Flooding in Bolivia

Many of you may have read in the news of the flooding taking place in Bolivia and also Peru. This is unfortunately a fairly normal occurance, but because of the El Niño cycles, this year has been particularly bad. I was looking at a map on the websites of one of the Bolivian newspapers and the worst region hit is the Santa Cruz department. It has had a great impact on much of the agricultural areas of the country and 18,000 people have been affected nationwide with over 44,000 acres of land lost to flood damage. Chuquisaca and Cochabamba departments have also been affected, but not as bad as Santa Cruz. The Beni department where I am headed was largely unaffected, but floods do affect Trinidad from time to time. They got lucky this time.

The La Palmera school that I'm going to has started up for the year and is now in the second week of classes. It was an auspicious beginning with several teachers missing (they were traveling back and delayed by the floods). But everyone is back now and there is an aura of excitement, especially in the high school. Teachers are working hard to teach and discipline and the kids are being attentive and submissive to teachers' requests, something that was a problem before. The school has also opened up a new physics/chemistry lab, so the high school kids will have more opportunities to see those sciences in action first hand.

I am really pushing to be done with support in the next couple weeks, so please pray that I can connect with people, reaching people on the phone and following up has been especially difficult. Pray that God would open up the communication lines, especially for people I've been trying to reach for some time. God willing, I'll be out of here mid-late March.