Family Matters

Moving to a new country - on top of being a missionary - requires that you do some re-evaluating of your family's everyday workings. The last month, we've had to re-evaluate a couple different aspects of how we "do" life here. One of them has been finacial. How do we organize our money and our budget in such a cash based society? We had it down in the States. Develop a budget, use our debit card and record receipts in our nice sophisticated Microsoft money program to track how much we were using and to help us stay within budget. That just doesn't work when you're spending cash on everything, and half the time don't even get a receipt. Like Josh said, "It just seems like they nickel and dime you to death here (or in Bolivian terms, centavo you to death)." 2 Bolivianos (Bs.) tip for the grocery kid or for the guy washing your windshield in the middle of the road, 5 Bs. for every taxi, 7 Bs. for a car wash, 10 Bs. on Tuesday to the guard every week for his nightly coffee and coca, 64 Bs. for an hour of my tutoring every week. The list just goes on and on. So we sat down together and came up with a list of everything we're spending money on and tallyed it all up. Now we pull out that much cash at the beginning of every month and divide it up into "envelopes" (really it's a nice little pouch with different pockets). Now when I go to the grocery store, I pull out my weekly budgeted amount of cash - and I don't go over, because I take my trusty little caluclator with me and add as I go. I think this system is really going to help us see where our money is going and stay within our budgeted amounts. And Josh will stop asking me "Did you take money out of my wallet?" : )

The other thing we've had to rework - especially now that Josh is spending more time out with people, and working at the office - is our calendar and family time. It seemed like we hadn't had a day off in several weeks. Things just kept getting added to our days - and then Josh wouldn't know what I had going and I wouldn't know when he was going to be home (frustrating when you're trying to coordinate your meetings, and child care, and meals!) So we sat down and printed out a calendar for the month that we tacked up to a corkboard. And then we blocked out Thursday, which was really the only day with not much going on, to be our family day. Last Thursday, we packed up the car, the kid, and the dogs and headed out of town to a park about half an hour from Cochabamba. We picniced, and hiked, and Josh set up the hammock for Michaela and I to take a nap. We enjoyed the view, the eucalyptus trees, the streams, and the quiet! Thank you, God, for seeing the need for a Sabbath!