I’ve been planning on doing a photoblog for a while now but I’m still waiting on my friends to send me pictures so that’s being postponed another week. In the mean time I thought I’d write a little pit about what it’s like here in Peru since we’re already about to leave.
This time around we all started with having bunk beds instead of sleeping in tents. If you didn’t know already this is the only month we’re living as just our team and not the whole squad. We are in charge of making our own meals here so we devised a schedule on rotation where two of us will cook breakfast and two others will wash the dishes used to cook the dishes but any personal dishes we use like plates and silverware are our own responsibility. The same goes for dinner however our lunch is provided for us and is typically soup. I’ve learned to make some mean bacon this way. Our hosts are a family named the Andersons. There’s Tim and Holly and their 5 kids. Also living with us are a young couple Max and Abby, as well as Andrew who pretended to only speak Spanish the first few days we were here. Typically we’re supposed to be done with breakfast and ready about 9 or 9:30 depending on the day although I’d be lying if I said that we haven’t been late on more than one occasion which usually has to do with underestimating the time to make breakfast. Our ministry isn’t a routine thing like in Ecuador but rather we do various tasks that need to be done. One day we we’re bringing stuff downstairs out of an orphanage for a yard sale to raise money, the next day we we’re the theft prevention for said chaotic black Friday like yard sale. Another day I drilled holes in the Andersons entryway so they can line it with wood and another day I helped paint their downstairs orange instead of yellow. Another day we drove miles through the mountains to a village where I met Andrew’s brother and with him, Max, and a few teammates we cleaned up a local lady’s yard and built her a shelf to put her cooking utensils on. And yet another day we mowed the grass in their yard so we can play sports. Most days we’ve had teachings here. For the first week we had Matt Blair a guy who works for AIM stay with us and every night he was here just about he had a teaching. Many mornings we’ve had a teaching from the Andersons before we started and our team leader Elijah had taught us twice, once one night and another one this morning when we hiked in the mountains. We’ve also had a teaching with the Andersons in the mountains before. For the most part it’s more laid back than our ministry in Ecuador where we were really pushed to our limits so it’s been kind of like a period of rest for us. Sometimes we even get off days. Most nights we watch a movie on the Andersons’ TV and a lot of them are relatively new or famous ones. Apparently you can buy movies really cheap here although I’m pretty sure they are illegally printed. Even though devotions aren’t mandatory I still try to read a little bit of my Bible when I wake up although not all of my attempts are successful. Compared to Ecuador it’s really nice to not have to deal with a curfew or a 4 person rule even though we don’t typically stay out late anyway. We also don’t go out quite as much since we have to walk a mile before we can find any buses. It’s been interesting using a new currency to say the least. Because we aren’t here very long we haven’t had the chance to do too much but there’s a few cool things worth mentioning. Yesterday 5 of us woke up before 4:00 am to go to Rainbow mountain which was absolutely beautiful. The altitude was so high up that you run our of stamina so quickly and my stomach was already hurting that day. I said before that the effects of altitude increase exponentially as you go up and I still say that’s very true. When you’re that high up just a couple hundred feet can drop your stamina through the floor and change the temperature by a ton. Tomorrow we leave for Machu Picchu and we get to see it on Tuesday and then we leave Peru around Friday.
I guess that my photoblog is going to have to encompass both Ecuador and Peru huh? God bless you all.
