Dean and Ruth's Diary

Living in Cochabamba has been fun. We get to go to classes a couple of days a week. There are always people to chat to – improving our Spanish all the time. Every Tuesday we have a social event.- making tacos, toasting marshmallows, pizza or something. It has been nice getting to know people from different cultures. 

The youth group at AFC have been busy fundraising for us by doing a sponsored hike through Ashridge. They raised a tremendous £500 which is amazing. One of the projects we want to help is the children’s centre – Centro de Apoyo y Amistad with resources that the children cannot afford. So we went to the cancha (a massive labyrinth of street markets) with the centre leaders, Joanna and her mum and bought school supplies for six months with £300. Paper, glue, tape, pencils, paint, colours, card – a whole wheelbarrow full of goodies which is exactly what the centre needs. 

The centre have six classes with over twenty children in each. The children go to the centre to do their homework every day with love and support from the teachers. They also have a healthy snack provided – a sandwich or fruit with yogurt. The sad thing is that many come to school hungry or without being looked after at home.

We have also been visiting different orphanages. On Sunday there was a special lunch at our church to raise funds for a mission trip in December that we hope to go on. We helped look after a group of seven orphans who were visiting with their “Tia’s”. Dean helped to feed ‘J’ who has been blind from birth whilst Ruth cuddled baby ‘B’. These are amazing children who survive against all the odds as they wait to be adopted by Bolivian families. A very humbling experience.

The Drama workshops are continuing to go well and we now have a very strong group who will be performing street drama this Sunday evening with the whole church backing them up.

The Visa situation is still ongoing, as we have had to send our marriage certificates back to England to be legalised. As soon as they arrive back we need to visit La Paz for an official stamp before we return to immigration here in Cochabamba. Such a long process which is really trying our patience!

Please keep sending your support (especially this Christmas). All funds will be put to good use and placed in the hands of leaders that we know and trust.

With love from Dean & Ruth.

Fundraising account
Mr D Such
Barclays
Sort code 20 39 07
Account no. 50163678

In the past two weeks we have continued with our Spanish lessons at Connexiones entre Mundos every morning. A whole new experience of homework and classes, timetables and “the subjunctive”.  We are like Hermione and Ron! Ruth getting her homework in on time and Dean a week behind…

We’ve been working with Belen Church and have a taught four drama workshops. We were invited to go out with them to do  drama in the main plaza. It was a great experience and we were glad to help. I do not know how many times we have performed the Heart sketch, but it always amazes us how much people enjoy seeing us make ourselves look silly and when Dean produces the new Heart the look of surprise always makes me smile.

We also went along to a local teacher training institute to teach them drama skills and how they can be applied to a classroom situation. Ruth was able to share a little about her teaching experience with the students.

Through Connexiones entre Mundos we have been invited to work alongside various projects in Cochabamba. Every Saturday afternoon a group go to the Main Plaza and set up a tent. They bring warm water and baby baths, shampoo, clean clothes, towels etc and they offer to wash the babies who live with their parents on the streets. The ladies come from the local area. We helped wash the babies- some as small as 3 months, others about 3 years old. It was so lovely.  The water turned black every time….

 

 

Last Sunday Dean was invited to preach at a Brazilian church for 250 students. he spoke about Love. We used a translator (neither of us speak a word of Portugese). They enjoyed the drama we presented and he has been asked to speak again in November.

 

As part of language school we have a number of weekly social events. We had a taco evening to raise money for a lady who had just had triplets. Her husband has abandoned her and she is struggling to work and earn money to buy powdered milk.

 

 

 

We also went to a fancy dress dessert party. We made Welsh cakes (an improvised version) and went as the Queen and Prince William. We have also walked up to the statue of the Cristo on the hill. It nearly gave us a heart attack climbing 1200 steps at altitude…  It is a whole 10 cm taller than the one in Rio…

We went to visit an orphanage on Friday that we have had links with for a number of years. It was great to spend time with the children, playing games and just hanging out.

 

 

 

 

Thank you for your continued support. We know parcels are en route..thank you. Please leave a message for us. X

 

 

 

Although we are officially still at Language school we have been so busy this week, getting involved with different churches and projects here in Cochabamba.

On Monday we moved house to be closer to the centre of town. We gave in our visa application at Interpol (stage 3 out of 6 complete) and now have to just wait until the certificates come back before going to the next place. We have run two drama workshops for a church group and are going to accompany them this afternoon for a presentation in the main plaza (square). It’s great to see all ages in the Church getting involved from the under 10’s to the over 60’s!

At language school we get to meet lots of people who work for various projects in the town. Sarah and her brother work at Casa de Amor, looking after children who have been at risk on the streets. This week they introduced us to baby ‘B’, who is making good progress after being abandoned by his 15 year old mother, who was not able to look after him. The aim for Casa de Amor is to find local Bolivian families who can adopt the children as soon as possible. He is 5 weeks at the moment – and really cute as you can see in the photo below.

One evening we went with a group to Salsa dancing classes. It was so funny. Salsa dance teachers (except the gorgeous Daniella Hobbs) all seem to have a thing about having their trousers just a bit too tight and a bit too short.!! Actually it was quite hard work dancing at altitude. Dean was one of only four guys, so had a queue of lovely girls wanting to dance with him…

Saturday is Market day. Time to stock up on delicious fresh fruit and vegetables from a local street market just 10 minutes from our house. It was a colourful experience, fruits, uncountable varieties of potatoes, yukka, real herbs, mountains of bananas and the innocent looking – yet deadly-  hot chilli peppers. We came home laden with stuff to try.

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Ahora, tenemos que hacer nuestro tarrea…. por favor Dino… No puedes copiarme!! Vamos.. poco a poco.

This week has been mainly based in Cochabamba. We have had some really interesting Culture classes with Mauge and have continued to have Language school to improve our Spanish.

It was great to learn more about the history of the country we love so much, and finally understand a little more about how the culture works. Having lived here for two years it felt like a ‘lightbulb moment’ to realise why people behave in certain ways. We learnt that here in Bolivia it is very much a Collective culture and rules are more like suggestions than ‘rules’ as we know them. It makes for quite a culture shock when you first arrive. On the plus side it is totally relationship orientated and people love to spend time together, so we feel really welcomed and loved.

Our Spanish is improving. We have spent time with friends who we met 5/6 years ago in Sucre and celebrated their son’s first birthday (happy birthday Lucas). We are moving house on Monday to be closer to the centre of town and the language school. We have had a lovely time staying at Gwen’s house… (thanks guys).

Last Sunday we introduced ourselves at a local church. We had a chance to present a short drama – which everyone seemed to love. The young people want us to do a short set of workshops to teach them drama and mime, which they will then be able to present all over the city. This is planned to start this Wednesday.

Today is the day of the General Election which means no one can meet outside of their houses except to vote! We are having an amazing time with our friend and spanish teacher Mauge who is looking after us very well indeed.

Thanks for keeping in touch. Please leave a short message if you have time.

 

 

We arrived in Santa Cruz and were met at the airport by William and Liz Moscoso. Liz has been our friend for about 14 years, since she spent a year in Britain and stayed at our house.

It felt strange being back. Familiar in so many ways, yet so totally different to life in England. The noise, dust and how the cars literally swim through the streets like fish in the sea. There do not seem to be any rules of the road. The bigger you are the more space you need. But cars literally weave and honk their way, wherever they want to go.

We visited their church (La Roca) for a four hour service.. yes, a four hour service!! It went surprisingly quickly and we enjoyed meeting people there. We met up with Juanita who came to England a few years ago to volunteer with Care-force. They took us to a small town outside of Santa Cruz where we saw sloths in the trees on the plaza. These animals are soo funny and move really slowly, a bit like Dean in the mornings. It was so sad to see people drunk on the streets and so much rubbish everywhere.

Liz invited us to the La Roca school to share our testimonies with the children and do some drama and games. She is an English teacher, so we knew that if our Spanish was a bit rusty she could step in and translate for us. It was great because we spent time with 13 year olds, 16 year olds, 6 year olds and 11 year olds. We introduced ourselves in English… a basic name, age, likes, dislikes, what we do in our free time and they understood that. Then we explained in Spanish why we are here and showed some dramas. We were able to explain them in Spanish – amazing how the words just flooded back!! The younger ones enjoyed seeing the puppets and playing parachute games.

We were sad to say goodbye to the family in Santa Cruz, but we flew to Cochabamba to start Spanish classes with Serve Abroad. This is the mission organisation that we are working with here. The language school is based in a house in the centre of town and has cultural classes and organises events / volunteer projects for the students. We will be having classes together for about a month.

We are currently staying at a house on the outskirts of town that belongs to a friend of ours. She and her Bolivian husband and 2 children lived here for about 9 years working with a community, building a community centre and pre-school. But now they have returned to Scotland – so it feels kind of quiet without them here. We are hoping to help there in the next few weeks, painting a mural or doing something practical.

We spent time with Rodrigo and his family yesterday. They are running a youth church here in Cochabamba for Brazillian students. He has already booked Dean in to preach at the end of the month. Tonight we are meeting a church youth group on the edge of town to teach drama and spend time with them. We are also invited to their Church service tomorrow morning. Really looking forward to meeting them… vamos a ver!

If you would like to send us some goodies through the post please send your items to the address below. Parcels could take up to 3 weeks to arrive. Thank you:)

Dino & Ruth Such
Connexiones Entre Mundos
Cassilla 15
Cochabamba
Bolivia

Dear friends,
Many of you may have already heard that we are going back to Bolivia on 25th September (today!) for about a year. We have been thinking about this for some time. We always thought that we would go back at some point, to help serve and encourage the projects we helped start when we were there in 2007-2009.

As you can imagine we cannot hope to do this work without a lot of support and prayer from all you guys. This time we are going with a Bolivian mission organisation called ‘Serve abroad’. We will be self funding our trip. Any financial donations we receive we will be able to give directly to small projects we visit and work with. If you would like to support the work you can donate via the details below.
After our previous trip we know that the most valuable thing is your continued prayers, your messages and your emails. We plan to keep updating our websitehttp://www.deanandruth.com with monthly newsletters and blog posts. Please keep in touch and follow our travels. If you’d like to go on our regular email list please let us know.

With love Ruth and Dean

Fundraising account
Mr D Such
Barclays
Sort code 20 39 07
Account no. 50163678

Whilst we were in Bolivia this summer we spent some time relaxing with friends. These photos show our weekend in Torotoro National Park and in Cochabamba.

We’ve been back in UK for a few months now and are beginning to get used it. We still really miss our friends and church family in Sucre and think about them often. We spent a couple of weeks with Ruth’s family near the beach in South Wales and stayed with friends until we could move back to our house.

We are both enjoying being able to catch up with friends and chat (in english). Dean has been doing some graphic design work over the summer and Ruth has been completing applications for teaching jobs. Ruth is going to start work in January in a local girls school.

We have joined a new church near our house. It is a smaller church, but very socialble and friendly. They have been supporting us whilst we were away in Bolivia. They have asked Dean to be the youth pastor 2 days a week. We are already feeling athome there and getting involved with lots of groups and activities.