The books are piling up for my Bolivia mission trip, which begins June 28:

* "Developing The Leader Within You" and "Developing The Leaders Around You," John C. Maxwell. Debra Snellen draws much of the material for her pastoral training sessions from these books, and so she sent me her copies so that I could get familiar with them.

* Lonely Planet guidebook: "Bolivia," sixth edition, published just last month. Here's a fun fact: the main animals cultivated for food in the Andes are llamas, alpacas and (cue ominous music) guinea pigs. The good news is that they're mostly served for special occasions. Most Bolivian dishes are actually based on beef or chicken brought in from the lower country. Still, it's probably best for me to stick with my normal "don't ask, don't tell" policy when someone serves me a dish with meat in it during the trip.

We will be in a rural area near Cochabamba, at an altitude of more than 8,000 feet. The air will be thin; we will get winded easily, and there's a little risk of altitude sickness (not nearly as much as in La Paz, which is at 11,000 feet). But the weather should be perfect. In fact, there's a saying about Cochabamba's ideal climate: "Las golondrinas nunca migran de Cochabamba," which means, "The swallows never migrate from Cochabamba."

The altitude also means I won't have to worry about taking an anti-malarial medication for this trip.

* A pair of hefty Microsoft Office 2003 textbooks -- a spiral-bound copy in English, a matching soft-bound copy in Spanish. These came from a local supporter who teaches computer courses. I will be teaching very basic computer skills at a little school in the area where we'll work which has a few computers. These books are perfect -- they correspond page-for-page, so I can just hand the Spanish-language version to my translator. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unknowns -- I don't know how simply we'll have to start. Debra told me the students will probably need even the basics like how to use a mouse, but I've got to be prepared in case they're more advanced than I expected. The cardinal rule of short-term missions is flexibility, because things never, ever turn out exactly like you expect them to.

My benefactor may end up teaching some Spanish-language courses himself in the future, and so he's anxious to see how my little experiment works out. In other words, he's using me as a guinea pig, which should give me pause since I'm going to a country where guinea pigs are on the menu.

* Not all my students will necessarily speak Spanish. Some will speak Quechua, a common indigenous language in the Andes, which is why I've also got the Lonely Planet "Quechua Phrasebook." I don't expect to get any fluency in Quechua, but if I can learn a couple of simple greetings, "please," "thank you," and that sort of thing it goes a long way. When you're introducing yourself to your host church, they love it when you can say "Hello," or "Praise God," or "My name is John Carney" in their native tongue, even if they know you can't really converse.

Now, I've just got to figure out how much I can take along. We will fly from Nashville to La Paz on good old American Airlines, but the last leg of the journey will be on AeroSur, Bolivia's leading airline, which allows much less luggage per passenger.

We try to pack light for these trips -- only a few changes of clothing, in lightweight fabrics which can be hand-washed and air-dried. But then you start adding in workshop supplies and materials like dental or school supplies which you intend to donate to the people with whom you're working. You can fill up your allotted weight pretty quickly without realizing it.

June 28 will be here before I know it.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.