Greetings from Peru!

This is sort of two blogs in one! The first time I had a chance to get on the internet, it quit on everyone after I managed to get off a couple of MySpace messages to my sister. Unfortunately, these will not be as frequent as I had hoped, but I hope I will be able to post every week and half or so.

This is a modified version of a message to my sister I wrote on the 24th of May

Yesterday (Tuesday), we visited another church. Again, the service was in both Spanish and Queche, but I was able to understand a lot more, as I was actually alert and feeling okay! We once again given seats of honor, as is the custom for visitors there, I gather. Mike got up and gave a message about the Great Commission, with the help of the REAP translator, Jerry. Then Lidman got up and spoke to the congregation in Spanish, with Renee, a local pastor that speaks both Spanish and Queche, translating for him. This church also fixed us a welcome meal. Unfortunately, their portion sizes are HUGE and are nearly impossible for us to eat. To make it worse, I was informed that the meat on my plate was part of a sheep’s head… Luckily, with Lidman along, we were able to diplomatically not eat all of our portions, which I’m afraid to say, would’ve been impossible for me to do, given my fragile stomach at the time.

My team members are great. One is Karen, a girl from southern Florida. The guy who ill be working with is actually Peruvian, and his name is Lidman. His English is about as good as my Spanish, so this should be interesting! Karen speaks Spanish too, and hers is about as good as mine (or as bad...which ever way you want to look at my Spanish!) The food is pretty good here in Lima. Lots of rice, chicken and potatoes, but you can get American fast food here too. I have not eaten any llamas or guinea pigs yet...though Lidman says he will make sure we get to try alpache. I think that God is going to do some great things here this summer! I´m really looking forward to cheap, even though the idea of some of the things I may have to do terrify me! so far, He has provided though, and I’ve made a whole lot of new friends here already (the majority I will be saying goodbye to for a month on Saturday, and will only get to see a couple of more times before leaving Peru in august).


Today´s blog!

Finally back on a computer again! Again, forgive my grammatical and spelling errors, because these crazy Spanish keyboards mess my typing up big time...

Let’s see... We finished our training Friday, and we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean that night. You can only see the most popular American films here on the same day they come out in the States. You can’t see Shrek 3 until June 14th here. Anyway, before the movie, we had a Thanksgiving dinner...turkey!...at Mike Weaver´s house, who is the guy who is the head of REAPSouth, the ministry that I’m under here. It was really good to have some home cooked American food, and his wife is a terrific cook.

Afterwards, I went back to our hostel and took a shower, and one of the guys, Justin, offered to take me to Wongs...which is like Wal-Mart here...to get a few things, but by the time we got there, it was closed. He’s a really cool guy though, and we had a lot of fun getting ´´lost´´ in Lima. Because it was closed, we went to Starbucks instead and hung out with the other people there until it was time to go see the movie. You have no idea how happy I was to get Sprite again at the theater!!! The movie was pretty good, but I still liked the first one much better than the newer ones.

Next day (Saturday) most of us headed off into the field. For myself, Karen and Lidman, this meant Chupa, which is close to the lake north of Lake Titicaca (I can’t remember its name right now...Lidman says he’ll take us to Lake Titicaca before midsummer break!). We met with the represenitives from the church that adopted Chupa, Bethlehem Baptist Church and they came with us to Chupa. They actually leave today.

So we actually flew from Lima to Juliaca, the major city about three hours away from Chupa, and where I’m actually sitting at the moment (no internet in Chupa...). Unfortunately, the minute we landed in Juliaca, I knew the first few days were not going to be easy for me. Juliaca is at about 12,000 feet above sea level, and the moment we got off the plane, I was asking Karen and Lidman to slow down because I couldn’t catch my breath. The remainders of my cold a couple of weeks ago haven’t helped any either.

I can’t say my first few days in the Chupa area were fun at all. At dinner the night we landed, we had Chinese, but I had to get Allen (one of the church reps) to take me back to the hostel because I felt terrible. After that...well, altitude sickness has not been fun and all, and I think the Chinese food had something to do with the fact my stomach was really messed up until yesterday. Karen actually ordered me to stay in our room in Chupa on Monday because I was having stomach cramps all night...she was right too. I convinced them to let me to go the school in Chupa (a couple of blocks away) and it turned out to be a very bad idea. After choking down some Pepno Bismo chewables (I’ve tasted worse...) and after Mike, one of the church reps, gave me some stuff for my stomach that also knocked me out, I was a lot better by morning and was able to go visit a church with the others.

We came back to Juliaca yesterday because the church reps, Mike, Lindsey and Carrie are flying home today. To say the least, I refused to have Chinese food for dinner, for obvious reasons. We went to a pizza restaurant instead, and it was very good, though the pizza here has a lot less tomato souse on it than that in the States.

We’re going to be eating breakfast here in about an hour at a pastry place that Lidman says has good breakfast food. I think we’re staying in Juliaca tonight, because we’re going to have to buy bus tickets back to Chupa and you have to get there very very early and its probably already to late to buy enough of them. We are talking about buying a motorcycle or horse to ride out to the villages we would otherwise have about 4 hour walks to from Chupa, but we will see what happens with that. We have to ask permission first.

Here’s a run down on what we’ve done in the villages the past few days. Forgive me, but I’m still learning the names of the villages. I will go back and add them we go.

Sunday morning we went to a church in a village that was about a 45 minute bus ride from Chupa. Unfortunately, we did have to walk, and me being sick with altitude sickness, this was very difficult. Lidman ended up lagging behind me on the way up there. They sang songs in Spanish and Queche (that is the indigenous language), and gave us seats of honor at the front of the church, and had us introduce myself. Unfortunately, my name is somewhat amusing to many of them and caused a few giggles. Lidman had already explained this to me, fortunately. ´Lisa´ is apparently is a local word for a rebellious girl. Unfortunately, due to the facts of I don’t speak any Queche, my Spanish is still fairly basic, and I was felt so ill and weak that I was actually nodding off against all of my effort during the latter part of the service, I didn’t manage to pick up a whole lot of the service. Mike did explain some of what was going on as he was escorting me back to the bus while the others stayed to eat. Be in pray for one of the men (again, I´m terrible with names, and I apologize for that) who recently lost his son and is now in financial trouble.

Monday I can´t really say that much about, as I was forced to stay in the room most of the day. We did visit a school, where the Gospel was shared with the children there and was accepted by many of them. Pray for these little boys and girls in Chupa, and that their schools continue to remain open to us.

So everything went fine with flying, no disasters like that. It’s very neat here in Peru. There’s really too much to tell and I only have an hour...probably more like 45 minutes at this point...on this computer (1 hour for 1 sol...Which is about 33 cents in US money...but I’m completely broke as far as having actual cash on me at the moment...but its okay. I will be able to get my other money tomorrow. Right now, were at a camp for training. Still technically in Lima, but we got back to what we would call downtown Lima tomorrow. Saturday, we will travel what I guess will be the nearest airport to cheap, the village where ill be working this summer. I believe we will be flying there, which makes me a bit nervous...its probably not going to be delta or some US based company that I´ll be flying on.