What a fabulous day we´ve had!! I´ll catch you up to what we´ve done since my last post. After our time at the Smith´s we had a little down time here. We rested and checked emailed and blogged. Then we went to Larco to worship there. The worship services were so awesome!! It was amazing how you could still trully worship even though you didn´t understand half if anything that was being said. There is no doubt the Lord´s presence was in the church. Paul Nasekos preached and I was wrong, Bill Bradford didn´t translate, it was Wes Baker. Both did a tremendous job! It was really special. Paul said that one young man said he understood both English and Spanish so he got to hear the sermon twice! After dinner we went to the Ball´s for dinner. It was a fun night. What a beautiful home and such hospitality--it has been wonderful. Jim and Nancy Bateman were there visiting their daughter Grace. Thier entire family is visiting and are having a great time. It was fun to see a Jackson connection here in Peru! Dinner was fabulous, as always, and lots of good fellowship. After dinner we returned to the hotel and went to bed.
Today, everyone is feeling better. Virginia´s cough is way better! And joy is feeling better. So, thanks for your prayers, but please do continue to pray for healing and continued health. We´ve got a hectic schedule coming up!! Today we went to the Smith´s home and organized camp stuff and split into groups that are doing activities and reviewed the activies and we made up skits to try and show the Peruvians what each activity was and how it would work. It was an energetic morning! The rule is if we are excited, then the campers will be excited. So, the same goes for the Peruvians and we started that today. After the Smith´s we went back to the Winchanzao church and met with the Peruvians to show them how we run church. We started by showing them the Let Me See Your Bugaloo in Spanish. For those of you not familiar with the song, you line up and stomp your feet as someone yells "Let me see your boogaloo!" and the rest of us say, "What did you say?" and you repeat this a few times and then for the boogaloo, you dance around all crazy. Then someone says "One more time!" and then one last round of dancing and then the leader yells, "Back in line now." and then we clap ourselves back in line, link arms, and heads down. The leader lifts his head as he yells the lines and the rest of us lift our heads as we say, "what did you say?" This goes on a few rounds with other things like, Let me see your -- cockroach (half are bugs on floor other half stomp them or spray them), monkey, condor, mirena (peruvian dance), robot, Bill Bradford (which is a golf swing)! They were a little overwhelmed I think when we got up and did that in Spanish for the Peruvians, but it was all good by the end of the day! They were really excited. We explained camp and how everything would work, we passed out Twin Lake Shirts to the helpers, did our skits to explain the activities, and they did a few Spanish camp songs also for us. It was a wonderful day of preparation and reminders of how everything we do at camp is to point these precious children to Jesus Christ. We do that in our relationships, our activites, the assembly, the evanglism tent, how we eat, how we play, how we pray, everything! And then we prayed for the camp and all we´ve done and will do this week.
Next we had a wonderful lunch together with all the Peruvian church members that will be helping us run camp. We had lomo saltaldo. Lomo means loin and saltaldo means junked or in this case, tossed. It was like a tenderloin chunks cooked with red and yellow peppers, onions, and potatoes. It was served with rice. This is a very common Peruvian dish and they eat lots of rice every day. Also, there was aji (a-hi) on the table, a pepper sauce. It was pretty hot and spicy!!! But a few people didn´t seem to mind. . . including Marshall who ate a whole spoonful straight and really entertained the Peruvians! He wanted to go for a second, but Bill Bradford covered his eyes and said, "No mas por favor." I think he was worried Marshall´s stomach couldn´t handle it. I have pictures of the training and the food, but will have to down load them later tonight or maybe even tomorrow night depending upon time.
After telling our new friends ciao, ciao! and adios! we headed back to the smith´s to pack up all the camp gear so it can be transferred to the camp tomorrow and then back to the hotel. We got to the hotel around 3:00 pm and had free time until dinner, which will be at 7:00 pm, but we just got told 7:30 so that is good. We all had a lot to do this afternoon, some camp preparations and exploring the city. We went to the Plaza d´Armas and saw several churches in the downtown area. We split up into several small groups. The rule being, at least 4 and no groups of just girls. We all had a fabulous time!
Tonight we are having dinner at the hotel and then a New Year´s celebration with the Peruvians. It was supposed to be at the beach, but I literally just heard that we are going to one of the churches now and the beach may be out. So, we don´t know what we will be doing, but it will be fun. Here are a few New Year´s Eve traditions that are celebrated in Peru. They wear yellow and especially underwear--this is for good luck. Also, for good luck you are to eat 12 grapes under the table, well the table is not necessary, but eating 12 grapes one for each month. If you want to travel next year, then you take your wallet and run around the block. also, they create replicas that are like straw statutes of people they hate and then they burn them at midnight. Also, you see yellow everywhere!
A few funny random events--traveling on the van, we have all the windows down so we can get some air moving. . . there is no AC. John was sitting by the window when it sucked his hat off on a main street, 4 laned, and we stopped immediately, Matthew jumped out and ran back to get it and ran back . . .pretty impressive! We all laughed so hard. Also, everyone has had to adjust to some of the customs and ways of life here. One would be that you cannot throw the toliet paper in the toliet, there isn´t enough suction or the pipes just cannot handle it. This is all over Peru. So, in every bathroom there is a small trash can in the bathroom right by the toliet. This is how you dispose of the toliet paper. At least one toliet has been killed by this in our group--forgetting. So, while bathroom talk is normally not acceptable, it has been a big topic of discussion. Some how, Ethan and Marshall both missed this. They just found out as they are reading over my shoulder. We told them that they were going to have a stopped up toliet if they didn´t watch out and finally Marshall admits it already happened, but he managed to fix it "bare handed"! No lie. . . :) Welcome to our group. We have bonded you can tell!
I hate to end on such a stinky note, but dinner is in 4 mintues and I need to run to the room before we eat! Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to lift us up. Tomorrow is the first day of camp. We cannot wait!!
