Our first blog post from Cochabamba, Bolivia! The heart of South America. We are officially in our third month of living here and it feels good to finally be a bit more settled and adjusted to our new home ( and 2 months later have WIFI! ).We will try and give you all a recap on our first few months here in the next posts but first ... ... how did the idea of coming to Bolivia ever come about? Many friends have asked us why Bolivia?

Coming to Bolivia started with our cousin Nicole one weekend when she was visiting in 2012. Nicole has been serving as a need greater for 10 years now.  She started in DR when she was 18 and travel to Central America later and is currently serving in Bolivia and has been for the last 5 years. She proposed the idea ..."You guys should come to Bolivia!". Nicole told us Cochabamba was a good city for a family to serve where the need was greater.  It was "safe" for living abroad standards, affordable and most of all the harvest is ripe for the picking.

Overtime the encouragement of WT articles and JW Broadcasting experiences of those who had moved to further kingdom interest really pushed us towards Bolivia. We felt that reaching out more for Jehovah and his kingdom  would be a good goal for our family and so we began to prayerfully and thoughtfully consider ways we could simplify our lives to reach this goal.

ONE of the many first things we did was make a budget and stick to it. (This was really HARD for me!) This meant no planning expensive vacations or making unnecessary purchases for several years. Every time I purchased something I would ask myself " Do I really need this?" slowly I began changing my mindset.
Derek began to look for a telecommuting job that would enable us to cut down on living expenses such as commuting time, gas, lunches out, a second vehicle and the maintenance of it.

Derek found a great job working at home in 2015. We sold our second vehicle and relied on one vehicle. This took some time getting used too since there were times Derek had to travel to the office and I was left without a car all- day with a little rambunctious Lucas at home. ( Stir crazy to say the least those days)

We also bought a small house that needed some cosmetic repairs with the sole purpose to flip and with the profit of the sale two years later we were able to pay for the cost of applying for visas and 3 tickets here! Our house sold in three days and we sold most of our belongings and came to Bolivia in September 2016!

As you can see it took around 4 years of readjusting our lives and thinking to reach our goal to simplify and come to Bolivia to serve where the need is greater. It was not an emotional decision nor something that we took lightly as parents to move to South America with our small child. We pray-fully came to this decision, spoke to other families with children serving here also. Asked a lot of questions and tried to prepare ourselves as much as we could. It has not been easy but the spiritual benefits have outweighed all the material sacrifices we have made.

 If you are  thinking about similar goals to serve where the need is greater we encourage you to pray on the matter and take action on your supplications - Jehovah will help you!

A simple life in Jehovah's service is a happy, contented life -1 Tim 6:7-9 we are learning this day by day here in Bolivia.

Next we will start from our arrival here!