Los Fresnos, Por Favor

Hola everyone! I really appreciate all of your prayers these past few days, the transition period is always one of the hardest parts. I’ve learned a lot my first week here. Where to begin… Yesterday was the second anniversary for “La Casa de la Gloria” a Christian home for girls who are pregnant or have a baby. These girls are as young as 13 and during their time in the home they are taught how to do some type of work (making jewelry, cooking, etc) to be able to provide for themselves and their baby, they get to continue their education, and they are living in a community that stresses the power of the gospel in everything they do (Hagaí 2:9, Isaiah 40:30-31) it’s an incredible home. The girls and that mission is what Dylan and Lindsey (the other two MTW interns here with me) will be devoting their time, love, and energy to all summer.

Like I mentioned previously, I am working with “los jovenes” which is the youth group of my church here, and with the missions teams that will be coming in to work. So far we worked with the “jovenes” meeting (games, songs, scripture) and with the church’s prayer meeting that was last night. Every lesson, prayer, and basically conversation dealing with these things are in Spanish. The first sermon I went to I just wrote down all the words I recognized because my brain could not process them, change the tense back to one I know, and understand before the next word came. Thankfully (gracious a Dios) I am surrounded by patient teachers in my home and work. Tula (my madre) introduced me to one of our neighbor’s who is a Spanish and English professor at one of the local colleges who is going to be giving me Spanish lessons this summer if I will do the same for him in English!

My friend Alex is teaching me all the slang terms I need to know as well as helping me with my accent. Every morning at breakfast my brothers drill me with vocab. It is really getting better daily but definitely is still a wonderful (no sarcasm intended) challenge that I thoroughly enjoy. Another fun challenge is our means of transportation in Lima the rest of the summer. “Cambi’s” (buses) are how we will be getting around the rest of the summer, we will take a cambi from our neighborhood in Los Fresnos to either Salamanca (the church and office’s neighborhood) or to Avenida la Molina (the Berry’s neighborhood). Now these buses are very small and very fast and very crowded and we stick out like sore thumbs, especially myself because of how tall I am, and the drivers will try to rip us off with expenses so we have to be on guard for that as well as thievery on the buses and taxis which is very common. Mom, I know you are probably freaking out at the idea of my using Peruvian transportation all summer but I swear it’s okay and actually fun!

The sun has been out the past few days and the frigid mountain air has retreated and it’s absolutely beautiful all day long. A few nights ago Paulo and Alex took Dylan and I to this internet café where we went to a back room and climbed a ladder into a hole in the roof that opened up to a room with pool tables and an incredible view. It was so much fun! Peru is full of surprises like that, I’ve learned (once again) to never judge anything or anyone by how it may first appear, no matter how good you intuition may be.

Also, I went to the market, not Plaza Vea which is like a Peruvian wal-mart but the real market, and it was such a fun experience. We saw chickens getting plucked, strange fruit that we don't have in the states, flowers, and I bought my first pair of Peruvian crocs because everyone wears crocs in their houses, NEVER barefoot and my Chaco's are very Gringo but thats ok with me!

Prayer Requests:

Definitely continue to pray that my Spanish grows stronger, pray for los jovenes and that we will be able to help foster a stronger Christian community during my short time here, pray for Peru because the presidential elections are this Sunday and the two candidates are very extremist and Peru definitely needs prayer. Thanks for all who read this and comment! Let me know what you want to know and I’ll include it in my next post!