Siripaca Greenhouses, Mandatory Meeting

Early this week Jeff went to La Paz to meet Pastor Orlando Moller, a citizen of the U.S. and Bolivia, who’s here to lead a three-day seminary course for Titicaca-area pastors and church leaders.

While Jeff was away I attended an emergency meeting that ran two hours longer than expected. So Pastor Juan Paz, Fausto, who’s a leader in one of the church plants out on the peninsula, and Pastor Dionisio, newly assigned here to help Pastor Juan, and I were late getting out to visit four rural sites – two schools seeking mission funds to help re-roof an existing greenhouse and build a new one, and two existing greenhouses to ensure there’s reinvestment and proper use of profits. Heavy morning rains had flooded some mountain roads, so it was hard to find a taxi driver willing to take us.

We arrived at the first site, the village of Siripaca, three hours late. The rains had made some of the mountain paths impassable for some of the school board members. But nine of them greeted us warmly and enthusiastically. At meetings such as this, “important” people make at least one speech. Mine was embarrassingly short, but delivered partly in Aymara. The school director, speaking in Spanish, said that although the village is geographically hard to reach, it’s not isolated. No one is isolated. He said “We are all pasajeros (travelers) in life. God wants us to help each other and live in harmony.”

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