The past four weeks have been filled with adventure, excitement, and very few dull moments! HIS has had visitors out our ears, starting in the middle of September with the Spiritual Emphasis Week team that came from Texas. Friday we finally said goodbye to our last visitors, retired ladies who came to electronically catalog our entire library, and I’m hoping for a mostly regular week before the crazy of the Holidays hits!
In the middle of October, I had the opportunity to chaperone the High School Takesi Trip. Takesi is an Incan Trail that starts about 2 hours outside of the city, crosses the Cordillera Real Mountain Range, and dips into the jungle! It was quite the hike with 40+ High School Students and my coworkers. In my opinion, my friend Emma who teaches High School Science, was the best backpacking partner I’ve ever had. According to her fitbit without our 20-30 pound pack included, we burned 6,385 calories, took 74,656 steps, went 26.6 miles, and were active for 539 minutes. I reached my highest ever altitude, too, around 15,000ft! We definitely got moving! If you want to read more about the actual trail you can here! One of our students is a photographer in the making. You can check out the experience of the Takesi through her eyes!
The week and weekend following that trip, I spent nearly every free moment working on my class for Seattle Pacific. I had to get moving on it to beat the Bolivian unpredictability of a possible move at any time! The risk, laughs, fun, adventure, and movement continued the following weekend as three other friends and I headed to Coroico, a jungle town about three hours from La Paz. I celebrated (nearly) finishing all of my school work with a three hour hike to Bolivian waterfalls, poolside reading, and zip-lining for the first time. The company boasts speeds up to 50mph, 5,100 feet of wire suspended hundreds of meters above the valley. It was awesome!
All suited up for superman style!
Erin forgot she was wearing flip flops…who knows where the other one is!
Upon returning to the city, I watched God move by answering my apartment’s prayer for an apartment within a 3 block radius of where we currently live. I am so excited that God is giving me and my roommates the desires of our hearts. We will be moving December 11, one week before the end of the semester, into this home! Lots of negotiating, prayer, and conversations went into this deal, and I’m so thankful that at the end, the owner saw our need and is “willing to compromise to bless us”. It’s also fun to see that God has a sense of humor in all of this. The apartment doesn’t have a full size fridge, and after all the drama with our last one, I’m hoping that we have one when move in day arrives!
Bigger than my three block move, after many conversations with the Lord, I believe he is calling me to move to Seattle starting in June 2016 to finish my Educational Leadership degree at Seattle Pacific University. I remember a conversation with a friend my first year here, her words, “I’m here until the Lord calls me elsewhere” still ring in my ears. This statement now rings true for me. I am beyond grateful for my experience here at HIS and with our organization NICS. I know and believe that God is on the move, already preparing what’s to come! Please be in prayer for me as I serve the rest of this year and for details to come together for Seattle, specifically…
• An affordable car (do you have one you want to sell or give away!?) phone, and apartment
• Community and/or roommates who love the Lord and encourage me to be chasing after Him
• A paid internship – this is perhaps the biggest prayer need. I will be taking 4-7 credit hours per quarter on top of a 15hr/week internship. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for a part time job, so I’m ambitious to think that God could take care of my financial needs through a paid internship!
I’m praying that you’ve seen the movement of God in your life recently, too!
Bekah's Bolivian Blog 