Day 66- Juan Zuniga

“Where are all the guys?”
                After being unable to attend Jovenes (‘youth group’ for highschoolers and young adults) for the past many months, Juan Zuniga wondered what had happened to all the guys who used to attend Jovenes. Juan was a faithful attendee of Jovenes for many years until he was physically unable to attend anymore. Juan has had some major health complications in the past year. He was working as a carpenter when he pulled something or moved a certain way. Not sure exactly what happened, but knowing something was wrong, Juan went to the doctor to see what was happening. He found that his abdomen was filling up with cerebral spinal fluid. In order to fix things, the doctor had to operate and drain the fluid from inside him. This was the start of operation after operation, countless doctors appointments, and months of being bedridden. Juan woke up from one surgery to find his intestine on the table next to him. Another operation was performed without antithetic. During this spur of the moment operation, the doctor used his bare hands to move around his insides to try to fix things. On top of all this, Juan is a hemophiliac which complicates every operation. I’ve personally been able to visit Juan at his house three times in the past few months. I’ve heard countless times people discussing his situation. However, since most of those discussions are in Spanish, I don’t quite know what else is going on with his health situation. I do know, however, that he is not doing very well emotionally. With another operation in the future, Juan is struggling leaning on Christ through this trial. In the past few months, Juan has been making progress keeping food down, but he is still very much under weight. He is also stuck in a wheelchair with no encouragement from the doctors that he will be able to walk again.

                Yesterday (July 28, 2012) was the 191^st celebration of indendence for the country of Peru. Every holiday and birthday is of importance here. With that being the case, the Jovenes of the church wanted to have a party after our weekly meeting. Juan, who has not been able to come to church in the two months that I’ve been in Peru, really wanted to be able to join us for our Independence Day party. With the help of his cousin, Juan was able to attend Jovenes for the first time in many months. However, he found it slightly different than when he had last been able to go. Our church is now overrun with females! I’m not sure how Juan felt about this change ;) But hopefully we made him feel comfortable and welcomed him back with open arms. Pray for Juan. He needs emotional, spiritual, and physical uplifting. Pray that he’ll have the strength to come to church more often. Pray that our church family can be an encouragement to him throughout his upcoming surgery and the recovery process.  

Day 52- Las Aventuras del Sábado

                A typical Saturday...There is no such thing. Every Saturday is different and every Saturday has its own adventures. Since I have much to tell each week and can’t give a play by play of every day of my life, I’ll give a detailed picture of one of the fifty or so Saturdays that I will spend in Peru.

                My alarm rang obnoxiously at 8:00am. Normally in the states, I am incapable of sleeping later than that anyway…but I’m constantly tired here and felt like I needed a good three more hours of slumber. I got up and ready for a miniature work day at the church building with Pastor Jim and Miss Becky. Our main purpose for going to the church on a Saturday was to cover the open air window with a piece of plastic. We hope that this plastic will keep the dirt and cold out of the Sunday School classrooms on the second floor. We arrived around 9:30. Miss Becky put me and Dani in charge of cleaning the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors on the first floor. We got started and Dani found out she was a little too short to reach the top of the glass, so she left me with that job to help “PJ” and “Momma B” upstairs. An hour or so later, after I was finally content with the spotlessness of the glass doors, I went upstairs to see if the others needed more help. They pretty much had everything under control. All I did to help was hammer a few nails here and there. We finished up around 11:30. Miss Becky offered to take us to the laundry mat before dropping us off at home. As soon as we merged into the “Parking Lot” of the Lavendaria, we had a little t-bone accident with another car. Thankfully neither car was going very fast and a few hammers from the mechanic took the dents out of the cars. Since Miss Becky was busy dealing with the man from the car accident, Dani and I took the bus home.

                Early in the week, we had made plans to go shopping for boots with our host father, Renato,  and sister, Paola. We had approximately three hours between cleaning the church and our next obligation, Kid’s Club. Plenty of time to go shoe shopping, right?...Wrong. Dani and I wanted to take a shower after cleaning and hammering all morning. That’s acceptable. We didn’t want to make Renato and Paola smell our nasty scent all day. So we quickly showered, ate lunch, and left to meet up with Renato who was working. We had to take a bus and a Comvi (Large minivan that stuffs 10-15 people inside) in order to meet Renato. While trying to run from the bus stop to the boarding place of the comvis, a small car almost backed into me. Normally I’m pretty easy to see! How many other fluorescent white skinned, blonde haired girls are there in Lima? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was in his blind spot. -__- Anyway…we met Renato around 2:00pm. Lunch, showers, and travel time took a little longer than we had anticipated, but we still had about an hour and a half to shop for boots. Plenty of time, right?...Wrong.

                Renato has two jobs. On the even days of the month, he changes money from dollars and euros into soles. On the odd days of the month, he is a police officer. The family doesn’t have a car, so he rides a motorcycle to and from work each day. Between his police officer duties and his knowledge of riding a motorcycle, you’d think he’d be an excellent driver. ;) We borrowed his brother’s car to go shopping. Renato drove. I felt like I was learning how to drive all over again. Granted, there was a bit of traffic, but going down the hill, we jerked every few feet. The transition between accelerating and breaking could use a little work…but…esta bien. “It’s ok. It’s all good.” Dani and I were laughing quietly to ourselves in the back seat. We probably drove for an hour or so. We got lost a few time and had to ask for directions. Streets in Peru are never directly north, south, east, and west. They run diagonal, they swerve, they twist and turn. We’d get directions and start heading in that direction when the road would suddenly turn to the left and we’d be heading the wrong way again. We finally got to the shopping area in Villa Salvador. It reminded me of an outlet mall. They had dozens of shoe stores, huge stores with all different kinds of clothes, and streets lined with stores selling really nice furniture! I felt like a true tourist gaping out the window at all the stores. 3:30pm…half an hour till we were supposed to be at church helping with Kid’s club. We’re not even thinking there’s plenty of time anymore. We’d given up on that notion for the afternoon. Once we finally found a place to park, Paola and I started our quest for boots. Normally I’m not much of a boots fan. However, the buildings here don’t have heaters. Plus, its winter (In July). Also, we wear skirts a lot. The combination of the three makes me cold even now as I’m in sweat pants, a sweatshirt, and a blanket.  So I decided I needed some high boots to keep my legs warm.  We looked through the dozens of shoe shops walking down a number of streets. Of course we find boots in the very last store we go into. It would have been easier if Paola and I weren’t such giants! Paola is about as tall as I am. In translation, we’re both pretty tall in relation to other Peruvians. We finally found some boots and started heading back to our little “subdivision” called Musa. We got home in time to sit down for a minute before we had to go back up to the church for youth group.

                For Kid’s Club and youth group on Saturday’s Dani and I take the bus up to the church. We can either take the green and yellow “C” bus which drops us off at the park down the street, or we can take a blue and orange “E0-69” bus which drops us off right in front of the church. The “C” buses are much more frequent than the others, so Dani and I have only taken these buses. However, yesterday, we saw the “E0-69” bus and decided to give it a try. Here’s the thing. There are a lot of other blue and orange buses that don’t take us to the church. Since there are so many others, we weren’t 100% sure that the “E0-69” was the one we wanted. We climbed aboard anyway because we were tired of waiting for a “C” bus. Sure enough, we picked the right bus. The bus turned the corner toward our church. We told the cobrador that we wanted to get off. Normally, he’d yell up to the driver to stop. Just our luck…he did nothing of the sort. He just looked at us and asked, “Where do you want to get off?” “Here! At the church!” “you’ll have to wait till we get to the corner.” The funny part was that we picked people up right in front of the church, Dani and I just couldn’t squeeze through the sea of people fast enough to get off before the bus started moving again. Sooo…we picked the right bus, the one that should have dropped us off feet from the entrance of our destination. However, we had to walk a few blocks anyway because the cobrador didn’t let us off where we wanted to get off. It turned out alright though, because we saw our friend Emily at one of the stores while we were walking from the bus to the church. We ended the day playing some fun games and learning about Romans 12 with the youth group.

                Let’s review: We got in a minor car accident. A car almost backed up into me. We got lost going to Villa Salvador. We missed Kid’s Club altogether. We couldn’t get off our bus where we wanted to. A typical Saturday in that we never know what to expect from the day. An untypical Saturday because there is no typical routine for any certain day for an ARRIBA student. 

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.

Day 31- Wading through the waters

               After 31 days of drowning in unknown words, strange foods, and severe staring, I think some of us are getting to the point where we are no longer gasping for air. We’re finally able to understand enough of the conversation that it doesn’t sound like we are listening underwater. We’re still splashing in the waves and sometimes our ears still get water logged, but we no longer feel like we’ve been thrown overboard and are kicking fiercely to stay afloat.

                Last week JR was talking about his Mid-week prayer meeting at church. He said that there is a group of guys who pray with him every week during the prayer meeting. They always want to pray with him and he always agrees, but he doesn’t know exactly what they are saying. This week, however, was different. He was able to finally understand the words they were praying on his behalf. Jr said he almost started crying. He didn’t share with us what these men said, just the fact that they really do care about him. They want to see him succeed and have a profitable time here in Peru. They are cheering for him and praying for him without fail. Take a deep breath, JR, and enjoy the sweet fellowship with these men.

Today is Sunday the 24^th of June. I’ve been in Peru for 31 days. After 40 hours of personal Spanish tutoring and countless times of saying “No entiendo” (I don’t understand), I was finally able to grasp most of the lesson in Sunday School. Each week I hop around to different classes to see which one I want to help once I become more fluent. Today I sat in with the teenage girls. Heidi (who is also from the U.S.) gave a lesson about David. We talked about his youth and his valor. His weakness and strength. But mainly we focused on his firm confidence in God. No one in their own strength would willingly volunteer to fight a giant. But David knew his God was stronger. We think of David as being so brave, but his God is the same as ours. The same God that killed the giant and defeated countless armies is the one we serve today. Do we see him that way? Or do we back away from challenges thinking we’re too weak to face them? I’ve heard this lesson since I was a little girl. However, I’ve never thought about it as hard as I had to think of it today. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had to think twice as hard to comprehend a simple Bible story lesson. Through the past few weeks, I’ve learned that having to think this hard is not a bad thing.  The simplest Bible stories can be seen in a whole new light when concentrate hard enough to translate each word in your mind. David had a “confianza firme en Dios.” He had a firm confidence in God. Do I?

Psalm 27:13-14
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Day 22- Why am I in Peru?

Four weeks ago, I was in Colorado. People were asking me why I was going to Peru and what I’d be doing for the eleven months that I was there. I would say, “Oh, I’m going to be a short term missionary: discipling girls, leading a bible study, counseling at camps, etc.” I initially thought my goal for this year in Peru was to be a blessing to those in the church that I’m working with. All of my answers had to do with me and what I was going to be doing in the lives of the Peruvians. Well now I’ve been in Lima for three weeks. I no longer think I’m here to change lives. I think I’m here for God to change mine. My reason for being on earth is to bring glory to God. My life should constantly be pointing to Him. However, in order to be able to disciple others in their walk with God, I must first evaluate my own relationship with Him. I can’t lead anyone further than I myself am.  This week in our classes we’ve been looking at the “missions statement” of Paul. In many of his epistles he tells the believers that he wants them to imitate him. As we looked deeper into the epistles, we saw that Paul wasn’t saying that he wanted the believers to imitate his human qualities. Rather, Paul was imitating Christ. Therefore, he wanted the believers to imitate his Christ-like qualities. If the believers were imitating Paul they would result in imitating Christ. That got me thinking…Why am I in Peru? I’m not in Peru to make my friends back home think I’m spiritual. I’m not in Peru to be seen as the amazing gringo from the states. I’m not in Peru to draw attention to myself. I am in Peru to bring glory to Christ and to let Him use me in spreading the news of his saving work on the cross. But I can’t do that if I’m constantly thinking of how this year of my life will look when I tell people in the future. I can’t bring glory to Christ if I’m seeking all the attention as a young white girl from North America. The only way I can glorify God this year is if I give up my prideful attitude and let him guide me this year.  Now I know that this year, God is going to shape me, smash me down, mold me again, over and over until I am his true vessel. I can't form my own shape. He is the potter. The only way I can be a blessing to the people here is if I am in my rightful, humble place with God. Only then will He use me to disciple the girls or encourage the members of the church. I think that's the purpose of my year here: to let him shape me. Hopefully I'll be able to be an encouragement to the church, but I don't think that's my main purpose. Not until I get my own heart right. 

Day 16- Twenty Seconds of Comfort

I usually would never admit this, but I know I’ll have worse experiences while I’m in Peru. Here’s the thing…I went three days without a shower this week.  It’s winter here in Peru. I’m not saying that it’s freezing cold. Usually the days are fairly warm. However, the sun only stays out for approximately twelve hours. So the water in the water tank doesn’t have enough time to warm up in the sunshine. Normally in Florida when I’m at the pool or the beach with my friends, I pride myself in being able to handle the cold water. In Florida, as soon as you get out of the water, you start to warm up again. However…this is different. You don’t warm up after these showers. It’s not just a little chilly. It’s like taking an iced shower. I know athletes take iced baths all the time for their weary muscles, but my muscles are fine! I don’t need to ice them! So as I’m taking a shower, I’m practically doing a backbend trying to get my hair wet enough to make the shampoo sudsy, yet keep the rest of my body free from the falling ice droplets. I finally take a deep breath and step under the running water just long enough to rinse off before I grab my towel and try to get warm again. My family has been trying to get the electrician over to the house for the past few days to fix the water heater. Hence the three days without a shower. The family told me the heater would be fixed tomorrow. I think, “Ok, I didn’t sweat at all today. I can go a day without a shower and just wait for the warm water.” I thought this twice before I realized that in Peru, “tomorrow” does not always mean tomorrow. So finally I man up enough to take another frosty shower. Finally the electrician fixes the water heater. Yes! Finally a warm shower! Here in Lima there are three settings of water temperature. The middle setting is the normal cold water. If you flip the switch to the right, the water gets a little warmer: just enough to make the mirror a little foggy.  If you flip the switch to the left, the water is supposed to get a little bit hotter: just enough to thaw out my skin from previous week of cold showers.  I get in the shower and flip the switch to the left. I relish the warm water for about twenty seconds. Then all the lights in the house go out and I’m left taking another freezing shower…in the dark. I decided that next time I take a shower, I won’t be greedy. I don’t need to thaw out during every shower. I just need to make the mirror a little foggy. 

Day 11- Please leave your shoes at the door

A phrase you don’t often hear in Peru. “Feel free to take your shoes off.” Dani once went barefoot in our house and got a few remarks from our host family. They didn’t think it was disrespectful (at least not from what I gathered). However, they did think it was strange. Taking off my shoes is one of the simple pleasures of Friday nights. On Friday nights, all the ARRIBA students gather at the Carlton’s house for a meal, games, and a whole night of the English language. Being able to speak English freely is a privilege I’ve never thought about before. However, after struggling to communicate through my first week in Peru, I’ve come to cherish the hours spent with my ARRIBA team speaking freely without having to think about each word before it comes out of my mouth. At the Carlton’s we talk about the differences between our host families and what we are struggling with at the time. It’s strange to think I feel blessed to have both a shower curtain and a toilet seat. Others on the trip have neither. However, those others have hot water to shower with. I can’t decide if I’d rather have hot water but no curtain, or a curtain but no hot water: a decision many have never even thought about. It’s the simple things that make this experience exciting. I can’t wait for the week when the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen will all be in the jungle J