Leini, La Exploradora

What a whirlwind! I have had the amazing opportunity to explore so many parts of my beautiful home of the past almost eleven months. Just call me Leini la exploradora!! Not only did I get to trek these marvelous lands, but I also got to share my mission here and this country with some very important people in my life. 

Capítulo Uno: The Adventures of Leini and Boots

Boots is always right alongside of Dora on every crazy adventure she goes on. He’s always there to hold Dora’s hand and does flips through all the hoops she throws at him. As stated on Nick Jr’s website: “No one can make Dora laugh the way Boots can. He's the best friend you always wanted.”  I have been very blessed with my very own Boots, who doesn’t have nearly as creative of a name: Gannon. Late March, my Boots came to Bolivia! After being climbed on by so many other little monkeys, receiving massages, and getting little fingers shoved up his nose here at the Hogar, Gannon and I took off to Sucre, the beautiful capital of Bolivia. Gannon and I spent some very relaxing days chitchatting over coffee, walking the streets, touring the churches, and having midday tea. We made drank liquid chocolate, had green beer on St. Patty’s Day, ate apparently the best steak in Bolivia, went to a fabulous dinner and a show, spent an afternoon on a roof of a church, tried a Pisco Sour, saw a bunch of people in zebra suits, ATVed up the mountains on a super gross day, celebrated Mother Earth in Tarabuco, and danced the night away in a discoteca. I played my first game of chess too! We had a bit of a run-in with Swiper the Fox…Despite our chants of “Swiper, no swiping! Swiper no swiping!” the darned fox (disguised as an ATM machine) swiped my debit card for a night. but still, a great adventure with a great companion.

ALPACAS in Tarabuco

The girls lovin' on Gannon

Just two kids, living it up in Sucre!

Capítulo Dos: Can’t forget about Map and Backpack!

I’m going to be nice and corny and keep going with the Dora theme. Map is always ready to give Dora direction and help her get to where she is going throughout her adventure. He’s a funny, bouncing little thing and he doesn’t speak any Spanish, but who knows, maybe some library CDs could get him learned up on some words (That’s an inside joke, sorry). Then there’s backpack, who according to the Nick Jr website is a “real go-getter with a can-do spirit.” She’s always filled and ready to give Dora anything she may need to complete her journey—from chapstick and face lotion to peanut butter and cookies. She throws some Spanish in there every now and again too. My dad is my map, and Sharon the backpack. They came to join my journey in April!

Sharon, Dad, and I on the salt flats

Here at the Hogar, they had the chance to meet their goddaughter Lizeth, who they are sponsoring, which was too cool. They also had their first ride on a Montero moto (Dad’s feet nearly dragging on the ground), tried their first salteña, tried to dance the merengue, did some English tutoring, and assisted me with my laundry. We then took a 3-day trek through the salt flats in Uyuni seeing some capital B Beautiful landscapes and natural wonders. We even got stuck in the salt the first night leaving us on the flats to see an awesome sunset over the mountains. After roughing it for three days—and I mean roughing it—we made our way back to La Paz, where we did some shopping, attended the cholita (indigenous Bolivian woman dressed in their traditional garb)

My dad with the wrestling Cholitas!

fights—which was so outrageous, went to a traditional music show, and saw the ruins of Tiwanaku and learned all about Pachamama.

While Dad and Sharon were here, they were taking care of ME. Throughout this year, I have been the caregiver and the parental figure to these Bolivian girls—showing them affection, taking them to buy new shoes, helping them with their homework. I hadn’t realized how I missed having someone care for me and how important that can be. I have such an independent streak too that sometimes I just don’t let anyone take care of me. After experiencing this care and love for the first time in a while, I realized how blessed I am to have people to care for me and how much I really need that.

Capítulo Tres:

Shortly after returning for my excursion with my parents, I was off with a group from North Carolina that was installing a Living Waters for the World pure water system. I was brought along to help translate, but I gotta say--I was given so much more than I gave them! Oops! The group split into two: one installing a system in a hospital in San Juan de Yapacani  (a nearby Japanese colony); the other installing a system in Villa Amboro, a tiny village that you need to trek through the forest and cross a river to get to. I was assigned the hospital group and assisted in the education of the nurses.

I met so many great people being apart of this project:

The system Joe and the guys
installed! I can totally explain
how it works--English or Spanish!

--The NC group members themselves… Hillrie, Lee, Joe, and Ann—the four that I spent a good majority of the week with—took me right in. We shared so many laughs over so many delicious meals. I feel like I knew them for much longer than just a week—which tells a lot about the kind of people they were. And the rest of the group busting their butts in Villa Amboro: Skip, MaryAnn, Eva, and Marty. I was so blessed to have the chance to be a small part of their mission.

--The nurses that we were teaching the materials too. Faces and smiles I will never forget. We had a lot of fun learning about clean water.

--The workmen who worked alongside Joe to install the system: Edgar, Jorge, Tani, and the electrician. They had big hearts, and just got a kick out of the little white girl hanging around and making jokes with them.

--The group had also brought wheelchairs for a few of the hospital’s patients. I helped construct chairs for children with CP whose mothers had been carrying them around for 12 years. 12 YEARS. There was a woman from the community with three young children who was in a car accident and was unable to walk who could finally maneuver herself with the wheelchair the group provided her.  Her daughter—who has clearly grown up fast to become her mom’s right hand woman—had done her hair and gotten her all done up to come to our ceremony, and she looked beautiful.

 

Going with this group made much more of an impact that I imagined it would going into it. My role at the Hogar is very Hogar-intensive: I open up the on-site library and work on the computer to communicate with our Madrina sponsors via email—-all within the Hogar walls. Rarely do I leave for extended periods of time, making the majority of my interactions silly and playful with the girls. In some way, I kind of lost the idea of who I was outside of the Hogar. Scary stuff, I know. Going with the group, I had to opportunity to be outside of everything Hogar and just be Lainie. It was rejuvenating and comforting, and I credit it all to my new friends from North Carolina. So blessed to know them! What a wonderful, wonderful part of my mission.

Totally zen on retreat :)

Capítulo Cuatro:

I took a little bit of my break from my adventures, enjoying my time back home. Then the Bolivian SLMs and I took Samaipata by storm in July for our second retreat of the year! Samaipata is a small town in the department of Santa Cruz that is surrounded by natural wonders and crisp fresh air aka the perfect place to get some R&R and hang out with my SLM friends. We visited the ruins at El Fuerte, found an aviation “park,” and got pelted with the waters of the waterfalls--Awesome. What a great place to reflect on our year here surrounded by God’s handy work. I had forgotten how much I love nature and how uplifting it can be. As always, sharing meals and conversations with my fellow SLMs did not disappoint either.

Capítulo Cinco:

During the girls' school break, we all trekked to the Lomas de Arena, the unexplainable sand dunes located just outside of Santa Cruz. It was such a fantastic day of sun, sports, swimming, and lots and lots of SAND. There were too many unsuccessful jumping pictures, girls being carried into the water against their will, and an hour walk to and from--which I shared with Yordania riding piggyback after the long hot day in the sun, playing a game where one of us would make an animal noise and the other would name the animal. Too much fun. These little girls, I tell ya...They get me every time.

All of us at the Dunes!!

Capítulo Seis:

Me, Fabiola, and Gladis in the
back of the truck!

My last and possibly final expedition around Bolivia (eek!) was with the Madre to visit her home in Concepcíón. How did I get there? Six hours in the back of a pickup truck, of course! During this adventure, we visited the Jesuit Missions in San Xavier and Concepción; visited the Madre’s family’s home; went to her family’s house in the campo (out in the countryside), where we watched cows get branded, rode a horse, picked oranges from the trees, and hung out surrounded by banana trees; took a dip in el lago; and attended one of the coolest Sunday mass services I have been to. I’m not kidding--it gave me chills and made my heart swell. The mass was held in a tiny chapel with a stained glass window behind the altar where the morning sun came in. Four boys from the community played different instruments, with whom everyone sang along heartily. The children of the community were involved reading the scripture and made up the majority of the congregation. Everyone held hands during the Our Father singing a song before and after, and during the sign of peace, the peace just kept on giving! The priest came out into the congregation to shake the community’s hands, and everyone had smiles on their faces. It was such a beautiful community, and the Holy Spirit was among us.  God gives so much to those who have so little. SO COOL.

Judith :)

Capítulo Siete:

And here I am again, back at my humble home :) And so happy to be back! I’m convinced distance makes the heart grow fonder. Every time I was off on my adventures, I found myself thinking about the girls and being so excited to get back to them. The Hogar has really become my home, and each person here an integral part of my life here. My heart is so huge right now, and the Lord keeps assisting me to continually open it again and again to each hand that reaches out, each yell of my name, each cold shoulder, and each time I hear my favorite nickname: “mala”.  Being an exploradora is so exhilarating, but through it I discovered that I am such a little homebody. This is where I am supposed to be, right here in the thick of it--being woken up at 5 in the morning with music blasting through my window, constantly being asked when I am opening the library (seriously, I open it at the same time every day…), being on-call for literally anything that someone may need me to do. I’m not a novelty anymore… I’m just Leini and I’m here.

My own clean, unselfish love

Coming on mission, my goal was to love. Love these girls who do not feel a parents’ love. Take them in and love them for all that they are and all that they are not. Love them until it hurts (Waddup, Mama T?). Well I discovered that love is not always what you read about in the storybooks.

It would be great if all love was flowers and butterflies, but it really wouldn’t be worth having if it was just the same all the time. Coming here I thought it would be so easy to love these girls. They really need the love, right? Piece of cake. More like piece of an enormous jigsaw puzzle (...sorry, bad analogy).

Martha and I sharing such a tender moment
evident by the look on my face

I had my best lesson in love when it came to giving it without receiving it back. In the storybooks love is always mutual and so appreciated. I found out the hard way it is very, very difficult to love another person when they do not appreciate you or reciprocate the love. Luckily I had the wisdom of a previous SLM (Heyooo Jenna) to lean on. She reminded me that the soft, fuzzy love is not the reason we came on mission. We came on mission to be like Christ. Throughout his life, Jesus loved those who sinned against him, who spit in his face, and who led him to death on a cross. He LOVED them, crazy man that he is. This is the love that we are called to, not the stuff that makes us feel good inside at the end of the day (although that is certainly nice every now and again :) ). This has been and will continue to be my struggle throughout my mission—I mean, I scored a soft teddy bear on my confrontation analysis… of course this is going to be tough for me.

I’ve been reading some reflections by Thomas Merton recently (Still a big fan, Mr. Norman?). While reading, he had a quote that really struck me that inspired this post: “Clean, unselfish love does not live on what it gets but on what it gives. It increases by pouring itself out for others, grows by self-sacrifice, and becomes mighty by throwing itself away.”  This clean, unselfish love is what I need to strive for here in Bolivia with these girls and with everyone around me. And also reading this, I can’t help but think, “Jesus is such a master.” Talk about clean love, man.

Maria Greiser and I

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Kind of switching directions, I have had another personal struggle with love while being here on mission.

Love and I have a funny relationship. For some reason, I have grown with this notion that it is my sole responsibility to give love—that my relationships with other people depend on the love that I give to them.  Basically I put all the responsibility of the success of the relationship on my own shoulders… which, let me tell you, is really not a great place to be. If relationships fail, it is my fault. If I mess up in a relationship, it’s over because another person could not possibly be able to see beyond that mistake.  They say the best gift is to give, which is so true, but there’s a problem when you cannot accept the gift of love from another person.

I am not sure when it started, but this roadblock in my relationships has made it very hard for me to feel and even accept the love of another person. It is like I don’t see the capacity for other people to love me. I have never thought before that it is my responsibility to accept the love of another person.

Me and Emily

While I do believe I was called here on mission to give my love, as time goes on, I have found more and more that one of the biggest reasons God called on mission was to learn to accept that another person loves me fully and completely for who I am. Day after day I am greeted with a great “LEINI”, showered in hugs and kisses, and receive smiles and laughter filled with such joy. How could someone not find love here in this place?

One of my biggest difficulties in love was to accept the easiest love of all: the love of God. I always thought that I had to do good things in order to earn the love of God. But I have slowly discovered that Uh uhhh, I am doing good things because God loves me—C.S. Lewis helped me to this one.  HIS LOVES COMES FIRST. He loves ME. He longs for ME and for MY love. He is constantly seeking for ME… Of course he loves you too—That I never have had a problem accepting. God is working through the people in our lives to show his love for us. God has brought me here—thousands of miles away from the comforts of the people who, in my eyes, have to love me—to show me that he loves me too, gosh darnit, and he’s showering me in his love each and every day.

God loves better than anyone else! What better way to discover his love than during this Easter season? Jesus laid out alllllll the cards displaying his love for his people….and for me. This man had me in mind when he accepted death on the cross. Unbelievable, right?

So I’m on a journey to discover God’s clean, unselfish love for me. And to share that with other people. I am also working on realizing that his best way of showing his love for me is through his people, who just might have this clean, unselfish love for me as well. I apologize to anyone who has been caught in the crossfire of my internal battle. I really love you all.

Finishing this on the night of my 22^nd birthday, I have felt nothing but love all day long. Thank you to everyone who has made me feel special in every teeny-tiny way.

Sending my GREAT BIG LOVE from my humble hogar home,

Lain

LONG time, no see!!

If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been suffering from a bit of a writer’s block…

When I last left y’all off, I was playing in rice. Between now and then, wow, so much has happened.

Here’s a rough timeline:

The school year here is flopped with the one in the States—the girls are on their long summer break during Christmas and go back to school in February. The girls are given many chores throughout summer vacation in order to keep busy. It is definitely a wild experience because 100 girls are alllwayyss around.

Making cookies was one of the tasks the girls were given to do throughout summer break.
Mixing the batter with your hands?! Of course I wanted to help!

We performed the Jingle Bell rock dance
at one event...in front of everyone....
per request of the Madre

Typically in the summer, the hogar has the opportunity to travel to some fun places nearby. Unfortunately, we did not have as many opportunities this year due to lack of funds. But we went to a couple celebrations, a couple events were brought to the hogar with clowns and fun for the girls, and we had some fun days at the pool too!

Having some fun at the pool!

The whirlwind of Christmas was thrown in the mix—with the responsibility of raising money and buying presents for 135 girls. Piece of cake, right? I’m talking trips to the feria (a grid-like endless abyss of an outdoor market where you can get lost in a different part of the market each time and forget what sunlight looks like), late nights preparing and wrapping gifts, of course a fever intertwined with all that stressful goodness, making bundles of batches of monkey bread, playing with sparklers, dressing up like an elf, and dancing and singing for Jesus! Someone tell me that doesn’t sound like a crazy ride. I’ll be honest, most of it is a blur.

Me with just part of the presents!

Christmas Eve night: Rocking it out with Madre Fatima!

Yummmm. Monkey Bread on Christmas morning

Papa Noel getting a big hug from one of the girls

The group on the roof 
of the Institute on New Years Eve

We then celebrated the most spectacular New Years Eve I have ever experienced. Just imagine being on a roof, surrounded by great people, and literally surrounded by fireworks—one of the most breathtaking sites and a Bolivian memory I don’t think I will ever seize to forget. AND dancing at the discoteca until four in the morning with friends? I’m a lucky girl. 

The beginning of the year brought with it a group of new girls for us to love here at the hogar with even more personality to bring joy to our lives. 

Oh hey, Jesus.

It also brought a great opportunity for a get away with all of the SLMs in Bolivia. Traveling to the much cooler Cochabamba, we had a great relaxing weekend retreat reconnecting with friends, sharing our experiences, and helping one another through struggles we may have been having. I couldn’t help but be reinvigorated by the amazing views, amazing food, and amazing conversation. What an awesome program I am a part of!

Great times cooking, eating, and cleaning

Getting back to the hogar, we went as a whole to the terrific annual celebration of the hogars throughout Santa Cruz at Hogar Don Bosco. It was a great day filled with singing, swimming, dancing, and games for the girls and was the perfect ending of summer.

Norah and I hanging out at Don Bosco!

The beginning of school was met with great chaos, as the madre did not have ample funds to cover the cost of all of the shoes, notebooks, uniforms, and textbooks for the girls. We volunteers took buying shoes off of the Madre’s hands, and the task still is not complete!! It is a tiring task, following the girls around until they find their perfect shoe, but it is very rewarding all the same. I’m the “mom” who is feeling for their toe, telling them to walk around a bit to see how it feels, recommending black rather than white because it will show less dirt. I nearly died when “shows less dirt” came out of my mouth—that’s what MY MOM would say… Terrifying. But here in Montero, showing less dirt is definitely something to think about…

Right after getting foamed

Talking about chaos, it was then time for CARNAVAL: a crazy three-day celebration of braided hair, parades, costumes, dancing, screaming, foam, water, and paint. Tania and I joined two workers from the hogar at a Friday night parade and then actually became a part of the parade—surprise, surprise! Saturday we went to a parade and then came back to a crazy water fight at the hogar, which like any good water fight started with water balloons and ended with buckets of water. Monday night we had our celebration at the hogar, and yours truly was the queen of the personnel…reluctantly. Woooo Los Hawaianos. It was a great night of foam, food, and dancing—three of my favorite things.

After Carnaval, it was pretty much back to the daily grind of opening up the library and helping the girls with their homework. I have also been busy with the madrina account, finding madrinas for the new girls as well as 30 girls who have not heard from their madrinas in a couple years… so that’s been a lot. If you’re interested in being a madrina, definitely let me know!! We’ve got so many girls needing some extra TLC that only a madrina can provide!

Soooooo this post has pretty much been strictly business… I felt overwhelmed thinking of all that has happened and all that I have learned while it’s been happening and shied away from writing. That’ll teach me not to put off writing! Hopefully I will get a better post up soon.

Chauuuuu,

Lain