Day 37- Cookies are the bridge to any friendship.

Frienship cookies

“Miss! Miss! Queremos unas galletas! Puedes comprarlos para nosotros?! Por favor, Miss!!!”

“ Miss! Miss! We want some cookies! Can you buy them for us? Please, Miss!!!”

This week the ARRIBA students did not have a academic course to go through. We had Spanish tutoring followed by cultural learning and Spanish listening. This week was called SPANISH EMPHASIS WEEK. It’s called such because all we were supposed to do is practice our Spanish. Every day after two hours of Spanish tutoring, we went out into our neighborhoods or to a more touristic part of Lima to practice our Spanish, listened to Spanish, or learn more of the culture. On Monday, Dani and I were walking to the market in our neighborhood when four little girls ran up to us from their house. We had never seen them before, but they kept calling us “Miss, Miss,” grabbing out hands and hugging our legs. They could tell we were white. They could tell we had money. They wanted some cookies. They conveniently live right across the street from a little “tienda” that sells cookies, fruit, juice, etc. After debating to myself whether or not we should start a habit of buying things for everyone we meet, I decided…sure why not. The cookies don’t cost more than 50cents. So we bought them some cookies and started talking to them on the sidewalk. Dani had some gospel tracts in her purse so we handed them out and started asking questions about church. I was talking to a 12 year old girl who told me that she went to the Catholic Church down the street. I was going through the tracts with her in my limited Spanish. I was asking her what she had to in order to live forever with Jesus. She knew she was a sinner but she thought going to church and helping other people was sufficient for eternal life. I couldn’t get very deep into the Gospel message because I simply don’t know the Spanish words yet. However, I tried to explain that no matter how hard we try, we can’t do enough good things because we’ll always be doing bad things too. The only perfect one is Jesus and we need him in order to spend eternity in heaven with Him. I don’t quite know if she understood my jumbled up phrases and my thick American accent, but it was a good time of getting to know some of the girls in our neighborhood. We sat on the sidewalk from close to 45 minutes before the girls started getting tired of trying to figure out what we were trying to say. After that, Dani and I played volleyball with them for another hour or so. We talked to one girl’s mother who was selling pastries from her doorstep with her little baby girl in hand. We told her we lived in the area and asked if we could come around again to visit. She seemed pleased with our efforts and confirmed that we could come by again. A few days later, Dani and I were walking up the hill from the bus stop. These same little girls ran up to us once again hugging our legs and holding our hands. They didn’t ask us for cookies this time. They were just happy to see some friendly faces from the white girls who took the time to talk to them. Hopefully over the next 10 months we’ll be able to bring them to church with us and build a greater friendship. Simple cookies can build a friendship not only with some “gringas” but hopefully a newfound friendship with the Creator as well.