Photos of Peru

A few weeks ago Peru Mission had  a team visit from Savannah, GA and were blessed to have Nate Henderson photograph some amazing pics of everyday life in Trujillo.  Take a look at where we will be living and working!

http://www.openlightstudio.com/blog/?s=peru&searchsubmit=Find

Beach Weekend

Not exactly the same as checking into a hotel in Destin.....

This past weekend we decided to join our friends Steve and Dianne for a getaway to a nearby beach town.  They were celebrating their anniversary, but ended up having our family and five other fellow students join them!  Altogether this was a different sort of beach trip!  We rode a bus (my first time to ride one for travel other than for a school or church trip) for about 2 1/2 hours to get to the beach town...hmmm...village is a better word!  And we were looking for landmarks for the homes we would be staying in, and we found them we quickly had to yell "baja" to get off.  So we all pile off the bus, grab our luggage, and look at each other with thoughts of "now what"? as the bus drives away!  We thankfully choose the correct dirt road to walk up to arrive to our homes for the weekend, but tried to laugh about our long walk on a dirt road with lots of backpacks and bags.  

 

Our house on the "campground".... we did have a great view of the Pacific ocean from our porch!

Our friends enjoying spaghetti prepared by Dianne!  

Possibly the BEST part of the trip... chocolate roasted bananas!!  Our German friends taught us this... you split a banana down the center and slide in small pieces of chocolate.  Then you roast the bananas over hot coals.  The German version of campground food.  Yummy!  Hint:  Best to eat with a spoon!  

Laura and Lisa preparing the bananas.

Although by far this was not the most luxurious trip we've ever had, it was a great break for the kids!  There was a large farm around the Norwegian mission campground where we stayed, and the kids were free to roam around and play and scream, without worrying about getting run over in the city streets or bothering our nearby neighbors in our apartment.

Sam thought it was a little cold... he's running back to shore!  The water was FREEZING!! 

The boys helped Mr. Steve build a castle.

Sarah Caroline enjoying the sand at night

It was COLD... actually much cooler than in Arequipa.  We are at 8000 feet above sea level in Arequipa, so we had the idea that being at the beach would be warmer.  But we didn't do our research well before we went - it is only warm at the beach for three months- in December, January, and February.  So, lesson learned!  We did have about 4-5 hours of sun on Saturday, which we loved!

We also toured the lagoons of Mejia, by walking about 5km.  We saw lots of birds, but the most interesting were Chilean flamingos!

The best part was the fellowship with our new friends, getting to know about other cultures, and having worship together.  Sam liked it - tonight he started crying because he wanted to go back to our house at the beach!

Poco a Poco...

We continue to study Spanish, "poco a poco" (little by little), or maybe it's a lot??  We are covering 6 months of curriculum in 3 months, so it's pretty fast, I suppose!  It is fun learning a new language, but not necessarily an easy task alongside caring for four children!  I'm not sure that I am absorbing all of the Spanish that I hear and learn every day, but I am hoping that one day it's going to all come out a little easier!  It's in my head somewhere!  But we are progressing....  And we have only four more weeks of school until we move to Trujillo!!

The kids are learning too!  Today I heard each of them speaking Spanish phrases without realizing they were doing it.  Some things are becoming more natural for us all.   Some of the children have had some homesickness, and we've all had our share of culture shock and adjustment.  There are days it seems normal to live here, and others my spirit is rebelling against all of the changes.  I struggle with feeling like we have so little, living so basic, but then am so thankful for what we have!  We see so a lot of poverty here, even in our little bubble of going to school and not ministering directly to others right now. We pass by homeless men every day, one who cleans his feet in the running water in an open water line under the sidewalk.  I think he may have some open sores he is trying to care for.  Others have enough to get by, but every day they wonder how they'll make ends meet.   Not in the way we all worry in the US - can I buy a new car, or a tv, or some new clothes, but truly - can I eat today?

We will have a lot of thoughts to process while we serve here in Peru... thankfully God led us here to serve, but we are also learning so much ourselves!!