El Cristo
Bolivia 2007 July 3rd, 2007 by GennaHola! This is Kara Meeuwsen and I am going to give you an update on our Sunday experience on July 1st. We had initially intended to join the youth for their contemporary service at the Babtist Church, but instead ended up helping them get organized for a bbq by washing pealing vegetables, etc. I enjoyed this because it gave me another opportunity to work and talk side by side with some of the Bolivian women. At 11 we headed into the sanctuary and attended the normal service. The congregation was very welcoming and even sang us their traditional welcoming song while we were up on stage.
After the service we went out to lunch where we all ate an extraordinary amount of meat. In order to work off some of our meal, we decided it would be a good idea to hike up to the top of El Cristo. El Cristo is the tallest Christ statue in all of South America. Earlier in the week we had been debating on how fast we could make it to the top of this mountain in order to reach El Cristo. (There is a tram or taxi available for most, but that just takes out the pride factor). Tony decided that 20 miuntes would be the time to make and so that became several of our teams goal. The hike is only about a mile, but it is very steep and at an already high elevation, this seemed like a lofty goal. I believe there were just under 1000 steps to the top. A fair amount of our group have also been entertaining colds and other illnesses, so we weren´t in the best of conditions by any means. In the end, three of us made it under the mark, although I have to say I was beat by the end. We were able to climb up inside of the Cristo about to His arm and walk around, etc. This was definately a memorable experience.
Our final event for the evening was going to evening services. Our group split into two and we went to churches we had never been to before. The services were very different from each other. The church that I went to was very small and very traditional. Many of the songs we sang were in Ketchua (spelling?). I would say that both groups learned something new about Bolivian culture and what an impact leadership can have on a church.
At the end of our Bible Study that night everyone was very exhausted. We decided to integrate free (nap) time into more of our days and it has brightened our spirits greatly since then. I would ask though for prayer that our spirits would continue to be lifted as we near the end of our trip and our days are still long. Thank you all and goodnight.
Kara Meeuwsen