The long goodbye

Since my last post Ann has finished school and as always I´m still waiting on my school to get its act together. For the last two weeks Ann has been on vacation and I have been running around trying to get everything set up to defend my thesis, which, Lord willing, I´m supposed to defend this Thursday even though they still have not told me what time or given the final approval to go ahead. So for the last couple weeks we have slowly been saying goodbye to people. Saturday night was our official goodbye party. We had the whole church over and grilled chicken and cooked a big meal and we made a long slideshow of all the pictures we have of church events and people in the last couple years. We borrowed a projector from Ann´s school to show it on the wall and we all had a blast looking at all our pictures together and remembering all the times we have shared together. We each had to give a little speach of course and there were a few tears. Bolivians are not very emotional or expresive people though, so it is kind of hard to read how people really feel, which you have to do because they aren´t really going to tell you most of the time. But it went well. Yesterday was our last Sunday. Like any other Sunday we went to Sunday School and both taught our classes-- Ann the little kids and me the adults. Afterwards we stayed for lunch and went home to take a nap. Sunday night was a little different because Ann preached! The pastor has always asked her to do it and finally she gave in on our last Sunday. It went well, and after of course we had to come up front and we prayed and then they presented us with gifts: ponchos! Then everyone wanted their picture taken with us and then we all walked back up to our homes together like we always have done. It is still hard to realize that something that has become so routine and part of our lives like our Sundays is about to completely change. Our pastor is about to go crazy. There is no one to take my place as deacon in the church so she said I´ll just have to be the virtual deacon now. It is hard to image how the church will continue to function, but we have to realize that it does not really depend on us but on God. We are praying hard for new leaders and especially youth that will really dedicate themselves to the church.
I guess in thinking about all this and our getting ready to go I have realized that maybe I came here to get a master´s degree, but God had other plans and our church community is really where we have been used the most and is really what we will miss. This finally hit home on Friday when I realized I won´t be able to graduate before leaving because of stupid paperwork issues. Basically after I defend the only thing left is to apply for the diploma, but the school never told me until Friday about all the paperwork I have to do to legalize my US college degree here which in Bolivia would take about a month to do (optimistically) and it would cost over $1000. Surprise! Another thing the school slacked off on and now I have to pay the consequense. I am the kind of person that is determined to finish whatever I start. It hurt a lot to realize that I spent the last two years here and at the last second won´t be able to finish what I came here to do. But I realized that maybe God was just trying to show me that I have finished what he wanted me to come here and do. And maybe I value things like diplomas too much. I did all the work and finished, I just didn´t get the piece of paper that says so. But should that be very important? Don´t know, but I guess if I ever need it for something we´ll just have to take a vacation to Bolivia and finish my paperwork.
So this week I´m running around still trying to get things all ready to defend and Ann is running around with our list of things to do before leaving. Hopefully Thursday night we will be celebrating my succesful defense and Friday afternoon church friends are coming over to help clean the house and move out. We´ll spend the weekend with friends in Santa Cruz before flying out Monday morning.
Going home will be fun and good. Leaving our home here is hard. For the first time in my life we don´t really have any concrete plans. We don´t know where we´ll end up or what we are going to be doing. We are just going to trust that God has a plan and when it is time he will let us in on it.