This month has been very back and forth in terms of ministry. Unlike last month, when we worked with the same foundation all month, so far we’ve helped at two different places and have several others we’ll visit this week. A lot of what we’re doing has been distributing flyers for a new church and participating in services and their English club outreach.
But last Tuesday and Wednesday, we got to take a bus way out to Ventanilla, one of the poor districts on the edge of Lima (just don’t ask me which direction, Lima is too huge to look at on a map). There, we met Carlos and Miriam, the couple who run the Estación Esperanza – Hope Station. They and another missionary, Natalya, provide after-school tutoring to children in the slums and work to strengthen their families.
They have fairly recently finished construction on the lower level of their building, so they’ve had teams doing lots of painting to further spruce it up. If you remember from Malaysia, I love painting!
I didn’t manage to get any pictures taken, since we were too busy downstairs painting columns orange and yellow or upstairs (on the unfinished second floor) sanding and sponge painting child-sized chairs and tables. We also had to fend off scores of eager children who wanted to help paint but always ended up dripping paint everywhere. In order to extend the color and help it spread into the grooves in the walls, we added a bit of water to it, so we had to be extra careful not to fling paint droplets across the room.
So Miriam put the kids to work sanding a giant table.
We also took some time to play games and teach English to the kids; they asked us if we could do an impromptu children’s program, to which we replied, “Of course!” The first day, my afternoon of painting was serenaded by children outside yelling, “Senor Lobo, que hora es?” Mr. Wolf, what time is it? To which he would eventually reply “Hora de comer!” Time to eat! and the children would run screaming in the opposite direction so as not to get caught.
We didn’t quite finish all of the wall-painting, partially because the paint store had no more yellow paint, but we spent two fantastic days working our hardest and it ended up looking great!
