I think spring has officially arrived in Bolivia. Yesterday it rained about six different times, none of them for very long but a couple of times it was heavy enough to make me glad we were already home from church. Today is overcast also; we're going to La Cancha in half an hour and I am definitely taking my umbrella.
The most important news of the week is that Farron has been called to serve as the Second Counselor in the Cochabamba Temple Presidency, effective November 1 (and I will be one of the two assistants to the new Temple Matron.) We are more overwhelmed than excited by this new responsibility at the moment, but we are happy to serve wherever we are asked and can only trust that the Lord will compensate for our inadequacies.
Since a call to serve isn't really a "photo op", I thought I would show you something else today - namely, our walk to church each week. Actually, we walk down to the intersection where we catch the trufi - then we ride for 30 minutes - and then walk several blocks.
This first picture was taken just outside the temple gate. You can see (across the road) some green grass and little palm trees. That green area is maintained by the temple groundskeepers, that's why it's neat and clean. The flowers on the right are part of the temple landscaping; these new ones were just planted last week.
Here we have rounded the curve and are walking south alongside the temple grounds, but as I said, even though we are outside the fence, all this is maintained by the Church gardeners.
They are reseeding some of the grass, hence the brown spot at the lower right corner.
Notice how clean and neat everything is.
This is near the south end of the temple grounds. When we cross the street just ahead of us, we'll be off Church property. The red brick buildings to the right are an elementary school. The cars you see parked facing this way are taxis. They line up at this intersection and wait for customers. The funny thing is you can ask three different drivers how much it would cost to be driven to a certain place and get three different answers, so you just keep asking until you get the price you are willing to pay.
This looks like a California Pepper Tree to us - the foliage is identical with the ones down around Puddingstone Reservoir at home. Notice how dry and brown the ground is,
and all the trash under the tree and on the sides of the little ravine to the right.
There is trash everywhere outside the temple grounds; it is really sad.
This was taken on the southeast corner of that same intersection. We are standing and waiting for our trufi (#134) to come. We're looking west here. Yes, that is an ATM on the corner.
Notice the graffiti on the building. Graffiti is omnipresent, like trash.
As we cross the street by the rotondo, this is the first thing we see...
. . . and the next few pictures were all taken as we walked the five blocks south to the church building. This is HUGELY better-looking than a couple of months ago when the whole street was torn up (and closed to traffic) while they did some kind of street repair. Many of the sidewalks were torn out by the street crews and the unfortunate property owners have to replace them (when they can.)
This one is interesting because it shows you how a sidewalk can look IF the property owner has the money and the desire to make it nice. Isn't this beautiful? Farron says the city will eventually fine people if they don't fix their sidewalks. Some of these people are so poor, that's a real hardship.
This is one of the last corners before we reach the church. Not sure who's responsible for it.
This is a meat market that hadn't opened yet when we went buy at 7:40 a.m. You'll notice there is a sidewalk all the way to the curb. Also, the people you can see down on the next block (if you make the picture big) are eating at some food stands that are on the sidewalk in front of a big Catholic church (El Templo de San Joaquin. I have never heard Catholic churches called "temples" before, but they do it here. Maybe it's a Bolivia thing?) They have lots of people eating there every Sunday and there are picnic tables set up for them. We think it may be sponsored by the church but we're not sure. I would have taken a picture closer, but I thought they might not like it and I didn't want to offend them.
Here we are at the last corner (just south of the Catholic church) looking across the street at our building. You will notice that it has a high fence all the way around the property and yes, the gates are locked when meetings are not in progress. Unfortunately, were it not so, the church would be vandalized and everything in it would be stolen. All the churches in South America have to be protected this way. (Not just the LDS buildings, either. All denominations are enclosed by high security fences.) Of course, as Farron just reminded me, it's not just churches that are security-conscious. Sometime I'll post pictures of the walls around people's houses with broken glass set into the cement!
This is what we see if we look west across the street from the front gate of our building. The trick is to ignore the graffiti and concentrate on the little tree and the pretty flowers in the median.
And here is Farron standing just outside the front door of the Jaihuayco Stake Center.
After seeing these pictures, you will understand why, when we came out of church yesterday and it was raining, we did not walk the 5 blocks back to the main drag where we could catch a trufi, but rather flagged down a taxi right in front of the church.You can imagine now how mud-splashed our shoes would be if we walked in the rain. There are just too many places where the "sidewalk" is a dirt path. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. When it's not raining, we have no problem walking to and from the main street and have done so 90% of the time we've been here.
The important thing is that we have to be aware of reality (i.e., keep our eyes on the ground when we're walking so we don't trip and fall over broken sidewalks, rocks, or other obstructions) but at the same time we can look for the good things, the good people and the flashes of beauty here and there. For instance, they've done a nice job (now that the road construction mess is over) of planting trees and flowers down the median of the street. Also, this is a picture of a fairly-large park that is diagonally across the street from our church. (We are standing north of the Catholic church and looking southwest. The LDS church is a block further south and looks northeast to the park.)
They really have a lot of little parks scattered all around the city - some are a block long, some less, some more. All of them have benches where people can sit and relax and some have playground equipment. Bolivia is SO DRY that right now the parks aren't terribly green. They don't have sprinkler systems. We have occasionally seen a park/city employee holding a hose and watering small trees or bits of grass by hand. I think when it really rains, as it is supposed to do for the next couple of months, all the parks will be green and beautiful.
And speaking of beautiful, here are a couple of shots of a jacaranda tree at the corner where we caught the bus to come home from grocery shopping today. The flowers are an even deeper purple than the camera captured, and the tree really is lovely. It made me happy just looking at it!
. . . a close-up of the flowers
I dig the doors (or maybe it's a gate...) to get into the stake center. They look very secure. 8)
ReplyDeleteAlso that last picture, the close-up of the flowers - beautiful!