ciao!

What are we doing in Bolivia? Good question! We will be travelling around, visiting various family & friends of David{s (the Bolivian fellow leading our team) — I will put pictures up of all of us in time. We will be doing various activities with youth, like camps, drama & music stuff and visiting various churches where we will encourage and help people in the work that they are doing etc. Will share more later.

La Paz is a very interesting city, people everywhere, honking of vehicles everywhere too. Your feet have to speak with authority if you want to cross the street in between cars. Everything is super cheap for us too. I had a full meal of rice and beef curry for only $2 Canadian. Being here, where the air is kinda nasty etc. and everything is so cheap just shows us how much we have in Canada. Hopefully we can give some back to the people while we are here. If you care to visit here some day, drink lots of water and brink (I mean bring) some pills for altitude sickness. My love from Bolivia!