From July 26 until August 10 our Youth Venture team will be partnering with the work of Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Boliviana in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Mennonite Mission Network has had a long standing relationship with the church in Santa Cruz. This will now be the third year that the Youth Venture team will be working with a daycare on the outskirts of Santa Cruz, Guarderia Samuelito. The Mennonite churches of Bolivia have been supporting this daycare for several years now. They started it to provide a place for children to be cared for during the day while parents worked or so that parents could work. With the help of two previous Youth Venture teams they have been able to build a new center and now serve more than 75 children from the neighborhood, ages 6 months to 6 years old. We will also be partnering with a couple of other community development projects in the area.
Our schedule will look a little like this:
On Monday, July 26 our group of 15 will meet together for the first time for lunch at the Sinai Mennonite church and them visit Guarderia Samuelito to learn about their work.
Tuesday through Friday, July 27-30, we will be working at Samuelito with some outdoor/construction work to create a grassy playground area. There will also be opportunities to work in the classrooms and kitchen.
Over the weekend of July 31 and August 1 we will visit Samaipata. Samaipata is 118 km from Santa Cruz and is a town that was inhabited by the Chane indigenous group. It has many amazing archaeological sites.
The second week of our visit, August 2-6 we will split up into three groups to continue the assignment. One group of 5 will work in the daycare, one group of 5 will paint and do other construction in the nearby church that used to house the daycare and now is the location of another community development project, and one group of 5 will help with improvements in nearby villages of Los Tajibos and La Tejeria.
The final weekend we will enjoy our final days in the Santa Cruz community and learn more about the region. And we will all depart on Tuesday, August 10.
We will be splitting up in pairs of 2 or 3 to stay in host families which provides for fantastic stories during our time together and so many beautiful experiences.
Our group is 15 strong this year! Eleven from the group come from Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, California. They are going to be in Bolivia about 11 days before the Youth Venture assignment begins for a learning tour with Mennonite Central Committee. These 11 are: Elizabeth Cortez, Erica Cuellar, Esther Rosales, Gonzalo Villegas, Kevin Lott, Kris Melban, Maria Rosales, Rosana Zamudio, Samuel Kelly, Valerie Chacon with Ivan Paz as the leader.
Joining this group on July 26 are: Alison Stauffer, Millersville, PA; Kelsey Schrock, Wellman, IA; Sabrina Lengacher, Loogootee, IN and Jill Schmidt, Newton, KS as the leader.
Please follow the adventures and work that we will be part of in Santa Cruz and pray for God's protection, guidance and understanding during our time of learning and serving.
I, Jill Schmidt, will do my best to keep this blog posted with the latest activities we are engaging in.
No comments:
Post a Comment