Forgive my tardiness on my blogs about Peru. I have battled a broken laptop battery and a lack of wifi the last few months.
In December we served a ministry called Ramas. The word ramas translates to branches in english. Their vision is to be the branches “ramas” that connect churches together in their community. They want to connect and help build relationship so that churches can have opportunities to be more unified.
The first week we served a Church called Aliansa. They are a new Church plant that is working on growing and sharing with the community their existence. Most of our time was spent with Pastor Victor, his wife Carola and his oldest daughter Christina. We helped make christmas gift bags that held a variety of candy and an invitation to their christmas service. After we made all the gift bags the next day we went to a park close to the church and passed them out to children and gave vouchers to their parents. It was a wonderful experience and our whole team wore red noses like Rudolf, which the children loved. Some of our team had opportunities to speak and share testimony’s on a Wednesday night prayer service and during the Sunday service. My favorite time was our team sang worship for the Sunday service and belted out the 3 Spanish worship songs we know. After worship we joined the kids upstairs and helped them make Christmas cards for a loved ones and shared the story of Mary receiving news about being the month of the messiah.
The following week we took an hour bus ride to Ventanilla a little village on the side of a sand mountain where we had to hike up tons of stairs. This week was spend with Pastor Roberto and his wife. Our first order of business was the building of a kitchen on to the back of the church. We had to dig sand and place it in buckets then run up mountain of sand behind the church and dump the unwanted sand in another place. Thankfully team cafe loves to work together and we made a assembly line and had a blast shoveling sand. After we dug out the sand and moved it to a different area we began to bring in these pallet wood refurbished walls. We had to dig a foot deep whole in the sand (which seemed impossible as the sand fills up all the area of sand that is removed) place the walls and then hammer them down into the sand and after we filled the holes back up to hold the walls. This is hard to explain but I hope I am painting a good picture of the structure. The intention for building the kitchen are to help feed children who are left at home because their mothers are at work. Most of the population in Ventanilla are single mothers and the area is very impoverished.
We completed getting all the walls up for the kitchen and then we switched to focus on preparing for Christmas party’s for the village and church community. We packed gift bags with candy, soda, juice, milk, fruit cake and cookies. We had two christmas parties. The first one was for the village on the other side of the sand mountain and then we had the second in the church for the main village we served. These parties consisted off gift giving, singing, and lots of dancing. The day we had the Christmas party at the church I gave a message for the night church service about Matthew 20 and the book of Jonah. I spoke about the way the Lord is faithful to be fair and to love all of his children equally and this calls us to forgive and love our brothers in sisters (even if they are enemies) because of His love for us. He gave everything for us to come back to Him and he calls us to do the same reconciliation with our siblings in Christ.
The last week in Peru we began our adventure to Machu Picchu with a 24 hour bus ride to Cusco where we met a guide and took our stuff to a hostel with no name. This was the hardest bus ride of my whole race so far; I would recommend flying. After stopping at the hostel we walked around the beautiful town of Cusco while our guide, Cosmay told us all about the foundations that where once an Inca kingdom, but now stood tall as Spanish architecture. While we where walking around Cusco their was a huge festive with tents because it was Christmas Eve and it is tradition to buy stuff to make a nativity scene.
The next day we where picked up by a van for a 6 hour trip to Agua Calientes where we would hike about 7 miles to the town of Machu Picchu. In our van their where people from all over the world including: Argentina, Brazil, China, Canada (because of Kaelyn), Chile, and then all of us Americans. It was such a cool experience to be in such a small space with people from all over the world. We became most aquatinted with a couple from Brazil. It was an intense ride because it was all mountain roads and their where places where the road was covered in rocks from land sides. Finally we arrived and began our 7 mile hike which took us about 2 and a half hours, but we enjoyed meeting and talking with some guys from Germany. Once we made it to agua calientes we had to walk to the back of the town to find our hostal called Las Rockas.
We woke up at 5am to be ready for our tour to Manchu Picchu the day after Christmas. It rained the whole time we where at Manchu Picchu but we had a wonderful tour guide and it was such a beautiful site. Around lunch time we headed back to the town below Machu Picchu. Us girls grabbed lunch and our server was a wonderful man from Venezuela who shared our faith and who we had a beautiful opportunity to empower, encourage and pray for him. I know he was just as much their to encourage us as we where to encourage him. We then headed off with an hour to walk around the town until it was time to ride the train back to aguas callientes (the boys hiked back) where Hannah and I meet a brother and sister who has also traveled from Lima, Peru. After we had our 6 hour van trip back to Cusco and stayed the night in the same hostel.
The following day we had another free half day in Cusco where Christy and I hung out and visited the park to do some quite time and just take in the beautiful town of Cusco. We then walked to look at some shops and had awesome interactions with people from all over. On shop we entered because Christy said it smelled good, though I did not smell anything and we met a man who used to be a missionary in Colombia. We had a wonderful conversation and prayed for our brother in Christ and then he asked to pray over us. After we left we believe Christy was truly following the smell of the Holy Spirit. Later we all met up and headed to the airport. It was a smooth ride where I sat next to Ike and a stranger. Ike and I just talked about how wonderful the Lord is and all the things we had learned from the book we both read called the Celebration of Discipleship.
Once we arrived back in Lima we had a few days to get packed and ready for our first continent change. In about two days time we where headed off the South Africa from Lima, Peru.
I love South America and the Spanish culture. One day I will be back and I hope to visit the wonderful host I stayed with during my time in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. I am so thankful for all the worship sang, songs learned, preaching opportunities, but most of all the memories made.
