I should probably not make working with children a lifetime career.  I think I've been sick more often than I've been well here...  >_<

At least it's getting better... the past few days have the been the worst, with a possible blepharitis, sore throat that hurt every time I swallowed, and a cough/runny nose leftover from my flu a couple weeks ago.

like wut.

This has also made me wonder if I could live in a foreign country... so much health fail.  It also makes me wonder if I could handle being a doctor, being around sick patients all the time.

Alice, the volunteer who works with me at MC (and unfortunately is leaving this Friday... =\) has countered my above fears each time I've voiced them though.  Well, I didn't say the being a doctor one out loud, but she countered the other ones about working with kids and living in South America.  We'll see.



I heard from another volunteer yesterday that Cochabamba's Pride parade is happening this Saturday!  I wish I could go--I've never been to one, and it's been lonely feeling like the only gay person in the country.  But alas, it starts at 7 p.m., and that's when my church's youth service starts.  I'd kinda rather go there and see people I know. And plus, we're apparently making pizza at someone's house.  =D  Exciting.




Also, I fail at going out of the city and seeing cool stuff and travelling.  I guess that's never been me anyway.  Plus, I don't want to miss either of my church services!  I do really enjoy my church here.
I've resigned myself to just do all my travelling and sightseeing in the future... maybe next year?  xD  Anyone wanna take a tour of Peru and Bolivia with me next summer?  ;D

(Reblog from Tumblr)

wesleyhill:

My friend Andy Byers has posted a recent conversation he and I had over email. Here’s part one, and here’s part two.

Great stuff.  My favorite Q/A (bolding mine):

HR: This seems to be the testimony of some gay Christians: “Once I embraced my sexual identity and began practicing it, I then drew closer to Christ.” You have chosen a different route, operating with an entirely different logic. It seems to me as though your testimony could be expressed in this way: “Once I embraced my sexual identity and surrendered any hope of practicing it, I then drew closer to Christ.” Is this an accurate assessment? How would you account for the disparity in these two testimonies? Are both equally valid options?

WH: One of the things we have to face up to honestly as Christians is the fact that behaviors and choices that, on a traditional Christian account of things, are “sinful” are also, nonetheless, liberating and peace-giving for some people.Remember Psalm 73: righteousness doesn’t always lead to observable flourishing! Sometimes when we seek to communicate the gospel, we feel that we need to “unmask” the peace and happiness that unbelievers say they experience before we can talk to them about Christ. “Your life is really miserable,” we say, “so you need to come to Jesus.” But is that right? What if the person replies, “But my life isn’t miserable! On the contrary!” I wonder if Bonhoeffer’s reflections on “religious blackmail” could help us here as we ponder how to speak to gay people about the historic Christian teaching on sexual ethics without attacking their own gay partnerships as just obviously ”bad” for them. To someone who is in a loving partnership, that attack will either ring hollow or be profoundly hurtful or offensive. I think of a passage from Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology in which he says that we Christians ought to be able to recognize that some people who are rejecting Christian truth often live quite “healthy” lives, when you judge them by the standard of, say, the mental health profession. “Conversions to other religions or yogas or therapies may,” Jenson writes, “in their own ways be describable as ‘forgiveness’ or ‘liberation’ and so on. To such possibilities the gospel’s messengers can only say: ‘We are not here to entice you into our religion by benefits allegedly found only in it. We are here to introduce you to the true God, for whatever he can do for you — which may well be suffering and oppression.” Applying this kind of perspective to homosexuality, I’d like to say that gay partnerships may provide a measure of “liberation” for some and that following the historic Scriptural teaching on either marriage between one man and one woman or celibacy may be quite difficult and not obviously or empirically “good” for us, even though we trust that, in the long run, obeying God does enable true flourishing — and celibacy can indeed be joyful and life-enhancing, even in the meantime.

I was having a rather down day a couple days ago about how no guy to my knowledge has ever liked me (kinda petty, huh?  haha).  But then after I wrote some things down, I just prayed, “I’m going to trust You.” And that just brought such peace to my heart.

It’s true. This isn’t gonna be easy. Even if there are studies that show that gay celibate Christians have higher rates of suicide and depression, that living this way may not be “obviously or empirically ‘good’ for us,” it is true that I have gained so much already from living like this.  It may not always be so. In those times, it just comes down to trust.

My second favorite Q/A:

HR: Back to the issue of the Bible and homosexuality.  Many gay Christians are reading the passages on homosexuality differently from you.  When it comes to homosexuality, are the Scripture texts muddled?  Is there hermeneutical space for differing interpretations?

WH: Those of us who maintain the “traditional” viewpoint on this — that the church ought not to bless same-sex marriages — need to help people see that the historic Christian opposition to same-sex sexual partnerships does not simply rest on a few isolated prooftexts, like Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 (as vitally important as those texts are!). It is, rather, part of the larger fabric of Scriptural teaching on marriage, procreation, child-rearing, celibacy, friendship, etc. So Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, and Ephesians 5 are just as crucial, or even more crucial, for forming Christian sexual ethics than Romans 1 is. Chris Roberts, in his excellent book Creation and Covenant, has shown how all the major strands of the Christian tradition have upheld the significance of sexual difference (our creation as male and female) for the moral theology of marriage, and that that has been the basis of their opposition to same-sex partnerships. If we could help people see this more holistic vision, then perhaps the church’s continued opposition to gay marriage wouldn’t seem to rest on such an arbitrary, flimsy basis. It isn’t just about picking and choosing a few random verses and building a sexual ethic out of such fragments. It’s rather about a coherent vision — a kind of seamless garment — of Christian teaching about our creation in God’s image and the vocations that flow from our creation and redemption.

Loewenstern Fellowship Envelope #4

Open at the mid-point of your experience

Whoops.  I basically haven't blogged in a month.  My b.

I blame getting the flu and med school apps.  But now that those are both more or less out of the way (still waiting on a recommender... -_-), I can begin blogging some more.

Now there is obviously way too much to even begin to talk about, but I suppose talk about I must.

Misc. Updates

• My host family got another volunteer on May 29th, and it's been great to have another volunteer and another person to talk with at mealtimes.  Makes everything slightly less awkward.  She's a nursing student in Wisconsin, 24, and interestingly, comes from a Mormon family (she's no longer LDS though), and has a sister who lives in China and now speaks fluent Mandarin.  I do enjoy having a companion to go places with and to share a taxi back home when we're coming back from a dinner or outing with the other volunteers.

• Going to a conference/talk thing by Josh McDowell on Tuesday on sexuality... kinda amusing... just the fact that Bolivia in so many ways is just like a culmination or reminder of so many different things in my life.  I remember my sister giving me a day-by-day youth devotional by Josh McDowell back when I was like in middle school.  The first one I ever got and more or less completed, I think.

• Got to share the Gospel and talk about my faith with Alice, the volunteer who is mostly with me at Maria Cristina, the orphanage for people with special needs.  She's pretty open-minded she said, which is certainly true.  Hopefully I can have a few more conversations about faith with her before she leaves.

• I called my dad today (for the first time since I've been here... so 5 weeks.  oops!  But we've communicated through e-mails) for Father's Day and spoke in Mandarin for what has been ages.  I speak a little sometimes at Ciudadela, the other orphanage, since the kids want to hear some, but that isn't much of course.  When I couldn't think of the words in Chinese, though, all I could think about was Spanish... haha.  Which I suppose is a good sign that I'm practicing my Spanish quite a bit after all.

Ciudadela (the orphanage for children without special needs that I work at)

• Although I initially kind of resented being at Ciudadela, since I came expecting to work with people with disabilities, I am growing to quite enjoy it.  It's awesome to be able to speak with the kids and learn about them and their passions.  Even though some of the kids can be kind of insulting (a couple have told me, "No sabes hablar bien (You don't know how to speak well)" which naturally made me sad), they mostly all seem to really enjoy my presence there, and I can barely walk around the orphanage without hearing "TÍO DAVID!!!" and kids running up to me.  That is nice.  =)

• The place has its own challenges though... like tutoring kids in math and physics... in Spanish. Sometimes I have to help the younger kids with their Spanish homework (make words out of these syllables, or make sentences out of these words sort of exercises) and I basically just run and go get a dictionary.  lol.

• On Friday, I happened to be looking through one of the 17-year old girl's, Marisol's, notebooks, one where she seems to draw random things and write other things.  I reached one point where the word "Fracasos (Failures)" was written, and as I was reading other things out loud in the notebook, continued to read these out loud.  Of course, Marisol got embarrassed and told me to read it silently, and I quickly understood why as I reached the part where she wrote, "A 14 años, me enteró que mi papá se murió (At 14 years old, I was told that my dad died)." Underneath that was "A 2 años, mi mamá se murió (At two years old, my mom died)" and above that was a line about how she had to repeat a grade.  It usually doesn't really strike me that almost all the kids I'm working with don't have parents... but this was one of the times that it did.

• The other time was when another one of the older girls, Esperanza (I think she's 15), last week was saying that she felt sad the day before, and I asked why.  She hesitated a bit, but I continued asking, and she said because she was thinking about how her parents had abandoned her.  =(  I tried to say something like, oh, it wasn't abandonment, they just wanted you to have a better life sort of thing (Marisol was there and helped complete my sentence with "una mejor vida"... made me think that this is probably the sort of thing they hear quite often).  But of course, that's not much comfort. She later said her parents had passed away now), and that God loves them... but still.  It's hard to provide comfort in a situation like that.  I guess you can really only just be with them and give them your love.

• One other time was when Marisol was baking a cake for her teacher's birthday the next day.  She invited three of her friends from school over, and I chatted with them.  Esperanza was there as well (haha, can you tell that Esperanza and Marisol are my two favorites at Ciudadela?  They're so sweet and kind to me.)  I guess just the fact that these kids had parents and Esperanza and Marisol didn't anymore just kinda struck me.  All the kids are usually so cheery and happy whenever I see them (I guess because they're usually happy to see me.  haha, that sounds awfully prideful) that I tend to feel like they're all at boarding school or something.

• Interestingly, a few of the girls I was talking to (ranging from like 10, 12, and 17) all said they didn't want to be adopted.  After all, those parents wouldn't be one's real parents.  I could understand the 17 year-old's feelings, but I thought it was interesting that while one might always think that kids would want to be in a home, that isn't always the case.

Ahh, I still need to talk about the political situation here.  I guess I'll get there.  Ahh, and the chance to interact with cleferos.  Well, more... at some point, haha.  I also have an Envelope due tomorrow for the midpoint of my experience, so I'll be blogging for sure at least then.

More Detailed Updates Soon, But Today...

I met one of the new Projects Abroad volunteers from the States (who happened to come on the same flight to Cochabamba from Santa Cruz and helped out another new volunteer who is currently living with my host family and me since she couldn't really speak Spanish) who is the nephew of who may hopefully be the next President of Bolivia.  His uncle was also the 4-time mayor of Cochabamba city and governor of the Cochabamba state and who was 2nd place to the current president in the last election in 2009.  More on the not-so-great job the current president is doing later.

We painted two rooms together with a couple other volunteers.

He's really cute.

Tomorrow, he's planning and texting other volunteers and me about going to a Brazilian steakhouse.


may have just found my third slight infatuation since coming to Bolivia.  >_<


still in awe that I got to meet this kid.

Also, he's studying Poli Sci like Albert.  haha.