Thoughts

I thought that I would centre this blog, as well as telling you about the recent events in El Alfarero, to focus more on what I have been thinking about and what I have been learning. To put it another way, what God has been teaching me. Theres two bits of the Bible that have come to have a greater significance for me in the last few weeks:

‘Enter through the narrow gate. The gate is wide and the raod is wide that leads to hell, and many people enter through that gate. But the gate is small and the road is narrow that leads to true life. Only a few people find that road.’ Matthew 7v13

‘Sell your processions and give to the poor. Get for yourselves purses that will not wear out, the treasure in heaven that never runs out, where thieves can’t steal and moths can’t destroy. Your heart will be where your treasure is.’ Luke 12v33-34

One of the things that I’m being reminded of, as things are not always easy for me living here, is the importance of sacrifice. This life is really not that long in the light of eternity, and I don’t want to fritter it away. A lot of the things that I have been missing from home are essentially shadows and dust when compared with what it might actually mean to build up treasures in heaven. Mining gold and silver from the earth, as many Bolivians know, takes much sweat and toil, but the end result is worth it. Treasures that you don’t have to work for, that don’t involve sacrificial love, are almost never as powerful.

So many people, Christians or not, spend their whole lives avoiding the narrow way because it is just so much more difficult. But the narrow way is the only way that will lead to true life – Jesus said that those who give up their lives for him, will find true life – I left my whole life behind in Scotland, and I like to think that what I’m doing is finding true life.

Anyhoo. Enough of the (hopefully) wise thoughts, moving on to another wee update on how life is chez El Alfarero. One of the main changes that there has been in the home over the last week no more, has been the arrival of three new girls! Unfortunately, none of the three girls made it to the reception house because it was always been occupied by boys at the time, but it has still been very interesting for me to see how things operate when new girls arrive. The three girls have very distinct personalities – one of them I really don’t know anything about yet as she arrived late on Friday night, and I left for my free day early on Sunday morning. So I shall find out when I get back how the weekend went: please try and remember this in your prayers, as we’re up to 17 girls again now, and Salustio says that whenever the home starts to fill up people start to leave again.

One of the good (great) things about the last week has been that I am beginning to feel a little bit more connected with the other people who live at the home. I’ve had a few good chats which allowed me to open up slightly more to them, and I’m beginning to feel that we are working more as a team. On top of this, after having been at the home for six weeks now, I feel that I’m ready to begin making comments about the way the home is run. I’m glad to have stayed fairly silent for so long, because there are things that at the beginning I didn’t understand or disagreed with that I know understand the reasons for and can see are for the best.

The main issue I can see with the home, and I’ve discussed this with Sandra, is the lack of actual consequences when they do something wrong. This came up particularly one evening when Sandra and I were on our own with the girls, and during the reading the girls were just horrifically badly behaved. Sandra ended up having to pull the youngest girl away because everyone was hitting her – and despite the older girl’s conviction that she is the root of all the problems at the home, their behaviour did not improve when we took her away. About an hour after all this, two of the older girls started fighting over practically nothing – fists and all! It is the first time in my life so far that I have had to pull one grown woman off another one – although I did have some help in it! And what were the consequences of all this misbehaviour? Essentially nothing, except for a lecture in the morning. So I have begun to think of potential things that we could to discipline the girls, privelidges that we could withdraw that I can suggest to Yanyt and Salustio: after all, real love is not afraid to correct bad behaviour.

I have had a fairly good weekend off so far, I’ve been avoiding my slightly horrific habit of spending all of my time off sitting about in Casa Alfa, as it is quite tempting to be lethargic! I went to Sandra’s house yesterday to visit her family, which was much fun, and then we went out for ice cream with her friend. Mmm. On my days off I try to sneak in a little bit of western food, as I really am eating very traditional things at the home. Despite the fat and carbs content of this food, I have somehow managed to lose half a stone since arriving – very weird. In other good news, I have an extra day off this weekend as Monday is a national holiday for the day of the dead.

Another highlight of the week was going to Patty’s house for the meeting of the senoritas (hee hee I am one of those!) who work with Operation Restoration. It is definitely making a difference having people around who I feel like I can start to call friends: because it is not good for man (or woman) to be alone.