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.