Life; here in Peru

Life; a journey, an adventure….Yes, indeed, it is!

Last Sunday as I looked at our calendar of events for the week, I found it to be clear and open! YEAH! It would give us time to give some undivided attention to creating a new, updated ministry flyer, complete some monthly bookkeeping, finalize the ‘first draft’ of a project plan to go to the states, and do some studying on being clay in the potter’s hand. We had to present the Pastors a project plan, and emailed the English document to the states to be translated since we wanted to make sure it was totally clear and able to be understood. All we needed to do this week was grocery shop, laundry and visit Pat’s Place to take some photographs.

How quickly all that changed. You see, we are no different than you are, just living in a different location! All of the above still faced us and needed to be worked on, but other things kept popping up all week long that needed to be tended to.

Monday night we were invited to a birthday party for the matriarch of a large family. The party was scheduled to start around 7:00 pm but guests continued to arrive even as late as 9:00 pm. We had a great time, wished the birthday lady ‘feliz cumpleanos’ and greeted, hugged and kissed many people we hardly knew! Such is the custom here in Peru. The parlor games were a challenge and of course we struggled with them. We watched a video of a wedding of one of their relatives in the states, and they had so many questions about it that we attempted to answer. Communication is always interesting and charades seem to be necessary most of the time! It was after 11:00 pm when we walked on home.

Tuesday was our shopping day and it takes about 3.5 hours to get it done because to go to the mercardo there is a walking distance, shopping, and toting the bags of goodies back home; then the walk to the bus stop, shopping at the store, walking back to the catch the bus, and then walking home, again with bags that seem to get heavier with each block we walk!

The week also included a visit to the church to present the translated information about AWANA, a funeral of the father of a friend of ours from church, date night with two other couples to the local ice cream parlor, our ‘connections café’ had a visitor one evening, and there was a problem in the city of Lima where our water was turned off for a day! We discovered a major problem with some of our emails being sent and not received, so contact with many in the states has suffered.

Life; a journey, an adventure WITH JESUS!

Can you imagine your week of activities without Jesus? All the interruptions, unexpected glitches and unforeseen circumstances? Just a reminder to you, as it has been to us….He knows all the details that take us by surprise. So glad He’s with us on our journey!