It’s been several weeks since we got deported from Bolivia and I thought it might be nice to share with you guys the story of what happened and how God has been faithful in showing us why!
The day we were supposed to head to Bolivia we said goodbye to our hosts and got on our bus. What was supposed to be a 20 hour travel day to El Alto, Bolivia turned into a lot of sitting on the floor of the border patrol office and ultimately going back into Chile.
When we got to the Chilean/Bolivian border we exited Chile just fine and went over to the Bolivian side to be able enter into their country. We had done a lot of research to be able to know what we would need to cross into Bolivia but all our research gave us was a list of papers they MIGHT ask us for. For those of you who don’t know, Bolivia isn’t really excited about American’s entering their country. The only people they’re harder on than those of us from the USA are people from Russia. From what we could tell from the internet, it depends on the day, the person working the counter, and what border crossing you’re at as to what paperwork you would actually need.
I am not going to lie, a few members of my team were missing one of the papers we thought we might need but with how sporadic the border is we knew that if God wanted us to get through He could easily make it happen. On this day there were some Americans in front of us that didn’t have a lot of the paperwork they needed. The man wouldn’t even listen to us when we said we weren’t a part of their group and we weren’t even allowed up to the counter to show the paper work we did have. He told us, “You are officially deported! Get out!!” After we all walked out the front door they closed it and locked it behind us. We all kind of stood there for a half a second staring at each other in disbelief of what just happened.
It didn’t take long before all of us kicked into problem solver mode and started figuring out what it was we were going to do. We ended up catching a bus back over to the Chilean border crossing where we waited for several hours. We contacted our leadership and people we knew in Chile that could connect us with some people who had the ability give us a place to stay for the night. We caught a bus back to Calama, Chile (for free by the grace of God) and a family who knew our host family from the past month agreed to house us at their church. Wow! This was a huge blessing! In 5 hours we went from not knowing where we were going to sleep that night to not only having a safe place to sleep but a church with hot showers, a great kitchen, wifi, and a family who had hosted 6 World Race teams before and knew how our group functioned. They were so so good to us and said we could stay there as long as we needed.
Over the next week we went to Bolivian Embassy in Calama 4 times. Each time we went, we were told we could not get visas into Bolivia. Besides the fact that we COULD NOT get into their country there were a few other reasons we were thinking this was not God’s plan for my team. A couple of my teammates started having dreams that we were not going to go to Bolivia alongside the fact that some of our quiet times in the Word started showing us verses like “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?” (2 Kings 2:18) and “And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” (Acts 16:7)
It wasn’t long before the whole team knew with certainty we were not getting into Bolivia. It was not God’s plan for us and while that made us sad we knew that if He was this adamant about us not being there He must have something really great planned for us in its place. We talked about it as a team and with our squad mentor and decided to head straight up to Peru which was going to be our next country anyways. We headed to Cusco, Peru and immediately we loved it and felt a peace about being here.
While we started to plan our month in Peru we contacted a few people with ministries we might want to help with here. Before we actually got in contact with anyone we did things like Food from M’dude. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about check out my blog “Food from M’Dude” to see how God used us to serve the people on the streets of Cusco.) As were served where we saw opportunity, my teammate Olivia had been contacting a family who had hosted 12 World Race teams previously. She came to me one day and said, “Hey! They answered my Facebook message and they sound really great!”
Shortly after that I was able to video chat them to see if they would be a good fit for my team. In just one phone call with this guy, I KNEW with everything inside of me my team NEEDED to go with these people. I couldn’t explain why I had such a strong feeling except that the Holy Spirit inside of me was pushing me to do this. We found out that this host and his wife really needed people but didn’t tell anyone and just decided to pray to Lord and see Him show up. That’s when Olivia messaged him asking if we could come. Woah, Lord. How cool?
We ended up leaving the downtown area of Cusco to head up to their house in the outskirts of town the very next evening. The day after that was one of the biggest days of the year for them and the orphanage they work closely with. They do a type of garage sale thing to raise money for the orphanage. They desperately needed people to help them run this sale and we came just in time. They told us they can normally raise a little over $1,500 by doing this but that this year they raised over $3,200!
Over the next week my team got to help them with several different ministries including the orphanage we helped raise funds for and a girls home that takes in ones who have been abused. I personally got to help a couple down the street who had been treated incredibly poorly by a woman many had originally trusted. They ended up getting the super short end of the stick when it came to the property they were supposed to live on. It was in such poor condition that our host decided to take them in and let the couple live with them while we helped fix it up. Over the week I did A LOT of construction. This looked like tearing down walls, carrying away rubble, and helping build a retaining wall. I got lots of scratches, bruises, and sunburns. It was absolutely exhausting and at the same time so much fun and rewarding knowing how long it would have taken them to all that work without our help. (I also got to help create several videos for the ministry, one of which is linked in the bottom of this blog.)
I am sure that we would have been able to glorify God in Bolivia and even if we had stayed in the down town Cusco area, but with this host we ended up where there was so much need and it was so easy for us to fill that need. They were faithfully praying for help and once again, like God has done so many times this year, He sent me and my team to answer the prayers of others. I love this family even though our time with them has been short. We would have never met and worked with them if we had not been for being deported from Bolivia.
Man, God has showed me a lot this year but one thing he continually shows me over and over again in my life is that He has a plan and that His plan is so much better than any plan I could come up with on my own. I can map out what I want to do for the rest of my life but I hope and pray that no matter what I decide to do I am I always willing to give it all up to follow what God’s plan is for my life.
If you would like to watch a recap video I made of the sale we helped with you can copy and paste this link into your browser:
