Happy New Year!

To all my faithful supporters, thank you for a wonderful 2007 full of support financially, emotionally and prayerfully. I am very blessed to have you all and I look forward to the developments the Lord has in store for this new year for me, for the project and for Bolivia.

A recap on the last week . . .

Christmas was surprisingly dull around here, Bolivians just don't celebrate it the way we do in Europe and North America with hardly any decorating or Christmas music. They do a traditional midnight feast, so I was invited to eat with the pastor, his wife, a volunteer and his fiancee and some extended family. We had pork and beef with lots of other things and of course Coca Cola (Bolivians LOVE Coca Cola). People set off fireworks in the streets and it had the feel of a "normal" holiday. I did have a nice lunch on Christmas afternoon at Lucho and Lorna's house with all the volunteers (3 of us) and a bunch of Lucho and Lorna's Bolivian friends from the project. It was probably the most festive part of Christmas.

Sunday night, one of the volunteers, Tony had his Bolivian wedding, marrying Irma, a Bolivian girl who has grown up in Trinidad, gone to La Palmera graduated from university as a dentist and is now working at the project again doing dental work for the kids. Tony as well is a dentist from Northern Ireland, and he too is committed to doing dental work for the kids here. I'm so excited for both of them as Tony has been living with us and Irma visiting quite often. I pray the Lord will bless them richly in their marriage and whatever other plans are in store. Tony and Irma left this morning to begin making their way to Northern Ireland for their second wedding starting with a bus ride to Santa Cruz. All the best!

Sunday night (or early Monday morning) at about 2am, as people were leaving the wedding, one of the volunteers from our house for whatever reason decided to walk home alone. As he was walking down the street, he was jumped by four men and had pretty much everything of value stolen from him - his wallet, his house keys, his digital camera, Tony's video camera and a bilingual Bible. Thankfully the volunteer is ok, and didn't even seem that shaken up but it serves as a notice to us foreigners to be careful and not go places alone late at night (although I thought that was common sense . . .). Needless to say, we changed the lock on our gate yesterday since we don't want strangers entering. It was probably time anyway, I think that lock had been in use for years and probably a fair share of keys had disappeared.

The last bit of news . . .I leave Thursday afternoon to begin my 17 day vacation, starting with a flight to La Paz and then Friday I will fly from La Paz to Santiago. Please pray for safe travels. I will do my best to keep you all updated and will be sure to post a few pictures when I get back (I'll probably do another travel journal).