The weekend

The kids have school on saturdays right now now to make up for lost time for the swine flew outbreak. So saturday I kind of just chilled until they got back at 1:00. I Ate some lunch with them then cut Gerson's hair. After that we played some video games. In the evening I went to dinner with 8 kids and Maribel. It was the 8 kids that recently got declared abandoned. Gerson, Yhonson, Joel, Sibila, Betsy, Nelson, Lurdes, Marcielo. After that I came back and had some kids over to watch a movie, but the movie didn't work so we played more video games instead.

Sunday was church and visitation day. We had a lot of visitors, and once again I got filled up with snacks that the parents brought and the kids wanted to share with me. Nothing out of the ordinary for Sunday.

I just got back from the Market, I went to buy some movies, and Cellphone minutes. While I was there I ate some papa rellenas (fried mashed potatoes rolled in balls stuffed with meat and hot sauce on top...SO GOOD) and some Cake from some of the stands there in the market... you can tell I'm starting to get brave when I'm eating food from stands. Later today I'm going to take Yhonson to go get a haircut. Maribel talked with me the other day and suggested that I spend more one on one time with Yhonson because he is not doing so well right now.

I also have a prayer request. I ask everyone who reads this to pray for Avis. She is very sick right now. The doctors say it is anemia and she is on some iron supplements right now. She returns to the states September 4th and I think she is planning on visiting another doctor there. She hasn't been able to do much of anything this last week, so please pray that she recovers.

Happy Birthday Joel

Yesterday was Joels birthday, and for a special celebration I took him to the emergency room to get stiched up. He was running around the house and slipped, fell, and hit his head on the corner of a wall. So Maribel comes knocking on my door at 5:30 in the afternoon and said "I don't mean to bother you...but can you take Joel to the hospital, he cut his head open." So I just grabbed the keys and we loaded up and I drove them down the hill to the Center of Health.

We got there and the doctor laid Joel down on the table cleaned him up, and said that'll be 20 soles. We also had to provide the supplies from their in house pharmacy. So we went bought the stiches the gloves and the needles brought them to the doctor and he stitched him right up. The entire emergency room visit took 20 minutes and cost us $12. Joel did great, he was a little nervous and wanted to see what the doctor was going to stick in his head, but we kept him from moving so he couldn't see the needles.

More good news, is that on Wednesday we finally got the official legal document declaring the Rojas Reyes abandoned. So if there's anyone out there that might want to adopt 5 kids aged 13, 11, 10, 8 and 6 let us know.

Utilities Crisis of 09.

So this last week we've been fighting some battles with our utilities. I found out that we haven't been getting our fresh water from the city about 4 days ago. We usually get a little bit of fresh water everyday at 4:00. We use this water for the kids to drink and cook with. The rest of our water we get from our well which is a little bit salty. So Fred and I carried some buckets of water in the old van over for them on Sunday. We had a meeting today with the water company and they told us that they put another line in that is lower than ours that goes to another part of the city, hence there is not enough pressure to make it to us. So we have another meeting later today with the boss of the water company to see what we can do about it.

At the same time we are trying to get more electricity in to the orphanage because we don't really have enough right now as it is, and we are wanting to build more volunteer houses and more houses for kids in the future so will we need more. The process was going well until a couple of days ago. Then we got a call saying that the company thinks we have enough electricity so they are not willing to put another line going into the orphanage. So we are in the process of waiting for the answer to come from our appeal.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon on top of the church installing an new antenna for our wireless internet because our signal has been very weak lately. Right now it seems to be much better so hopefully at least that problem was solved.

Tomorrow one of our kids is leaving. Maria who as been here since February is going to go live with her Aunt and Uncle in Chimbote. When she came to us she was on drugs and very unstable. She was living a very hard life. She is returning to a different place so hopefully her old habits will not pick back up again. She has made so much progress since she arrived. Right now I think that she is very sad and a little nervous to go. Please be praying for her.

Maria

Pictures

Flying a kite

Washing the van

House Mom Gina helping Fatima practice walking

The picture that will go in the twins adoption file; Jonel on the left, Lenny on the right.

Great News

So we went to Trujillo, again, and we talked with the judge one more time about sending kids away. This time our social worker went too. We also had our all of our complaints written on a document in a formal way. Maribel was just going to go give the document to the judges secretary and leave but the judge was there in his office and stopped her to see what was up. So she just handed him the document and let him check it out. He was a little angry at first and told her that "She was beating him with a stick on this one" our equivalent to raking someone over the coals I guess. So after much discusion he finally decided that our kids didn't have to go. None of them.

We were all pretty happy with this news, and my way of celebrating was to go to the Papa John's there in Trujillo and stuff myself full of pizza. They had a buy one medium, get one free deal going so I ate one medium and there's half of another one in my fridge right now. The other half went to Maribel and Mari Ester.

Then we came back and I took a quick nap. I have caught this little cold these past couple days and it's wearing me down. Then I went and helped with some homework, brought a couple kids over to my place to play some video games, then went to the other house and played some cards. So I felt like I got to spend some good quality time with the kids today too.

These next couple days I'll do some photo only blog posts.

This has been another pretty full week. Karen and Aimee left earlier this week. I felt terrible for Aimee because she was so sick that day, but I've talked to her since and she's feeling much better now. It's always hard to say goodbye to volunteers, and even harder for the volunteers to say goodbye to the kids.

I went to Chenpen on Wednesday to talk with the judge about moving those three kids, however I think right now it is looking like we aren't going to have to say goodbye to them anytime soon. We also went and took a tour of the orphanage where they would be going if they left. The orphanage had a great building however it was kind of a cold feeling. It reminded me very much of the government run orphanages that I've been to.

On Thursday morning I woke up at 4:25 and drove to Trujillo to pick up Terry Hunka from the airport. He came to visit me and see the ministry that's going on here in Pacasmayo. We first stopped by Hogar de Esperanza and had a great meeting with their administrator after taking a tour. Then we drove to Pacasmayo and I showed him around and gave him the tour of the orphanage and the school. We talked a lot with Avis and I think we might be trying to plan a couple trips next summer. Then last night I brought him back to the airport so he can catch up with his team that was flying in. Terry will be going to some meetings to check on the status of his adoption so please be praying that those meetings go well.

Today I took a couple of the boys to Pastor Auden's house to do a little yard work and hang out. At 12:00 we had a meeting with our lawyer. The rest of the day today I have been resting and talking to my sisters on skype. I'm getting ready to head over to one of the kids house and eat dinner. Hopefully tonight they won't be having Sangracita, which was something they made earlier this week and I ate for the first time. I found out that what Sangracita is, is just cooked blood. They put a whole bunch of chicken blood into a frying pan and cook it until it globs up, then they serve it over rice. The taste wasn't that bad, but it was just the mental part of it which made it so I couldn't eat it. I tried two bites then I had to give up.

I know I've been saying this a lot lately, but I'll try and post more on my blog.

The system

So I went and had a couple chats with the Judges on Thursday. First we spoke with the head president judge over the matter of them wanting to move some of the kids here at Casa de Paz to another orphanage in Chenpen. He was less than helpful. He said he had nothing to do with it, and was actually pretty pissed that we knew anything about the ordeal. So we left his office and went upstairs to talk to the family judge.

The family judge then gave us all his reasons and excuses why he wanted to move the kids. Mainly it came down to this other orphanage didn't have any kids and so he wanted to give them some of ours and some kids from 2 or 3 other orphanages. We explained to him again why it was tramatic for kids to just be moved all over the place from one location to the next. So he finally said fine, I won't move these kids. However, we still have to move 3 kids from our orphanage over to the other one. There are three kids in our orphanage that have all their paperwork in the Chenpen court system, and also have family in Chenpen, so they are the ones that have to go.

Other than all that crappy news, I had a relativiely good weekend. The sams from Blue Springs came and I had a lot of fun with them. Matt brought be some guitar hero games that I'm teaching the kids right now. They treated me to all my favorite restuarants here in Pacasmayo, and then in Lima they treated me to the best food I've eaten in Peru. I also got to take a great shower in their hotel room, so it was a nice little get a way for me.

While I was there I also got my residency card. So I now have some more rights here in Peru. I can buy property, a car, and open a bank account, and stay here for up to 5 years without getting my visa renewed as long as I pay my fees. I also get to take the local buses in tourist locations saving me hundreds of dollars. I'll try and post some more pictures later.