Hopefully I can finish what I started this time.

Today I´ve got a little bit more time to stop by this little open air internet cafe near my house. As i do this, it´s 70 degrees out and there is a light breeze blowing on me.
Jealous?. Also, these keyboards are crazy different. All the punctuation is all over the place, so I´m making a lot of mistakes, and generally don´t care enough to fix it. But anyways.

Tomorrow is when I´ll be be starting my "ministry" down here. I´m really excited for it, but at the same time a little bit hesitant. Talking with my family and the other people down here is generally pretty difficult and requires a lot of hand and body gestures, and generally means that I very poorly try to explain something I have no idea how to explain in Spanish. But it´s fun. And once everyone fully grasps how slowly, clearly, and simply they have to talk to me, things go better. But because of that, I´m a little hesitant with what I´m doing. (I was supposed to start on Monday. But I got sick. I won´t go into detail, but I´m sure you can figure out what was happening. One of the workers with the organization, Aldo, called it the "Bolivian Baptism". Wasn´t much fun for me.) So anyways. I´ll be working with this organization in the city that works with the families of people that have addictions. From what I can gather, (but could be totally wrong) the families live there. They try to give the family a safe place to sort of "start over" and teach them every day skills they might not have learned. These things range from auto repair to cooking, and everything in between. So, I´m excited to go. But the idea of jumping into another´s culture where I don´t speak the language, and then being expected to teach them things. I don´t really feel as though that´s something i´m worthy of, or that I´ve yet earned the priviledge to do. But I guess if I can do nothing else, hopefully I can at least show them love. so if whoever is reading this could pray for that, that would be really great.

Apparently, after living in the city for a month, or a month and a half, is when I will go to the Yuquis with Miguel. The hope is that I learn the language and become a little more comfortable and familiar with Bolivian culture before I get completely thrown off from everything I know. (Though it´s different here, it´s not completely foreign. We have computers. We have showers. (Though I was taking very cold showers for the first couple days, because I could not figure out for the life of me how to make the water hot. I finally asked Samuel, mi hermano. My shower today was very nice.) We eat chicken. And rice. Lots of rice. And drink tea. Lots of tea. And coffee. But generally instant coffee, without caffeine. sad. We drink milk. It just comes in bags instead. We watch TV. Always futbol.) So, though things are a lot different here, there are still parts of home that i can sort of grasp to for comfort.
However, from what I can gather through Miguel, the Yuqui´s style of life resembles nothing of what I´m used to. I got to look at some pictures he took from one of his trips there. There was a picture of him holding, what I´m pretty sure, was a lynx. Or something similar. There also was a picture of one of the Yuqui´s with a Puma sitting over his shoulders. A Puma! Who hunts pumas??? Apparently they are quite the hunters, will hunt anything, and will eat anything they hunt. So I guess there´s a chance that maybe i´ll be eating puma, lynx, anteater, or even a vulture. I´m not really sure how that´ll go.
They apparently still live, for the most part, the same way that they´ve been living for hundreds or thousands of years. From what I can tell, they don´t really do life the way that we generally envision people living, but legitimately and truly live off the land.
Also, the Yuqui people, conveniently, don´t really speak any spanish. So I won´t even be able to stumble through something resembling a conversation with them. But that´s pretty far in the future.

I think that´s pretty much all for now. At least to summarize my first couple days. Again, thanks for your prayers. It means a lot to have people doing this with me.
much love!
kyle