Back Home in Bolivia Again

We arrived back home in Bolivia on August 21. It was a very good feeling to be getting off of the plane in Santa Cruz and to have the feel of being home again. It was even better to see Bryan Canny waiting to pick us up and take us home.

And yet being home has taken some readjustment. Drivers still honk their horns before the light turns green. Paperwork and documents that we have always done before are getting harder to do. Not to mention more expensive. (We inadvertently paid twice the amount we should have at the bank for one document we were getting. No refunds, no problems! Just consider it a donation.)

We are thankful for the small apartment where we are staying on the property of a sister mission. It was good to see our dog, Hershey, greeting us at the gate and genuinely remembering who we were. And it is good to be with the brothers and sisters after an absence of 16 months. And yet it is different. We know that we are not home to stay, but that we have a new home awaiting us in Liberia, West Africa. The brothers know that too and so there seems to be a bit of distance and sadness as we greet each other with the typical Bolivian abrazo. And as we had our first council meeting together with our fellow missionaries it seemed different to be discussing decisions and future things of which we will not be a part.

I suspect that these three months will go quickly and then we will be boarding a plane again in the first stage of our journey to our new home. When the time comes it will be with mixed emotions that we leave home in order to go home. But in the meantime we will enjoy all things Bolivian while we can.