5:00am
The cannons start going off around 5am. Luckily it’s not every day. They’re a special Sunday thing, shot off to get God’s attention so they can pray. A lot of what we’ve discovered hear in Latin America looks like Christianity but isn’t actually Christianity. There are pagan practices mixed with the worship of my God. Practices like the cannons; like stacking rocks on top of one another as high as they can in hopes that while the rock-tower stands, God is answering the prayers they represent; like following lizards down two different paths at the end of life, one path leading to God. It breaks my heart and is also a really hard environment to share the Gospel in because they think they know Jesus but who they know is a distorted Jesus.
6:00am
On Sunday mornings, the alarm goes off sometime during the 6:00 hour. During the week, it doesn’t go off until the 7am hour but trucks honking and crashing down the Pan-American highway outside often wake us up early.
7:00am
On Sundays we left the house between 7 and 7:30. This month we’re working with an American-Peruvian couple who have seven church plants around the area. On Sundays we visit one or two of them and he preaches at two more. Each church is the only (or was the first) evangelical Christian church in that village. The ones where he preaches have about five adult members each and a whole slew of children. It was hard to see the effort and energy they put into these churches and aren’t being super well received.
8:00am
During the week, we live at one of the churches in a village. Literally a block off the Pan-American highway is a church with a small kitchen, small bedroom, worship center, children’s center, entryway, and room with hammocks. Notice I didn’t mention a bathroom. The building has no running water but there are two wells in the back. One tank holds water to scoop out and run through the filter for drinking and cooking. The other has a lever to turn on and off to run through the two toilets and sink for washing dishes. This tank runs out really fast so we avoid flushing the toilets. We run out of water on a regular basis because even six girls conserving water, can dry wells very quickly. Getting the wells refilled require calling a neighbor to call the company who always said they’ll bring water from the river “tomorrow.”
9:00am
I don’t know how we keep getting gifted punctual Latin men but a pastor or church member from the church where we’re working that day comes in the morning to escort us to the worksite. It’s not a dangerous trip but it is a difficult one so they send an escort to ensure we get on the right bus then into a reputable taxi and back again. After a few days, the taxi drivers started recognizing us and giving us the same deal every day so that was nice.
10:00am
It takes about 45 minutes (and $5/each) to do the planes, trains, and automobiles from one church plant to another. By 10:00ish we’re ready to start working. The first few days we painted one church to get ready for their anniversary celebration. After that, we did street evangelism in that town, passing out tracts and inviting the community to the Sunday celebration. It was hard and awkward and we’re not sure if anyone we gave tracts to actually came… but it’s what our host asked us to do so we did it to the best of our ability. After finishing that project, we painted another church.
11:00am
One teammate needs to stay back every day to protect our stuff. Our host has assured us we weren’t in danger staying at the church but wanted someone there to remove the temptation to try to break in and steal our electronics especially. We took turns staying back. The person who stayed back had to wash and bleach the dishes, burn the garbage, and clean the bathrooms and kitchen as necessary. We also left a phone back with her just in case there was a problem… but there never was.
12:00pm
Lunch break! We take our lunch to the job site every day. The churches want to feed us but we were told not to accept it because our stomachs wouldn’t be able to handle it. Our host told the churches we’d be bringing our own food and they were under strict orders not to feed us… but that doesn’t stop them from trying. We usually take sandwiches and fruit or leftovers from the night before to eat cold.
1:00-2:00pm
Whenever we get to a decent stopping point, we finish up our work for the day and head to the minibus station to head home. Busses leave every hour (or so) but if you don’t get there early enough to get five seats (of 13), you have to wait an extra hour. We eventually learned to buy our tickets first thing in the morning so we didn’t have to wait. One day we also tried to pay with Bolivianos… except we were in Peru. That was a problem but we were grateful the lady at the desk recognized us from the day before and accepted our promise to return tomorrow to pay our debt.
3:00pm
We get back to the church and have a break in the afternoon. We use this time to nap in the hammocks, sun bathe, read, listen to sermons, etc. The church has a full-size mattress, two twin-sized mattresses, and five hammocks. They said if we put the two twin mattresses together we could sleep three people the wrong direction. Instead we put one person in each mattress spot and two people sleep in the hammocks. Space is really tight and climbing over stuff in the bedroom is a given.
4:00pm
On Friday afternoons our host picked us up and drove us an hour and a half back to their house in the second largest city in Peru where we got pampered with our own beds, hot showers, and really nice wifi. It was a good break from life in the desert.
5:00pm
In the evenings we are split up into pairs. Two people teach English, two people cook dinner, and two people have the night off.
6:00pm
You never know how many children (and sometimes dogs) would come to English lessons. I spent my time with the teenage girls trying to convince them they did actually know English even if they didn’t want to speak it. Ana worked with the young boys trying to be entertaining as well as informative. We considered it a success that we didn’t get chalk pelted at us, make the kids do squats, or have to make up English songs on the spot like we did when we taught together in the Dominican.
7:00pm
Cooking is an adventure. The chicken comes as a whole chicken… head, feet, guts, the whole shebang. We have no shortage of chicken parts but do have limited seasonings, pots and pants, and ideas. Pretty much everything is seasoned with ranch. Nevertheless, it’s really good. Before any fruits and veggies can be eaten, they need to spend 15 minutes in bleach water. Lighting the stove requires turning on the gas tank sitting in the kitchen, turning the nob on the stove, and lighting a match. We have a flame-thrower that looks dead but is still strong enough to light the stove so we appreciate that. Cooking is also when the lack of running water is most inconvenient. Washing raw anything off your hands requires a trek through the backyard to turn on the well to turn on the sink to wash your hands to reverse the process and eventually finish the cooking job.
8:00pm
Team time. Some nights we do the traditional announcements and feedback. Some nights we do Bible study. Other nights we do Super Feedback (everyone shares something affirming and something constructive for everyone). Some nights teammates share their testimonies. And other nights we just hang out together. As I’m sure you can guess, some nights it goes long and some nights short.
9:00pm
Our first several nights in Peru, we had an earthquake every evening. One was relatively minor and some of us didn’t even notice. Others were big enough to require evacuation and sleeping with our shoes next to our beds to be prepared to evacuate during aftershocks. We weren’t in serious danger but we aware that a volcano was threatening to explode one mountain away and tsunami warnings were issued for the coast.
10:00pm
Boredom hits late in the evenings once the chores are done and there is no internet to serve as a distraction. Since the sun comes up early and the trucks wake us up too, we are all in bed by 10pm.
