Arrival and Day 1

After 2 long days of travel we made it. After preliminary gear checks it looks like the computer we brought for Avis is going to be fine. I haven’t booted it up yet but everything is in one piece, so that’s a good sign. I was planning on sneaking into the orphanage and surprising the kids, but I got tackled by Gerson, Yhonson and Joel as soon as I stepped off the bus. I was the one who was surprised. After we unpacked our bags we shared a meal with Avis, Ashley, and Tony and Marianna who are a couple from Canada that are planning on building a house down here. I also received another surprise when Avis showed me the living quarters that Orelio and Carlos finished over the last couple months. I am sleeping in a one bedroom place that is mine to stay in when I come back in May.

Day 1- First thing first, I had to take the Rojas kids to get a haircuts. I had talked to them on Skype about a month ago and noticed that their hair was really long, and then they told me that my hair was too long. So I said, "well, I'll cut it when I get to Peru" so they decided to wait until I got here to cut their hair as well. So four weeks later we all had the longest hair we've ever had. After the hair cut we went and got lunch. After that my mom went with some of the ladies from the church to hand out bags full of necessities to the new group of poor people who migrated here. The people already in the town called it an "invasion". Basically a big group of people all moved to Pacasmayo at the same time with no possessions. While my mother was doing this I walked around the town and bought some supplies. Meanwhile dad was already doing what he does best, building a fence. He and Orelio had to build a temporary fence to legally divide the property. The boys and I helped, and they felt really macho learning how to drive nails and cut boards with a handsaw.

Ok, sorry there's no pictures, I've been trying for awhile to post them but for some reason the internet isn't agreeing with them right now. I'll try to get some up soon.

Merry Christmas

Thanks for all the donations. Here are photos of some of the 39 kids receiving their gifts. Yes, 39 now. There are 10 new ones from when I was there over the past summer, and 3 have been adopted out. The older ones received cards which informed them that they got to go to 10 days of summer camp, which starts January 22nd. They were all very excited when they found out (the house moms were too, haha). The younger kids each received their own gift as well.

Welcome back, and Praise God

I wanted make a new post considering I promoted my blog this past Sunday at Gateway.

As we walked into church this past Sunday we were giving a card to write a praise on. On that card I wrote "Praise God for the awesome community of believers at Gateway." You see, when I'm away at college I go to another church, and there's just something missing there. It is a great church, the pastors are excellent and well versed. The messages are clear and precise and easy to relate to my daily life. The people who greet you at the door are friendly. But, there's something missing. It is something that might be hard to notice until you have gone without it. What I'm talking about is community. The result of all of us coming together and uniting under the one true God. We are there to support each other in good times and in bad times, and I know there have been both in the past few weeks.

So what I'm trying to get at is this. You guys are all awesome. I stood up in front of you all this past Sunday, certainly not giving the best public speech of my life. Mumbling over some of my words and forgetting about half of what I wanted to say. I stood up there asking you to give to an organization that you only know through me. None of you have even been there and made personal connections. But yet, you gave. You gave A LOT. Much more than I expected (sorry I underestimated).

I just want to say THANK YOU. I look forward to sharing stories and pictures about all the stuff that you guys will have provided. Check back here to see updates of our actual trip from December 28th to January 17th.

Goodbye...for now.

So I figured I'd make a closing blog just to finish it up if anyone is still reading. As you know I've been back in town for almost a week now, still adjusting back to this way of life. I'm not exactly sure how long it's suppose to take before I feel like I'm back at home. The summer was an unforgettable one. I have learned so much about faith, and the relationship with Christ. About how to depend on Him to see you through hard times, how to be peaceful in the midst of the storms of life. I've learned where faith can take you, the highest highs and the lowest lows. I've watched God's plan unfold infront of me and be awed and humbled by the intricacies of the inner workings.

I just want to thank everyone again for keeping up with me and reading my blog and supporting me with comments, mail, packages etc... thank you all so much.

Here is a video that I made for the kids and sent it on a dvd in the mail. It's in spanish, and theres not a lot of pictures of the city because they know what the city looks like. I'll make another one that I will probably show in church when I get the chance. Goodbye...For now.

camping (long)

Sorry this is super long. I'll have a final goodbye post probably tuesday or wednesday night, so check back.

I found out that the kids were going camping when I went over there at around 10:00. The moms said they were leaving at 1:00 and asked if I was going. I wasn’t sure if I should or not because Avis is gone, and I need to talk to some people about how to run English. I decided to go ahead and go because I wasn’t going to be able to spend a lot of time with the kids if I didn’t because I am leaving Sunday night. I gathered up all my stuff and went over there and helped them pack. The van arrived at 1:00 on the dot, the driver is the only punctual Peruvian I’ve met and even the house moms said that. When it showed up I asked if there was another one coming…there wasn’t. So 16 kids, 3 house moms, Matt and I, and all the camping supplies; food, clothes, tents, blankets etc… all fit into one MINI van. Yes, a mini van, not even a full size. Don’t ask me how we did it because I don’t even know. Two other house moms took another taxi there because there just wasn’t room for 2 more.

The trip there was long and cramped. I was in the front seat with 2 stuffed backpacks and Gerson. It took about 2 hours to get there, but it was probably only about 60 kilometers away. The roads were all dirt and had these massive speed bumps that the bottom of the car dragged on every time we went over. I don’t know why there were speed bumps on a dirt road that already had holes all over the place, not to mention the road was out in the middle of nowhere, if someone was speeding it wouldn’t really matter because there’s nothing there!

We’ll we finally got there and the place was surprisingly nice. It was in a valley at the base of a dam. I don’t know if it was an actual camp ground or not. It was a compound where people lived and studied plants, mainly fruit trees. The sign said ministry of agriculture. So inside there were fruit trees and plants all over the place. Too my surprise there was a giant clean pool as well. The kids had told me there was a pool where we were going but I just couldn’t fathom it on the way there because it was so out in the middle of nowhere. They had been here before I guess. We found a nice place in the grass to set up our tent, and after we got most of the rods in someone told us that there were massive amounts of ants there. So we carried the tent up and put it right next to the pool on some nice dirt ground where there were no ants, but there were plenty of rocks. We got the tent set up and decided to go for a swim. Only Matt and I jumped in the big pool because none of the kids knew how to swim. I think it was the second time in their life they’ve even seen a pool. Luckily there’s also a baby pool where that was about 2 feet deep and actually pretty large. The kids who were big enough to touch the bottom of the big pool got in with Matt and I. That included Gerson, Joel, and Estrella. Gerson was the oldest kid there by about 3 years, now that I think about it I think the moms used him as bait to get me to go with them haha…originally when I heard about it only the first grade kids and under were going, and I told them I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Anyway, I tried teaching them to swim but they were all pretty scared of going under water, so we worked on that first. After a while in the pool we ate dinner…chicken and rice, I mean what else to you expect on a Peruvian camping trip right?

We kind of just hung around until it was dark and everyone got in the tent to go to sleep. After about 20 minutes of sitting in our compartment of the tent which included Matt, Joel, Gerson and me, I decided I wasn’t the least bit tired, and neither was Gerson, so we decided to take a walk. We went down to where there is this giant model of the dam, including a big reservoir where they put koy in, and there turned out to be about 40 frogs all just sitting on the edge. So we had fun poking them with sticks and throwing pebbles at them for awhile, and Matt and Joel joined us after Joel found his other shoe, which took about 20 minutes. We then walked up to the pool to take a look and found 4 of the 5 house moms sitting up there chatting and eating homemade apple pie. It was delicious. So we sat up there and talked for awhile, ate some pie, and listened to music. We finally decided to head into the tent at about 11:00.

Trying to sleep was horrible. There were rocks all in my back, and Danilo has a bad case of the snores. As soon as I’d fall asleep I’d wake up from someone else waking up and crying or coughing etc…oh… and I think at one point in the night, I don’t even know what time I woke up and heard someone taking a dump right outside our tent, pretty close to my head. Needless to say I think I got about 1 hour of sleep all in 5 minute intervals.

The next day we woke up at about 7:00 and ate breakfast which was Peruvian hot-dogs(yuck) and yogurt . After breakfast we went down to the concrete soccer stadium and kicked around a semi-inflated ball and threw some frizbees. We did that until about 10:30 and then we all went back to the pool. We played in the pool until about 1:00 and then we ate some more chicken and rice for lunch. After that we started to pack stuff up, and take the tent down. We got the tent down and everything packed at around 2:30 or 3:00. So we spread some blankets out on the ground and took a little nap. Some kids played on the swings or just ran around. At around 4:30 3 house moms, Gerson and I took a walk down to the office building where they bought some fruit that was grown right there in the valley. It was really big, fresh, and cheap. We all marveled at how big the limons (limes) were. We walked back and had dinner at 5:30, chicken and rice once more.

The van arrived at 6:00 on the dot and we loaded everything up and headed on our way. The van couldn’t make it up the hill where our campground was from a dead stop so we all had to get out and meet it on the top of the hill. This time I was sharing the front seat with Gerson, Gladis, and Danilo. Only the right side of my behind had anything to touch for 2 hours with Gerson sitting on my lap. It was swollen up by the time we got home. The shenanigans that ensued on the way back were more than enough for me. While being folded up like a lawn chair Gerson threw up half on Gladis and half out the window. Also a water truck that sprays the dirt roads to keep the dust down passed us…oh and ya, our windows where down. So I got a nice little shower, but luckily the driver blocked most of it for me.

Overall I had a good time, and I would do it again. I had a lot of fun with the moms and the kids, and it was the probably the last bit of quality time I am going to be able to spend with them before I have to leave.

Umm... Wowzers

It was weird this morning. I woke up and it was the quietest that it had been. I asked Matt if he was awake, he was, and then I said, "it's eerily quiet." It was the first morning in the past 10 weeks that I can remember that no dog was barking, no one was knocking on doors, no kids were outside playing, not even crickets were making noise.

I continued on with the day. I did this and that, hung out with some kids, and put together a giant tent. Some of the kids are going on a campout so they wanted me to show them how to put together this mega tent that has 3 bedrooms in it, so that was fun.

Anyway, later on in the afternoon I got word that Avis was looking for Matt and I and she wanted to talk. It turns out that she's leaving for the U.S. tomorrow morning because her brother is dying. I think I already posted something about that earlier, he has cancer in pretty much his whole body...it's a terrible situation.

So, with Avis gone who is going to teach english? It turns out that some lady was coming from lima to look for a job, one of the house moms sisters, and is a teacher. So Avis hired her. Avis had met her once and said she spoke great english. Well with me being the only one here right now with any knowledge of how the english ciriculum works, its now my job to train 2 teachers to start teaching on monday. These last days will be anything but winding down...haha.

School Tour

Here's a tour of the school where I taught english. Yesterday, there was a huge event that our youth pastor had all the youth put together. There was a soccer tournament, a volleyball tournament and a concert put on by a regatone band from Trujillo. Regatone is pretty much like rap, but it all has the same beat, so after about 3 songs you've heard pretty much all of it...haha. It all started at 2 and went till about 10:30 at night. Around 6:00 Matt and I took about 10 kids and some house moms out to eat while the band was getting ready. I bet you can't guess what we ate...chicken and french fries...I know, I know, who would have thought right. So the 12 of us ate for 20 bucks, not too bad huh. Then went and watched the concert. Johnson was ready to go by about the 3rd song and so was I so I walked him back up to the house and matt stayed with the other kids and the house moms.

Tomorrow will be the last day I go to the market, I'm looking for some wood clamps, magic markers and a couple more t-shirts. The wood clamps because I need to fix a dresser drawer, and would you believe it they don't have any clamps to hold it together while the glue dries, I was surprised because they have just about every other tool you could think of in their little shop. I need magic markers because we bought a bunch of cups for the orphanage and need to have the kids personalize them. We did that because we noticed that all the kids share the same cup, and when one kid gets sick, they still share the same cup. But now, they'll all have their own cup, boyah.

Hard Times

I hate to say it, but I’ve seen this coming for a long time, and I’m pretty sure Avis has as well. When I came here in June she had told me that her main sponsor who gave her $5000 a month had quit paying because his business had started having some trouble. It’s been about 4 months now since he’s given anything and Avis has pretty much milked all her accounts dry trying to keep up with food bills and salaries for the 20 some Peruvians she has working. The school makes enough to just pay the salaries of the teachers but not enough to pay for books, food and all the other miscellaneous. After all, it is just the first year they have been going, and things always take time before they start to turn a profit. From a business point of view it’s a pretty big nightmare, because if she has to shut the school down half way through the year then the parents aren’t going to want to come back next year. The whole idea of a private Christian school is brilliant, it’s a way to let the orphans get a good quality education that they wouldn’t receive elsewhere, a way to spread the word of God to other kids in the city, and a way to generate revenue for the ministry so it can continue to grow. I think in a couple years the school will be able to do just that, but right now it could use a big financial push.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that if you can give a donation to someone I know a good place. There are many ways that you can help, such as sponsoring an orphan. The orphans get to go to the school, but no one pays for them to go so that’s probably the biggest reason the school is having a little trouble right now. Eventually Avis wants to send kids to school from around the community that are sponsored by people in the states. Most of the information you could ever need is on the website (www.goye-ministries.com) a good page to look at is called “Kingdom Investors” . If you want any additional information you can always e-mail me at kpg8xd@missouri.edu or Avis at goyemin@yahoo.com . If you can’t give a donation, you can pray, and Go Ye ministries just like any other ministry could always use prayer.

Next post I plan on having some video footage of the school, so stay tuned.

Saturday.

July 27th 2008,
Yesterday was another long day, but packed full of action. I woke up and picked up my packages from home, beef jerky and snickers bars, then headed over to the orphanage to hang out with the kids before I had to go to Trujillo (again) in the afternoon. We had to go because some kids from a church in Lima that Avis visited wanted to come here for a retreat, but they couldn’t get a bus any further than Trujillo so we had to bring them the rest of the way. Their bus was suppose to arrive at around 8:00 pm so we figured we’d go in the early afternoon and do some much needed shopping. We started to head out at around 1:15 or so, and Oraylio was telling us how he had found a dead rat in the van, so that was one of them. I remembered there were two that I saw. So the three of us hopped into the van and started to pull down the drive when Avis decided to check her papers in the middle consol. When she opened the consol there was a big, stinky Peruvian rat staring up at here. She immediately freaked out, opened the driver side door and jumped out of the moving van. I did some quick thinking and pulled the emergency brake and closed the consol. It was a pretty exciting ordeal. I picked up the dog and placed her in the front seat and opened up the consol, Princessa (the dog) quickly grabbed up the shook the rat to death. I then cleaned the rat blood out of the car, and we were once again on our way.

We got to Trujillo around 2:45 or so and did some shopping in the cheap market until dinner time. Then we went to the big grocery store to buy our groceries, and eat at McDonald’s. It was about 7:45 when the kids called and said their bus was going to be about 2 hours late, long story short we left Trujillo around 12:15 after getting lost because of poor directions and a lot of shouting in Spanish. I didn’t get to my bed until 1:30 and then was woken up at about 6:00 am, by one of the people who came who decided to sweep the sidewalks and water the plants while singing. I’m glad that he wanted to help but I would not have minded if he kept the singing to himself…haha.

Sunday - Wed.

Sorry I haven’t been updating as much lately. I feel that there’s a lot of routine now with English and all, so I’ll try and just hit the highlights of the past couple of days.

Last Sunday was the day that relatives come and visit the kids. It turned out pretty well. The aunt of Gerson, Johnson, Joel, Betsy and Sibilia came and they were extremely excited that she came. She comes about once every other month. It put Gerson in the best mood he’d been in for a couple weeks, but the older brother Johnson was pretty nonchalant about it. It was an answered prayer that Nelson’s father didn’t come to visit him, because now we think that he can be declared abandoned and be easier to adopt. His father hasn’t visited in over 6 months now, and the last time he visited Nelson was terrified and was crying in horror the whole time his father was there because he still remembered the abuse.

Tuesday night will be remembered as the great rat war. Avis was telling me about some car problems after dinner and I went out to go check the air filter in the car(which was completely caked thanks to all the dirt here) and that’s when I found the real problem…rats, Peruvian rats. There were two of them the size kittens with tails about as thick as my pinky finger. They were making a home out of the van. I went back and told Avis and she gave Matt and me some huge knives. We propped the hood open and started the hunt. I found one and made a quick jab at it, but all I came up with was some hair. We then decided to just put rat poison all over the van. The dog Sparky got a hold of one of the rat’s tails and ripped it in half which sent the mouse into a shrieking frenzy, then I went to bed.

Wednesday was another doctor day. I went to Trujillo again with 6 kids 2 house moms, Randy and Vanessa. After the nearly 2 hour ride there we waited outside on rickety wood benches for another 4 hours to see the doctor. The doctor finally prescribed some inhalers and I think the kids are already feeling better. After the doctors visit it was about 2 and we finally got some food. All the kids were starving because the moms made them fast just incase the doctors needed to take blood. After we ate we went to another hospital to visit one of Randy and Vanessa’s friends so I waited in the car with one of the house mothers and all the kids while they went inside. I fell asleep in the front seat because it had a recliner on it, and I was sharing it with Gerson who also fell asleep. I woke up and then out of no where Gerson woke up and started throwing up, good thing I’ve got the fastest puke reaction time south of the equator because I was able to grab a trash bag that was behind us open it up and put it under Gerson’s mouth in about .05 seconds. Thanks to the fast reaction time only my Jeans and his shirt got covered in vomit. We didn’t get back home till about 5:30, it was a pretty long day.

Update, and News (it's long)

If you get tired of reading at least read the last paragraph.

Today the electrical engineers came to meet with us. The story behind that is Avis needs more power into the compound where the school is so that she can meet the needs of the school plus the 150 more kids she plans on having in the orphanage. She has been trying to get more electricity since she has been here but they had never let her before, but a couple of weeks ago when some technicians came to fix the line they realized that we need more. The truth is they are running the entire school and all the houses on less electricity than one 3 bedroom house gets in the states. So when the technicians said that they would allow her to get more electricity she was ecstatic. The engineer guys came out and met with us today and told us that it was going to cost 10,000 soles to run the wires. That’s about $3800 that she doesn’t have. See, here in Peru you have to pay for everything that has to do with electricity. The power company just sends power through the lines. So if you need lines ran, you have to pay for it. If the line breaks, you have to pay for it etc. From what I gathered she’s taking out the last of her money that she has and using it to start the process. She said that if God has finally given her a window to have electricity she’s going to take it. She has more faith than I do… that is for sure. I don’t know where she plans on getting the money for next month’s bills because her sponsors haven’t been able to help her in a long time because the economy has gone bad, but she said that if God wants this ministry to continue and for these kids to be here that he will provide. She has also had a lot of other bad stuff happen to her this month, like one of her brothers getting diagnosed with massive amounts of cancer, and some other things that don’t need to be posted on the internet. But yet, she has an amazing amount of peace about her that I just can’t comprehend.

As for the rest of the day, I went over the orphanage and hung out with the kids for awhile. Gerson was feeling terrible today, he had a fever and was having some leg cramps as well, I prayed over him for a good while, and then went into town with Avis and matt to get some dinner, I stopped back by the orphanage on my way back to say good night and he was feeling much better.

Here’s the news that I said I had but I couldn’t share yet a couple of weeks ago. This whole time we’ve been down here Matt and I have been working on a new website for her. The address is www.goye-ministries.com go there, look around and post some feedback. It’s not completely done yet and there’s definitely some fine tuning to be done, but the basic format is ready to go. I’ve been working with Avis to give her ideas on how to generate more funds, because that is something that she is seriously lacking right now. She doesn’t really have groups come at this point, except one from Canada that comes every march for a week, and that is something that I’ve talked with her a lot about. Also, we’ve tried to set up the website so that people can sponsor kids or make donations which are 100% tax deductable .

Whooping Cough

I'm about 95% sure Gerson has the whooping cough and that's it is already making its way around the orphanage, so I'll probably contract it too. I've done my research on it and its much less severe the older you get, so I'm not too worried about myself. I found this out because the hospital we took Gerson to on monday called and told the house mother to take him out of school until he finishes his anti-biotics. That and all his symptoms match up perfectly. If you'd like to read more about this illness I found some good information here. Whooping Cough

As of right now I'm feeling fine, a little bit of a sore throat, but thats been usual for most of the time I've been here because I'm constantly getting different bugs from the kids. I'm sure you all are getting tired of hearing about all the sickness stuff going on, sorry.

Last night there was a women's meeting that Avis holds about 2 times a month. There were 45 women who came and she made spagehti and meat sauce for all of them. Us guys served the women the food. About halfway through the preaching portion the lights went out, so we lit a bunch of candels. Some lights were still on and some were off. So I went around and turned everything off in the compound except for the lights in the womens room and then they came back on. They have a problem with weak current, so that temporarly fixed it. Overall it was a good time, the women all ate, and prayed, and ministired to eachother.

More thanks, and update.

I just got another group of cards, so I figure I'd let you know that I got them. I got the Valdivias, Stigalls, a couple days ago I recieved one from the Bailes and the McRaes, I also got some more from you mom. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone. Anyway thanks a bunch. It's always nice to get mail down here, and I guess I'll get to thank you guys in person in about 4 weeks. Those first 6 really went by fast.

Update on Gerson.
We went to Trujillo doctor yesterday and they told us he has some virus that is the gate way virus to whooping cough. They gave him some antibiotics(which didn't make since to me if they said it was a virus) and a couple other types of medication. As well as prescribed this protien vitamin mix that he needs to drink for awhile. They also said its contaigous so they put a lot of the other kids in the orphanage on some antibiotics that is suppose to keep it from spreading. All this medicine and protein mix is getting really expensive. The doctor said that him throwing up is nothing to worry about unless it starts to turn bloody, also he could possibly have this cough for 4-6 months.

Orphanage Tour

Here is a tour of the orphanage. It's pretty quick, but thats because I don't have a high quality video camera with me, and it would take about 10 hours to upload it to the website if it were longer. I hope you like it. Another prayer request for Gerson. He went to the doctor last week who told him that he had asthma, but for the past week he has been having really terrible coughing fits where he coughs and throws up at the same time, it usually happens about an hour or so after he eats, and he says his stomach is never upset. I've witnessed it several times and it doesn't seem like asthma to me. It happend again today while he was in my house and I went and got Avis so she could see it. She agreed that we need to take him to another doctor and get a second opionion.

July 10th

Today was a good day. I taught P.E. in the morning, and English in the afternoon. At lunch time I had forgotten that it was my birthday, but I was quickly reminded when I walked into the lunch room and all the kids stood up and sang happy birthday. After school I knew the kids were throwing a surprise party for me, so I waited awhile until I headed over there so they could get organized. When I went over there at 4:15 and knocked on the door the house mom said that I couldn’t come in for another 10 minutes. I guess I should’ve waited longer. I was sitting downstairs working on the computer and the house mom told me that I was allowed to come into the house now, so I walked upstairs and when I went inside all the kids were sitting in a big square in the main room. On the count of three they all said “SORPRESA!” haha… I think I did a great job of acting surprised. The fiesta they threw for me had cookies, cake, purple corn juice and some other stuff I that I hadn’t ever eaten before but was pretty good, and I’m not sure I could describe it if I tried. The kids danced and played games for about an hour then it was time for cake. Gerson couldn’t have any because earlier he started dry heaving and coughing when he was eating sweets. I think it is something to do with the asthma the doctor diagnosed him with. But as they were passing the cake around he looked at me and said, “I want to eat” after he said that, there was no way I could eat cake in front of him so I said, “how come… real men don’t eat cake” then I put my piece they had given me on the counter for someone else to eat. Overall I’d say it was probably one of the best birthday parties I have ever had.

After cake it was time to leave and the regular routine of homework began. I left to go back and eat with the rest of the gringos because Thursday is missionary night, so we all get together and eat American food made by one of us. Avis made some beef patties in this ridiculously good gravy that we ate on top of mashed potatoes. For desert Avis made pineapple upside down cake with some candles in it for my birthday. That was pretty delicious too. It was a great day.

God the Provider

So like I said in the earlier post I was feeling sick the last couple days. Last night I woke up sweating and not feeling good at all, so I just started praying and said God, I don’t really know what to do here, but I know that you can heal me. The day before I had told the boys that I would come get them and come back to my house and eat some PB and J sandwiches… so I was on my way over there when I heard the loud music blasting out of the community center next door. I asked Carlos what was going on, and he said that they were giving away free medicine today. There were doctors and everything providing free health care and medicine compliments of the Pacasmayo Concrete plant. Talk about awesome corporate responsibility. I’m positive there was at least $50,000 of medicine there. They set up shop in the poorest part of Pacasmayo which happens to be right where I’m living, and their doors are open to anyone who walks in, absolutely no cost. I weighed in, answered some questions about myself, then waited in line to be seen by the doctor. While I was waiting in line the lady that was on the microphone yelling out peoples names and telling everyone what was going on asked me to tell everyone what was going on in English. I said why not so I got on the loudspeaker and told everyone that thanks to the Pacasmayo concrete plant there was free medicine to everyone today… it was just for the novelty of it because no one within a mile radius would have been able to understand English. Anyway it was my turn and I sat down and the doctor asked me what was going on, so I told him, and he listened to me breath with his stethoscope then looked down my throat and wrote down the prescription and I walked over to the prescription table and picked up my antibiotics. As I was walking out, Isabel a lady who works at the school and was helping me through the process told me that one of the nurses said she wanted to go back the U.S. with me and when I looked over at her she gave me a little wink and a smile…haha.

I’ve had 10 doses so far and I’ve started to feel better already, at the rate that he told me to take the medicine I should be done with all of it by Tuesday night. Just to be cautious I looked up the medication online and made sure that I wouldn’t have any problems taking it. I also looked up the price and I think its about $100 worth…Hallelujah

Calling all nurses.

I know theres a couple nurses out there that might be reading this.. so read this and leave a comment please

For a couple days I have had a pretty bad fever and getting chills, sometimes waking up at night sweating. I wasn't sure what to do so I just prayed and asked God whats up and wouldn't you know it... I woke up today and walked over to the orphanage and right next door they are having a free medicine give away for all the people in the area. So I stood in line told them what was up and this is what they gave me..

Bactrim - it is 2 bottles of anti-biotics in liquid form. And he told me to take 2 spoonfulls every 2 hours until the bottles are gone. The doctor also said something about not eating chicken. So I was wondering if he thought I might have gotten salmanila poisoning.

I looked it up on the web and it looked like what I needed but just wanted a second opinion. Thanks!

God bless

Happy Freedom Day!

Well, besides from being Awesome day, 4th of July is also teacher day in Peru. So this afternoon the kids put together a big party for all the teachers. There were jokes, dances, junk food and games. There was a sack hopping relay where there was a student and a teacher on each team. Nicolas and I destroyed everyone. Then there was an eating contest, and I won that too, but I will admit the kids gave me a smaller portion.

Matt made an awesome shirt for 4th of July, he just colored USA RULES on the front of a white t-shirt, the wrote FREEDOM on the back, drew and american flag on one sleeve, and an eagle on the other. Our plans to finish up our 4th of July celebration is to go to the most American resturant here which is a Pizza place that caters to all the surfers in the summer, then we are going to watch the movie The Patriot. Some people blow up some really loud fireworks almost every night so we are going to try and find those and light a couple off.

I have a couple prayer requests...
Gerson is really sick with some sort of cough, and they haven't been able to take him to the doctors yet because the house moms are really busy. Also his sister Betsy is really sick too.

Thanks

First of all I just wanted to say thanks to all the people back home. I received some more cards today one from the Skeen family, Rothaus family, Kirk family, Joey and a couple cards from my family. Also thanks to all the people who read this blog and all the people who leave comments. It really encourages me to know that people back home care about what I’m doing, or a better way to put it… what God is doing through me.

We went to another church in Pacasmayo last night that we were invited too because an American missionary was preaching there. He had a really awesome message using a story I had never heard before that is found in Genesis 26. It talks about how God had blessed Isaac and made him rich, so the Philistines decided to clog up all his wells, and then told him to leave. Isaac moved and re-dug all the wells. Then sometime later the Philistines came back to him and wanted to make an agreement to join forces because they had seen God was with him. The preacher then made the metaphor that wells are constant water supply or living water, just like the holy spirit in us is a spring of living water and that sometimes we get our “well” clogged up by others, or even ourselves, and that when we unclog the Holy spirit within us people will see that God is with us… ok I’m realizing it loses a little bit when I try to type it out in my own words, but you get the drift. It was a really awesome sermon and something that I needed to hear. Anyway after the sermon he came up to me and told me that I looked really familiar to him, and asked if I had been to Peru before, I said I had. Then he realized where he’s saw me, my blog. Funny how things work out. Anyway we talked for a little bit and he told me about the ministry he is apart of, they are all over the world, then he asked me if I’d ever want to join him…who knows maybe another adventure is right around the corner, haha.

P.S.
I have a lot of information I want to share with everyone (not related to the pastor that goes all over the world, don’t worry mom), but it is too soon to share.

Today was the second day of teaching... its going alright, a little crazy still but alright. They are starting to realize I'm a little bit more strict than the old english teacher, so things should get under control in the next couple days. Ok, I've got a birthday party to run too, I'll post about that later.

Here is a video tour of where we are living. Cinder blocks and concrete floors is about it. I'm not complaining though because most people around here have dirt floors and thatch roofs, if they have a roof. I'll add some more video tours in the future.

Picture update

Here's a photo update for you all. The giant bird statue is at a graveyard. The boat picture is at the beach near there pier. The other picture is of freds GMC, don't ask me how old that is. And the picture is me tickling nelson.

Trial by fire.

Well, the English teacher Ashley told me today that she's going back to the states on sunday. Her grandma is dying and she wants to see her again. It is so hard to be so far away when stuff like that happens.

So that means that I am going to be the full time english teacher. Up to this point I've taken over a couple classes so she could go to the market, and helped her with others, but taking it over completely is going to be another beast to tame. I'll need some patience which I'm generally short on. So if you're reading this and in the praying mood, pray that I won't throw any kids out of a window, one named Berly especially.

I tried making some salsa yesterday, but it just tasted like chopped up tomatoes. I put alot of other vegies and spices in there, but I guess just not enough.

Until next time.

June 21st.

The Bible says not to covet, but what if I’m coveting someone else’s relationship with God? I’ve come to realize how jealous I am of Avis’s relationship with Christ. She just randomly shouts out “hallelujah” and “praise Jesus” super loud all the time. She’s always talking about how Christ has done this and that and has so much faith in everything. She’s really teaching me a lot. It was overwhelming to hear her say the other day that she is still learning so much about God’s grace. She’s 63 and still learning a lot, I think I’ve got a ways to go.

Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile. I’ve been pretty busy lately. We took trip to Trujillo on Thursday, and I just want to give a shout out to Papa John’s, thanks for being awesome and having a restaurant in Trujillo, Peru. Half a family size pepperoni pizza does wonders for refueling the tanks. I think I can go on eating rice and chicken for another 2.5 weeks now. Matt and I decided that for our 4th of July celebration that we should go to Trujillo and eat American food. Besides a Papa John’s there’s a Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and Kentucky fried chicken. We might do a rotating feast.

Today was the anniversary of the City of Pacasmayo. So they had another huge march so all the kids from the school marched in their uniforms it was pretty sweet. They wanted me to help carry the school banner again because I’m awesome… or just American. From now on every June 21st I’m going to find some chicken and rice and eat it in remembrance.

Father's Day.

Happy Father’s day. The morning’s sermon was about the family and the father’s role. Avis also talked about how God was the father of everyone especially the abandoned, and how even though a lot of the kids don’t have a physical father God puts men into their lives to be their physical fathers, and she asked some of the older guys that were in the church to come up front, including Matt and I. She said see kids, God puts men like these in your life to show you good examples of fathers. Then she told all the kids to come give us hugs. I got bull rushed by about 10 of them and almost bit the dust. It was a pretty emotional sermon for a lot of people at that church. Not many had worldly fathers that are worth looking up too.

Friday June 13th, Hospital

Because of a Father’s day celebration school only lasted till about 1:00 today. The rest of the afternoon was spent rehearsing a skit, some songs, and jokes for the party. A lot of the dads came to the school at around 3:00 and there was a presentation. I sat with Gersion and Joel throughout the ordeal, it made me sad but I couldn’t really tell how the celebration was effecting the boys, they seemed pretty disengaged. Made me realize how much I love my dad and how hard it would be to sit through a father’s day presentation if I was in those kid’s situation. We left early because we had to get to the doctor which was rescheduled from yesterday to today.

There were seven of us total; Gersion, Joel, Betasabel, Bettsy, and one other younger girl whose name I don’t have memorized yet, the house mother, and I. We took 2 moto taxis to the hospital, hombres in one mujeres in the other. The motos raced there and we lost because we caught a stop light. The hospital is surround by a 20 foot security fence with guards posted at the entrance to let people in and out of the gates, such a warm welcoming feeling from the start. We walked through narrow hallways with dirt stained tile accompanied by low cellings to get to the right department. There was no front desk, no chairs to sit on and wait, only an empty 15x15 waiting room with a concrete floor. We sat on a rusted blue handrail outside until it was our turn. Our time came and we went into a staging room, it was about 8x8 with a single 4 foot blue rubber bench stained with white age spots. The bench faced some empty gym lockers and a crucible hanging on the wall with the price tag still on it, and that’s not to say that it was new, it was old and dirty. The sounds of a woman having birth contractions carried from across the hall. The first kid to go was Gersion, the nurse came out and put some of those sanitation booties over his shoes and led him into the back room. They were removing warts from all the kids and they didn’t want the other kids waiting to hear any screams or crying so they turned up the radio really loud, it made me nervous. Five minutes later Gerison came out smiling… I think he thought it was cool how they just “zapped” away his warts. Joel went next, he came out smiling too. The only one to cry was one of the girls, and I don’t think it was because of pain, more just because she was scared. After they were finished I told them we were going to eat at a restaurant and I was buying. I think the house mother was more excited than the kids…haha. It only cost me $9.00 to feed all 7 of us, I’d say it was a well spent $9.00. It was a great trip to the hospital.

Wednesday June 11th

Today I filled in again for Ahsley, she was still traveling back from Lima. Oh ya, I'm not only teaching the kids spanish, but after the school day all the professors want me to teach english to them aswell, haha. After that, around 5:00 I went over to the orphanage and helped Gerison with his math homework. He is struggling a lot and I'm pretty worried about him. He is 10 years old and still having trouble with multiplication and division... you teachers out there..is that normal? I wish I had some flash cards that would really help... I'm using beads right now to help him with the concepts. If you have some ideas post them in the comments. I stayed over at the orphanage until now..its about 8:00, those kids have a huge amount of homework, its redunk.

Tomorrow I'm going to the doctor with Gerison, Joel (pronounced yo well), and Betesabel. I'm pretty excited to experiance a Peruvian hospital. They have a couple warts on their hands that need to be removed.

I don't mean to brag, but my spanish is getting pretty awesome. I'm super pumped. Tomorrow I'm going to work on using the present perfect tense.. i.e. "I have not eaten anything tonight."(really I haven't) instead of just using "I did not eat." I can understand people really well now, except when they talk fast and use advanced conjucations.

Also..Thanks for all your comments. I DO read them, sorry if I don't get back to you in emails. If you want me to write back leave your email address and I will.

P.S. Vanessa what's your email? I had it saved on my computer but I can't find it.

Monday June 9th.

Monday June 9, 2008
Today I filled in for Ashley and taught English from 8-3:30. It was a long and crazy day. Today made me realize that I would not want to be an English teacher over seas. After class I took a little power nap and then headed over to the orphanage and helped some kids with their homework. Gerison is having trouble in math. He reminded me of myself today, because when he wasn’t able to do it, he started to tear up with frustration just like I did when I was learning to read. It didn’t help that the house mother just sat there and was asking… you don’t know it, you don’t know it? After the tutoring session Matt and Avis and I headed to a ladies house for another round of those cell group videos. The videos and techniques that this church is going into is more like a numbers game. It’s all about winning as many souls as you possibly can, the pastor talks about how his church in 21 days saved 18,270 people and how they tried to contact each one but couldn’t because the next day they saved 1000 more. For some reason I think they might be lacking some relational aspects. I’m not sure if I really agree with it, but it is what it is. When the video was over the lady made us all tea and whipped up some omelets with asparagus, onions and cheese. The tea and omelets were really awesome, and being Peruvian and old women they all just chatted for hours. We ended up leaving at around 9:30 when the women started getting wound up and talking extremely fast and Avis decided she couldn’t understand them anymore.

Sunday June 8, 2008

Sunday June 8, 2008
Church this morning was awesome. The pastor Randy gave a sermon about how we need to build each other up, and encourage each other and not gossip about one another. He used a really good illustration about how talking bad about one of Christ’s sons or daughters is like talking bad about Christ himself. He then talked about how we should resolve our conflicts with one another, after he said that a lady actually stood up, walked to the front of the church and called out another ladies name who was there and she came up to the front, the lady then proceeded to apologize to the other lady in front of the whole church. After about 5 minutes of apologizing they were both in tears and hugging, and the whole church was clapping for them. Another man then stood up and apologized to the same lady and to Avis and some other people. I don’t think that would ever happen at any church I’ve been to in the US. I think the reason for that is many people in the US are too prideful, and are not willing to admit their wrongs. Relationships would be some much easier if we all weren’t so full of ourselves.

After lunch Matt and I took Garrison, Juell, and Johnson down to the beach and had a blast. I was trying to teach Garrison how to swim but it was too difficult in the ocean with big waves coming every 10 seconds. Matt left a little early because he went to go practice playing the guitar with the praise band. So me and the boys got some Ice cream, if your ever in Peru and you see an ice cream dude get the frozen sublime bars you won’t regret it. 4 ice cream bars cost the equivalent of $1. After ice cream we walked to the bakery to buy some bread. I got 10 freshly made fist size rolls for less than $.50. Bread is super cheap. There was another church service at 7:00 that I went to and I didn’t really know if it was good or not because the lady that talked the whole time spoke really quickly and I understood about 5 words. She sounded like she was giving a good sermon though.

Parade!

First of all... I didn't have much time yesterday to post pictures. It takes about 2 mins to upload one picture and we were in a hurry to leave to some in home meetings. The meetins were about how to start cell groups so that the church could grow, we went into some peoples houses and played a dvd that was in english and spanish. They were pretty intresting, and very long and detailed. The 2nd and last house that we went to that night was the home of a man who was a stone carver. He makes chess boards and pieces completly by hand. After the video was over he invited us to go in to town and eat with him and his wife and son, the roasted chicken and french fries were awesome. His name was Pilar, but we called him Segundo, meaning the 2nd, i'm guessing is fathers name is Pilar as well. Anywho, after the meal was over he went and paid for all of us, I guess the rule is if you invite someone to eat anywhere you pay for them, kind of a cool practice. Paying for our dinner was very meaningful to me because this guy was living out of an adobe house, and I know that it was probably a much bigger sacrifice for him to pay for us than I realize.

Saturday June 7th This morning was the parade that the children had practiced marching for every day for 2 hours. All the schools represented themselves in the city square. Children from each school were dressed up in their uniforms and had a couple flag bearers showing the schools colors. Our school sported an American flag, a Peruvian flag, and a Christian flag. After about an hour long ceremony where the national anthem was played and the volunteer fireman were honored, each school took a turn marching down the street with. Matt and I were asked to help carry the school banner because they wanted to show off their Americans. So we carried the banner down the road while music was playing and people were throwing flower petals at us, I felt like I had just returned from a war or something…lol. We brought a couple kids from the orphanage with us to watch the parade, Garrison and Juell, they are brothers. After the parade, Garrison, Juell, Avis, Matt and I ate some lunch at a place on the beach. After that we played in the sand for awhile even though we all had our best clothes on, it was a blast. We also were able to buy 4 ice cream cones for the equivalent of $1.00. That’s pretty hard to beat. P.S. Sorry if my grammar is starting to get bad, my head is so full of Spanish it’s about to burst. PPS, I'm trying to post a video of the parade and some pictures as well, if it doesn't work..sorry.

Update!!!

The day in Lima was great, we walked around town for awhile and then took a taxi to the city center. We toured the Church of San Francisco, and watched the pigeons attack people on the city square. Getting to the bus station was a little crazy, the cab driver told us he knew where he was going, but he didn’t. I was starting to sweat it when our bus was taking off in 20 minutes and our cab driver was still asking people on the street for directions. When he found the place he dropped us off in back and we had to carry our bags through some dirt and mud to get into the bus station. The bus was really spacious and we had our own lazyboys that reclined into full beds for the trip, So it wasn’t that bad at all.

June 4th
We arrived in Pacasmayo at 6:00 am. Running off of about 4 hours of sleep I was able to get the taxi driver to finally get to our destination… 3rd time was the charm. We got doped up on coffee and took a grand tour of the place. There is a building that is a church and orphanage where all the kids stay, then there is the compound where the school and volunteer houses are. Currently Matt and I are staying in staying in the apartment that also serves as the kitchen for the school, but when some other volunteers leave on Friday were are going to snag their rooms. After the tour we ate lunch and went to the beach for a little while. After that we took a short nap and then proceeded to sort through all the books that we had brought. After dinner we went to a prayer meeting which I assumed was going to last about 30 minutes…I was wrong, we prayed for 2 hours straight, I had forgotten how passionate the Peruvian people were. It was a great day. I’ll post pictures as soon as I have time.

June 5th
Today was the first rested day. I woke up at about 8:00 to the sounds of the school kids playing outside my window. I ate some breakfast and then headed to a nearby town called Champen with Fred, Matt, and Carlos. We went to go check it the appliances were any cheaper there than they were in Pacasmayo… turns out they weren’t. On the way back Fred gave us a tour of a place where they made adobe bricks by hand, sorry I didn’t have my camera I wish that I had. When we got back it was lunch time so we ate then played soccer with some kids for about 30 minutes. After that we helped Ashley teach some English. I have to teach English next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because she is going to be gone. The teachers at the school all wanted me to teach them English as well, so after the kids went home I tried to teach the teachers, but it was very difficult because they were all at different levels and I had no book to go off of, so I started teaching my Spanish book I had brought with me in reverse. Thursday is missionary night, each American takes a turn cooking for the others on missionary night. We all ate some chili which tasted just like my mothers, it tasted wonderful. After we were finished we sat around and played the guitar and sang songs for about 3 hours, it was great.

Below are some pictures of our accomedations.

We made it

We made it to Pacasmayo safely, but not uneventfully. We arrived at about 6:00 am. I'll try and post some more pictures and info later. There is very limited access to the internet, but I will try and update as much as possible.

Here it is.

Just got done setting up the blog and figured make a christening post.

Well, it is about a week before I head South, I think I've got all the supplies I need (hopefully I won't go over the 50 lbs. per bag limit). I'm headed to Pacasmayo Peru with my good buddy Matt Sams, we'll be volunteering for an orphanage and a bilingual school. We already have many jobs lined up for us to do that include teaching English, setting up a basketball program, teaching chess (for some reason its something that parents really want their kids to learn there, not sure why, more on that when I find out), translating and many others. While we are there I hope to know Christ, make Him known, and especially enjoy the journey.

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