Hi everyone!!!! Month 3 is underway in Peru! We had a 32 hour bus ride from La Paz, Bolivia to Lima Peru where we spent a couple of days doing leadership training. Lima was awesome! Honestly, it felt like we were back in America. We had Starbucks, chilis, and TGI Fridays! It was a much needed couple days of rest after our month in Bolivia. We were only a short walk away from the beach and on our last morning there before we caught our bus to Tarma my friend Christina and I headed over to the beach at 6am to eat breakfast. The beach there is called Playa Peligrosa (dangerous beach) because the currents there are so strong. The beach there is all rocks and so beautiful. While we were eating breakfast we saw a seal swim by! I lost my shoes running down the beach trying to get a picture of it 🙂 After breakfast we joined back up with our team and the 6 of us headed to the bus station. It was about an 8 hour bus ride to our ministry site in Tarma. Sitting across the isle from Christina and me was a little 9 year old boy with a safari hat on. We took the opportunity to practice our Spanish with him! His name was Christian and he was the sweetest thing! He ending up bouncing back and forth from sitting with me and Christina to the laps of the rest of our team. He asked us all our ages and where we were from. He also asked us about our brothers and sister. We shared our snacks with him; he had never had peanut butter and jelly before so he was especially excited about that! He loved taking pictures with our phones and then running back to show them to his mom who was sitting right behind us. Katia (one of my team mates) told him that at home, I swim with dolphins. He just couldn’t understand what that meant so, I pulled out my iPad. He was absolutely enthralled and thrilled with watching the videos I had taken at work with the dolphins. He watched each of them at least three time. He laughed and giggled and was talking a thousand miles an hour in Spanish. It was so special to see how what I was doing at home can still bring joy to a little Peruvian boy on a bus, who honestly will probably never have a chance to visit an aquarium or meet a dolphin. (Lisa, it reminded me of the conversation we had in the stage left window after my last show 🙂 I was balling crying and you told me to take what we do and share it with the kids I’ll meet. You’re right! It was a hit! 🙂 I have some pictures of him that I’ll post when we have a better wifi connection!) After talking to Christians mom for a while, we learned that he had no vision in his right eye and that he could potentially lose sight in his left eye in the future. She asked if we would pray for him. So with little Christian sitting on Katia’s lap we prayed for him and for his sweet little eyes. His mom was so grateful. When we stopped at a little rest stop she bought us all bread. This was just another reminder and example of what God’s been teaching me this year. Stop and love the person who’s right in front of you. That’s our ministry.
Our ministry site this month is at a small church and school just a little ways up the mountain from Tarma in a village called Vista Hermosa, which means beautiful view. And oh my gosh is it beautiful! Our room is on the second story of the church and it overlooks all of Tarma. At night we can see each building lite up beneath us. All 6 of us are crammed into a room that is smaller than a bedroom in the states, so that makes sleeping interesting but we are making it work! There’s literally almost no water here…so we are planning on venturing into Tarma today to somehow find a way to shower and wash clothes this month. The church is in a very poor area, so they choose to live and have the amenities that the people around them have so that they can better relate to and serve them. Our ministry hosts are a sweet family, Miguel and Paulina. They have two children, Andres, he’s 3 and Ana who is 1. They are so generous and want to serve us just as much as we are wanting to serve them. Paulina cooks our meals for us as night and we all sit in the kitchen with her and laugh and tell stories while Kaitia translates for us. Yesterday for lunch I watched her pull apart the chicken we were all to eat….ewwwwwww. There are always people and kids from the community coming in and out to say hello. We started doing ministry yesterday. They don’t really have church services here on Sunday, they have their service on Fridays. But, on Sunday afternoons they have children’s church so we helped with that. We sang and danced and played games with them. They also learned a bible sTory which I’m still honestly not sure what it was since it was in Spanish! The kids are all so sweet. The 11 and 12 year old girls love trying to have conversations with us. So, this month we will be working a lot with the kids, helping with the children’s ministry and the youth group. We are also going to be teaching English classes which I am really looking forward too! I will keep you all posted!
