Wow let me begin this blog by describing how my time was while I was in the country of Peru and mention about all of the different amazing things that I did in each location I visited while I was there. I hope this blog allows you to feel the good experiences that I did and it also shows you the things that weren’t as good and you can kind of get a glimpse into my lifestyle for the whole month. Enjoy!
I’ll start by mentioning my first place, which was named Ollantaytambo and I must say that being there was so amazing. The reason why I say this is because that area is a small town with a view of a beautiful looking mountain in the background making you never want to ever leave that place. It was also cool to be there because we formed a relationship with our owner of our AirBnB, Sonjia who was so excited that we were staying there. In fact, we were able to actually be there for 9 days, which was awesome because when we got there we found out that we were the second group to ever rent from her and I think that is cool. Another thing that we got to do was when she invited us to come eat some lunch with her at her house and then after that we wanted to help her out by pulling some of the weeds out of her yard, so she could plant more crops. It’s an experience that I’ll always treasure in my heart.
While I was there my teammate Ana bought us a little Alpaca that she found that we now call our team mascot named Chimi, which I think is awesome. I definitely now know that O-City is a place that I definitely hope to go back to again one day.
The next place that we went to was named Cusco. That place was one where my whole squad was meeting up at for our LDW, or our mini debrief, which was for a few days and I was excited to see everyone again. However, I also didn’t really like it because O-City was so peaceful and I like small towns and not being too crowded and Cusco was extremely big and a lot of people. Another reason for that is because the altitude in Cusco is a crazy high number and I literally felt the sickness just walking up to get food because it was so strong and I wasn’t used to it. That made my stay there not the best because there were some times when I couldn’t even have meals with anyone because I felt like I had to sleep and sit in my room all day instead of move around and enjoy the outdoors. I was wanting the time there to be over with!
However, something that was awesome was that even with the altitude sickness that I had, I still got to know the people at the hostel we were staying, which was called “The Brothers Hostel” because they were a brand new hostel who were run by a Christian family and they were just so nice to us too. They always would love to be involved with whatever we were doing and I truly knew that they loved all of us being there because it made their hostel fun.
Something that I also enjoyed is that we had a night of telling my teammate Ana goodbye because she felt the Lord tell to leave the Race in order for her to start her next step towards a taco truck business she is starting up called “Taco Patrol”. I was sad to see her go, but also happy for her as she transitioned to the new time in the United States. She is always missed from team Chimichanga.
Another thing we did for our Squad Fun time was that we got to celebrate one of my squad mates birthdays where we got to sing her happy birthday and we got to have a cake on the same night Ana was leaving. Then later on that night we had a time of worship and prayer and it was such a powerful experience that I started getting sweaty and had to literally go into a cold room because the Holy Spirit was on me and I hope to have a lot more of those times. In the end, if I ever decide to go back to Cusco, I’m definitely going to be going back there and spend more time with them and hope to experience it again.
I will now mention some really cool experiences that I got to have with my teammate Ana and I hope they will show you about how she brought the fun into our team and will be experiences I will never forget. I will also show how sometimes she encouraged me to go on some of these fun experiences in Perú and I hopefully will be able to do them again later on in my life as well. I hope you all get to experience these things as well in your lives.
The first thing that I will now mention is about the time when my teammates Ana, Hunter, Emily and I all decided to travel by train to go to Machu Pichu for a day. The reason why we chose to do that is because we all felt like we wanted to experience something that not a lot of people get to go to and because I heard that it was “Something that I had to go to because it would be a time that I would never forget and if I didn’t go, I would miss out on something amazing and it would allow me to grow closer to the others with me.” I also checked the weather that day and it showed that we were going to have like no clouds in sight and so we would have great views, which made made me feel very blessed and excited. When I thought about it I wasn’t going to go because of the cost, but in then end I knew that I needed to go on it for the amazing adventure.
Then my team finally arrived from riding the train and as we were walking to meet up with the tour guide we met a girl named Keeley. She was a friendly person who was from England and she was needing some help with finding out about the place where she had to go to get on her bus to go to Cusco where she was coming from later on that day. Then something really cool happened, which was that Ana actually walked with Keeley because she knows Spanish and found out where and when and helped Keeley with everything she needed and so Keeley was really grateful for the help and said, “thank you” and Ana said, “You’re welcome” and we kept moving. We then met up with the tour guide since we had booked one with our tickets and after we found him she really looked like she wanted to join us, so we told her, “You can come join us” and she was very excited for that because she got to be apart of our team and we all truly wanted that.
Now I will tell about what it was like to be together with her and what we truly did together. When we arrived and were with her, we had to wait in a really long line in the place where we met her, which is a city where you wait for a bus to take you to the top of a huge mountain to get to where you can enter Machu Pichu, which was cool. Then when you get to the top of it and you can grab a snack if you want, use the bathroom and then start your journey inside it and so we did that with her and our cool tour guide who is there everyday and isn’t he lucky he gets to do that. Then we started walking around with him and he was telling us all of these interesting facts about the different things about Machu Pichu and we also got to see some alpacas up close and that was really cool too. As we continued our journey in it, we all just really felt like she had been friends with us for a few years because she took our photos and even got in some with us and we were having fun spending time with her. In fact, as we were walking and climbing all throughout it, we all felt like God had set it all up and it was an experience that I will never forget and I really want to go to it again with more people.
Another amazing experience that I got to go to that was really amazing was when I was able to visit a place called the Laguna Humantay with some of my squad mates, Emily, Kaelyn, Hunter and I. It was something that I had never heard of before going there, but supposedly a lot of people knew about it and even some on the internet wrote about how amazing and beautiful it was to hike to. They also mentioned that it usually takes about an hour and half to get up to the top and about forty five minutes down, but when you reach the top it is awesome. They said to us that it can be really cold because you see a really beautiful lake, which has mountains with snow in the background and they said it’s a place I needed go to before I ended my time in Peru and that I would miss the chance to see something great, so I decided to go to it.
When I arrived to it and started the climb up the mountain, I realized right then and there that it was going to be a really tough and steep climb and realized right away that higher you climbed up, the more you couldn’t breathe because of the higher altitude. It felt wild to me because when I was half way up it I had thoughts in my head like, “I can’t do this because it’s to hard and I really want to go down”, but it was during those moments that I told myself that there was no chance of that happening and that I couldn’t stop now.
As I was continuing the climb I also looked and saw that there was a man behind me who was asking if I was alright and then he used a lot of encouraging words to me and said things to me like, “Daniel you can make it there as it’s not that much further from here and it’ll be worth it in the end because of the view.” It was at that moment that I felt confident about finishing it and took his advice and continued up the mountain. Then when I had just finished it, I raised my hands in the air like I won an Olympic gold medal and it was at that moment that I realized that sometimes there are times when you don’t want to continue something, but if you do choose to move forward and continue with it, you’ll feel amazing and joyful in the end. I hope to go back and take some more people I know to allow them to experience it too and to also encourage the other climbers too as they go up the mountain too.
After that time in Cusco and visiting all of those cool experiences, my team felt confident that the Lord was wanting us to travel to my teammate Josh’s friend, Bobby and Tammy’s house, which is one hour away from an area called Tarapoto. After planning it all out, we then realized that the bus ride to get to where they were at from Cusco was about a 46 hour long bus ride and it supposedly had a lot of windy roads that were extremely dangerous, which would limit our time to be with them. However, after we told the leadership team about it, they all felt that it would be best for us to actually fly there, so that we would get there sooner and we were so glad for that because we all believed that God had some amazing things for us to do while we were there and that made us excited. I also learned that they had seven kids and I was happy about that too because I like children and I knew that we could have a lot of fun with them. We were ready for the amazing adventures ahead.
When we arrived at the airport in Tarapoto, Bobby picked us up in his truck, which was not what I was expecting at the time because of all of his kids and I knew that it would be a good time. In fact, on my way to their house, I was inside the truck and not standing up out in the back of it and I didn’t necessarily like it because all of the roads to their house from Tarapoto, which was an hour away, were really bumpy and it truly didn’t feel very good for any of us and we all were wanting to get there already. I felt like it was going to be fun.
When drive was finally over, we all entered the house and when we went inside we met Tammy and their seven kids who are aged from 12 years old to 1 and they told us that they were very excited for us to be there and we were too. It also felt like the first time in awhile that I was going to be in a family like environment on the race and that was something that was nice, but also felt different at first. However, even though I had some of these feelings at times, I was really ready to spend time with them all because it was going to be a experience I’d never forget.
After we had the first night with the kids, we learned about some cool opportunities that they were going to have in the local church in that area, which was to have two nights of services for healing. When they said that to my team, we thought it was going to be cool because we would be able to help people with any of the healings that they’d need and I enjoy doing that. Tammy also asked us during that time if some of us could speak our testimonies to the people who were there and on the first day I didn’t feel like I was supposed to, but on the second day I said mine to everyone. It was good for me to do that because I had never said it in front of a large amount of people, but I enjoyed saying it. There also were some good sermons because they truly were beneficial to the healing that God does for us and just spoke truth over what amazing things God can do through those healings and it was awesome.
However, throughout my time there, some of us in the house got sick on a daily basis. At first, I felt like it was just a cold or something that was just a disease, but after a few days, I felt like it could had been something else. In fact, I kind of thought that it was a spiritual battle between God and the enemy over the people in that area because there was a lot of darkness there. There also were times while I was there where I kept praying for everything and it seemed to that overtime things were getting a little better each day, which was awesome. Then I felt the Lord tell me one day to pray for Bobby’s knees because he really injured his leg in a bad car accident he had not to long before then and God actually healed him a little bit, which was awesome. I’m glad I get to see God do that type of stuff on a daily basis because it is amazing.
Then one day throughout the week, my team also chose to help both Bobby and Tammy looking after their kids for the whole day while they just enjoyed their time on their “date day”. It was a time where we all watched movies together, ate some food, had a time of dancing to music and even went to a local park to and played on it for a while, which was really fun and I would definitely do it again. I’m really glad that we had the opportunity to do that for them to truly bless them and help them just have a day of relaxation and fun because they just needed it and it was honestly a joy for us to have that too. I hope to continue to do these types of things for people and bless them with whatever they need, so they can enjoy themselves too.
Even though we blessed them with that, they both were truly a blessing to all us as well because they cooked us meals and loved doing it, allowed us to have some food and drinks whenever we wanted it and were just willing to help us out with everything and I definitely want to do that too. I feel like being with them was an experience that I will always cherish and one that I’ll never forget. It was an amazing experience.
After the time with them I truly felt like God was leading us into Ecuador to a place called Loja because I felt like He had a lot planned for us there and we could have some awesome opportunities there, but He said, “No Daniel, not here”, so I wanted some confirmation just make sure. Then later that day, my team and I had rented an AirBNB from someone that lives there and as we were about to go there they canceled on us and we couldn’t live there. When we first heard that we all thought, “Well I guess we should pray again and see if the Lord shows us a new place to go to.” Then right after that happened God showed me that the destination was actually farther to the west and still in a place in Peru, so I pointed to that general direction. We then looked on the map and we found a place called Piura, which was in the exact spot I saw it to be and I found that really cool. It was at that moment that we booked a new AirBnB there and traveled there from Bobby and Tammy’s place.
When we arrived to the new place in Piura I realized right away that we were in the middle of nowhere because there was only one small market shop across the street from the house and the nearest city was a hour walk away. It also had no kitchen in the place as well. It was during that time that led me to thinking, “Well this would be a good place to spend time with the Lord and to rest with Him after our busy time with Bobby and the kids.” and that was pretty much the case for our stay there. We also had a host that made food to sell in the city and she made us some tamales throughout the day and sometimes we ate some rice and one day out of the four I had chicken from the market. It was an experience that I’ll never forget.
After our visit in Piura, our team felt like we should go to the coast to a place that was in Ecuador called Montanita, but as we were about to go there, people in Ecuador started to protest the prices of gasoline for their vehicles and so going there was not an option because we couldn’t cross the border, it wasn’t open. After that we had to figure out where we were supposed to stay because that was our destination for awhile and it was at that moment that we just said to the Lord, “Okay Lord we trust you with everywhere we go and everything we do, lead us to the places where you want us to be in.” Then right when we finished saying that our hostel in Montanita actually canceled on us, so we ended not going there. We then ended up staying in a place right before you get to the border line and it is a place called Tumbes where we are staying at currently and it has been a good journey so far here too.
As you all can see, my experiences in Peru were pretty amazing and life changing and I look forward to continuing the remaining time going and trusting where the Lord leads me to every single day. I’m now going to be able to use these great experiences to help others understand new things as well when they need it. I also look forward to even more experiences to come throughout my life because I know that they will be really impactful for me and I hope to always bring fun into all of the things that I’ll do. Thanks for reading it!
