Baptism day!

Sorry for not posting every day. The daily things that happen to me seem less extrodinary now so I sometimes have a hard time being motivated to post them for you all to read. However there were some exciting highlights this last week that I will share with you.

Last Thursday Fred took me and some of the boys out for a worker appreciation day. All the boys that have been working and Carlos and Aurelio got to go to a resturant where there is a lot of pretty greenery and trees and flowers. The resturant also had a pool and a playground. When we got there and were excited to check out the pool we were a very disapointed to find that it was empty. We decided to stay and eat anyway because we knew the food was very good. All the plates were huge and Jose ended up getting a plate of Ceviche which was bigger than him. So after lunch we went on a search for some water to swim in. Thats when the Peruvian adventure came about.

Jose with his huge plate of Ceviche

The gang at the resturant

We were taking the ancient van, and I say ancient because old just doesn't do it justice. After about 100 meters out of the resturant the van starting smoking. We got out and took a look and discovered that there was a cut in our radiator hose. So me and the kids got some ice cream while we waited for Carlos to go buy some tape from the nearest store. After we patched it up we filled the radiator back up with water and were on our way. We had to stop every mile though to fill it back up with water because it was still leaking pretty badly. So after about 6 stops we finally made it back to the house.

Sunday:

We had our annual baptismal this past Sunday. We all got to church around 9:00 AM and had a short service that lasted until about 10:00. After that we all piled into the van and headed out someone's house that had an irragation creek behind it. We got there around 11:00, and had a little free time and ate lunch while the kids all jumped in and had a lot of fun swimming. At 12:30 we started the baptism. We had 10 people get baptized that day. Four of them were older girls from the orphanage. After the baptism we all just sat around in the shade and played games and talked until about 2:30 then headed home.

Kids swimming in the place where we baptized

Pastor Auden baptizing Milagros with the help of Fred

Current:

Right now the Sams family from Blue Springs is here visiting. I've been having a good time so far showing them around the city and just hanging out with some local Blue Springsians.

Tomorrow unfortunately I have to go to Trujillo at 5:30 in the morning to talk with a judge. They had this idea to take five kids from our orphanage and five kids from a couple other orphanages and combine them into another orphanage that doesn't have very many kids. So we are going to explain to the judge how terrible this is for the kids. To have to be moved to a new orphanage after they've been living here for so long and have finally gotten comfortable with it.

Some Updates

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, let me catch you all up to date.

First of all the most important news is that thankfully the tumor that was removed from Lourdes did not have any cancer, praise God!

I forgot to mention a couple weeks ago that all the schools in the Libertad Province were shut down to prevent a swine flu outbreak. They shut them down for two weeks, plus the one week vacation. Currently I'm on day 11 of no school. It's been both fun and crazy with the kids not having school to occupy the greater portion of their day. The volunteers, Aimee, Rita, and Karen have been working on delousing like crazy, I've been working on some more financial spreadsheets when I'm not having fun with the kids. I've also helped out with the delousing by spraying and carrying some mattresses.

The first part of this week has been kind of a blur, so I can't really remember exactly what I did on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Sorry about that. Today there sleepover for the older girls, the house moms, Maribel and the Psycologist. What that means is that me and the Girl volunteers are watching the other kids for the night. I took the house with less kids and the girls took the other house. I kind of got lucky because one of the moms didn't want to stay up late so she came back around 10:00, so that's how I'm writing this right now. I had all the kids nice and calm and watching some looney toon cartoons that I bought earlier today, then walked in Danilo (who is the mentally handicapped crazy child) and everything just went nuts. I only had to deal with him for about 2o minutes because then the house mother came in and took over, but 20 minutes was enough for me to never want to do it again.

Now I'm getting ready to go to bed after stuffing my face with a bunch of oatmeal butterscotch cookies that Wendy (The pastors wife) made for me.

Feliz Cumpleanous

Yesterday we had a huge birthday part for all the kids who had birthdays in July. Pastor Audens brother is in town and some people from his work gave him $100 bucks to do something for the kids. So he decided to sponsor the birthday party. There were 2 big cakes, a pinata, gifts, and prizes. We played a couple different games. One was wrap the other person in toilet paper to make a mummy out of them, another was the cram your mouth full of food and see who can finish their plate first game. We also did a race where they had to balance an egg on a spoon, and all sorts of other little party games like that.

Here is a picture with all 40 kids

Here is the eating game. The twins Lenny and Jonell are feeding Yhonson and Gerson

Above is a quick video I threw together of the mummy game.

These next couple days we all kind of have our own missions. The girl volunteers, Rita, Aimee and Karen are out to rid the orphanage of lice, we've had bigger out break and it was starting to get out of control. I will be assisting them. However, my main mission today and these next couple days is to take care of our (my) dog Sparky. He must have a bad infection of worms because he has gotten really skinny and does not have much of an appetite. Also he is itching really bad all over. So I went and picked up some parasite medicine for him today and gave it to him, I also gave him a flee bath and a topical treatment for flees and bugs. Cherry also called her son who is a veternarian. He said because he has a lot of open sores an thinning skin that he has a bacterial infection from being in the dirt so often also the fact that he had worms and is loosing weight isn't helping his body fight off the infection. So tomorrow or later tonight I'm going to go pick up some antibiotics that he recommended. In the mean time we aren't suppose to chain him up in the dirt during the day. So he's living in my house at the moment.

The operation

Lourdes, Maribel, Gladys, and I left Monday afternoon for Trujillo. When we arrived in Trujillo we put our bags at Gladys's mothers house. Then we headed for one of the plaza's nearby. We went and ate dinner and saw a movie. It was the first time that Lourdes had ever seen a movie in a real cinema. The movie we saw was "Knowing". We went back to Gladys's mother's house and spent the night there.

We woke up at 4:00 am and headed off to the clinic at 4:30. The surgery was scheduled at 6:00 and she had to be there an hour before for prep. The surgery amazingly took place on time. It lasted about 40 minutes. Everything went well. The entire tumor was removed and put in little black baggy and set on her night stand next to her hospital bed. We are taking the tumor to a lab to have it analyzied to see if it was cancerous. She was not allowed to talk or lift her head for an entire day. I let her listen to my Ipod for awhile and Maribel also read some books to her.

Avis and Peggy arrived at the hospital around 7:30 to see her. At 8:00 Avis, Peggy and I went to go eat some breakfast and then we went to the courthouse to visit with a judge in the supreme court. It turned out to be a great visit and he wants to come see Casa de Paz next week.

After the meeting with the Judge I went back to the clinic and stayed there with Lourdes until about 1:30 and then I got a bus home. If everything goes well Maribel, Gladys, Avis and Peggy are bringing her back in the van today around noon.

The weekend

I had a great birthday on Friday, I opened about 10 cards out of the 27 that I recieved. Thank you all so much for thinking about me. To celebrate my Fred took me out to the Estacion resturant, and all the kids sang me happy birthday when I came back.

Saturday in the morning is when Aimee, Karen, and Cherry got in to Pacasmayo. I went down and picked them up nice and early at 7. I helped them get comfortable and we spent some time with the kids. I then had a meeting that lasted too long with the lawyer, Avis, Fred, and Pastor Auden. We then went to church to hear the guest pastor from Lima preach. After that Aimee, Karen, Rita and I went out to eat at the only and very good Pizza place here in Pacasmayo. Rita paid for my part of the pizza for my birthday present. It was very delicious.

Today is another visitation day, I printed off some photos for the lady that comes and visits the twins. I need to go give them to her right now.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Trujillo and spending the night there. Lourdes has her operation tuesday at 6:00 AM. So I will wake up and go straight to the hospital. Then we have a meeting with some of the Judges at 9:00 am. After that I'm planning on returning to the hospital, and then most likely returning to Pacasmayo later in the afternoon.

So please be praying that the operation will go well. I will keep you posted and let everyone know how it went as soon as I can.

Pray for Lourdes

Lourdes is a 12 year old girl here in the orphanage. A couple of months ago we discovered that she had a tumor on her abdomen. After a couple of tests the doctors said that it wasn't dangerous and that they were going to have it removed in August when an operating bed opened up. However after the last couple of check-ups and some more lab tests and results, the doctors now believe there is a chance that it could be cancerous. So this Monday they are going to do the operation to remove it. She will stay overnight in the hospital Sunday and have it removed in the morning on Monday.

Please be praying that the operation will go smoothly. And that when they remove the actual tumor and do more tests on it that it will prove to be non cancerous.

Weekend marathon and Monday

Another great weekend!

Saturday we had the visit from the Judge and his crew to come inspect the orphanage. The judge came with three pyscologists and a state social worker. They checked out all of our rooms to make sure they were a safe place for kids to live. The psycologists interviewed three kids a piece asking them questions like, "do you have enough food to eat?", "do you think that you are safe here?", "do you have any chores?" etc... The judge acted like he loved the place, he had not seen it since the switch in February. Also while they were here inspecting Ronal Enrique from the chicken delivery business came and dropped off another couple boxes worth or rice, noodles and milk. They are continuing to bless us. This morning they also dropped off another 5 live chickens. I didn't here about that until later in the afternoon so I guess it wasn't at 2:00 in the morning again.

The Judge with a couple of kids

Sunday was the marathon. I woke up around 6:30 and went to my spot. My group was incharge of shutting down a portion of the highway so that the runners could run on it. The police and fire fighters came to help us (about 2 hours to late). I got to watch Yhonson, Pastor Auden and Fred run by for the 5k. Yhonson ran it in under 30 minutes with only practicing two times, so not too bad. I volunteered until 2:30 pm. Then came back and got out of the sun and rested until about 5:30, then I went to the after party for all the volunteers. The party was mostly Peace Corp volunteers. I also met some people that were doing research in Lima for the graduate school program. They were doing a project on eco-friendly fish farms that people in developing countries and start and make money off of while providing sustainable nutrition for their towns. It sounded really cool.

Yhonson in the 5k race

My group responsible for shutting down the highway

Today (Monday) all the kids had the day off from school, so that meant that I took the day off too. I slept in until about 9:00 for the first time since I've been down here. Then had a relaxing day of playing volleyball, watching some videos, then playing some video games all with the kids.

Learning how to play

Ok I almost forgot to add another thing that I did today. At first I wasn't going to post it because it was so gross, but then I realized it was just too gross not to post. So there's your warning if you don't want to get grossed out you should probably stop reading now. I'll even leave a couple blank lines to make it easier on you.

So the twins who are actually in that photo playing video games have their new grown up teeth coming in. This is causing some problems for them. When their teeth are coming in they like to pick at their gums and this has caused some infection. I guess a couple months ago one of the infections in their gums got bad enough that they had to take him to a doctor and put him on anti-biotics. Ok so now for the gross part, still reading? I discovered today that Lenin had another infection. He had a cankor sore on his top gum that had swollen up to the size of a pencil eraser. Not wanting it to get any worse I showed it to Maribel and his house mom Sindy. Then I decided to take some action. So I took him into the bathroom and had him lean his head over the sink. Then I popped the fluid filled sack. There was a lot of pus and blood in my sink after that. I got some gauze and soaked it in listerine and had him hold it on his sore. The other twin Jonel had the same thing but in the back of his mouth, so we repeated the process with him. They are rinsing with hot water then puting listerine soaked gauze on their sores and they are already getting smaller. Hopefully doing this will keep the infection from getting as serious as it did last time. They told me last time they had those they didn't do anything to them and they eventually got so painful they had to go to the doctor.

Friday

Friday was a great day! It was teacher appreciation day so the kids at school had a party for all the teachers. They gave them all gifts, I got a pair of socks and a matching handkerchief haha. They then sang us a couple songs and performed some skits they had been secretly working on. After that they just played a bunch of games for the rest of the school day.

Fred and I decided a couple days ago that we are going to have the boys start doing more "man" work around the orphanage. So Friday was the first day. When I told the boys that we would be doing this some of them were excited (Cristopher, the twins, and Jose) while others were mad and pouted (Gerson, Yhonson, Joel). However, they were all going to do it just the same. So yesterday after they ate lunch we brought them outside and explained to them exactly what we were going to do. They were going to learn how to take care of the yard, paint, and do stucco. So here are a few pictures from the first yardwork day.

Remember you can click on the pictures to see much bigger versions.

Lenin (Pronounced Lenny)

Jonell (Pronounced Yo-nell)

Fred, Jose, and JoelJonell and Cristopher picking up grass clippings

After the yardwork, Ronal from the Pacasmayo company stopped by to give us a donation of food. Praise God! He drove in with a truckload of food. Two 100 kilo bags of rice, and a whole bunch of vegetable oil, sugar, pasta and canned milk. All this food is from his employees. At the end of every month they get paid a bonus in food. So all the food you see on the table in this picture plus 2 bags of rice was given up by families for the kids in the orphanage. Avis was so happy that she started to cry. This was the first time that anyone from the comunity had really contributed to the orphanage. If I added it all up it is around $600 worth of food. All that oil will last us hopefully an entire month and the rice is enough for 2 full weeks.

Here is the food (you can't see the rice) with me accepting the inventory sheet listing all the stuff the workers gave from Rosa (the woman who got us an in with the boss).

Thanks for all the cards!

So I hadn't recieved a single card in the mail until today. But today they delivered 21 of them to me all at the same time. Thank you all so much. I opened about half of them and realized the majority were birthday cards so I'm going to save the other half until next week. Thank you all so much!

Also some other really fantastic news. Today we got the official paperwork that the 7 year old twins that are pictured in the post above are declared abandoned. Meaning that they can now be adopted. The agencies are in the process of looking for a set of parents. Currently there are no parents here in the northern district of Peru that want to adopt 2 kids so they are sending their file down to Lima... But, if you guys have knowledge of someone in the states that would like to adopt 2 twin boys (very tender and well behaved at that) keep us in mind. I can post more pictures later but I got to head out to the pastors house for missionary night.

Updates

Sorry it has been awhile since I've posted but nothing really out of the ordinary has happened. I did not end up going to the birthday party for the politician on Saturday because the other people that I was going with had to cancel and I didn't really want to go by myself.

I had a great meeting again with the local business man on Monday. He came up here to check everything out and he was just amazed. He said he had no idea that it was like this, it wasn't the big scary orphanage after all. After seeing everything he told me that he would be willing to help us out. So Maribel is going to be making some lists of things that he could help us with. While he was here he tried one of Gladys (our cook) empanadas and loved it. He said that we could come down to his business and sell them to his employees anytime we wanted.

It was another visitation day but a lot fewer people showed up this week. However the lady still came to visit the twins, and Jose's and Anabela's dad came to visit. Jose was excited to introduce me to him.

In other good news we found a man willing to sponsor all the kids in the orphanage to go to school for the rest of the school year! Praise God! That was an answered prayer, because we have been worried about the school these last couple weeks.

Tomorrow I'm going to Trujillo again to supposedly sit down and talk with the judges that are making the decision about the Rojas family. They don't know that we are coming and it was our lawyers idea...so I don't really know how that is going to pan out. We'll see.

Picture of Cristopher and other kids getting ready to leave for school

Here is a picture of the twins and the lady that comes to visit them every visitation day