If you’re an empty nester looking for opportunities to serve and support social or medical projects in other parts of the world, we encourage you to take the plunge and get involved. We did, and we are enjoying helping to support the work of HOPE worldwide Bolivia in La Paz, Bolivia. You can consider serving for short periods of time or even moving abroad as we did. We sold most of our belongings, our cars, and our home in order to move to Bolivia.
We wanted to be involved with overseas service projects for some time and had explored several orphan programs over a period of several years. When we reached the point in our lives where we finally made the decision to break the cycle of working and paying bills just to support “stuff” and “things”…we started seriously looking at opportunities around the world. We created a list of criteria to help us decide where we should move. That list included a safe location in close proximity to the States (so as to reduce costs of returning for family visits), a church family, a lower cost of living, and a not-too-difficult language barrier. (Spanish and English have many similarities). And, of course, we wanted to be involved in an active social/service project.
After an extensive worldwide search, we narrowed our choices to South America, and then more specifically to La Paz, Bolivia. (Please see this video). Amazingly, after focusing in on La Paz, we discovered that Dr. Kevin Broyles and his wife Noelle are leading the HOPE worldwide Bolivia team. Phyllis knew Noelle in college and attended Kevin and Noelle’s wedding nearly 30 years ago.
Initially, our move to La Paz was quite an adjustment. We gave up a very large, comfortable home, and many of our possessions for a one-bedroom efficiency apartment. We sold our cars and now travel mainly by taxi and mini-buses. We live in the downstairs apartment of a wonderful family from the church here and they have become close friends. Our living expenses have been dramatically reduced.
Stan is currently using his many years of business consulting experience to help with the planning and expansion of the HOPE worldwide Bolivia medical programs here, with the ultimate goal of supporting the charitable work of Hospital Arco Iris, while also helping the HOPE worldwide team to becoming self-supporting. Phyllis, who has been a teacher for many years, has found a part-time job teaching English at the local university. Both of us are improving in our Spanish skills daily. We look forward to traveling throughout Bolivia, as well as visiting other countries in South America in the future.
Please visit us at: https://sites.google.com/site/phyllisandstantravels/