Life; an adventure, a journey with Jesus!

The “other” Lima we hear so little about….

Just an hour from home lies the city of Lima with both old architecture and modern buildings intermingled throughout the city streets. The city is much like any other metropolitan city in the world. Not only are there quaint little shops, but there are street people begging for a handout; hole-in-the-wall restaurants and upscale coffee shops; alleys with all kinds of things for sale and department stores.

On July 4th we were celebrating Don’s birthday and decided to take the bus to one of the newest modern malls. Plaza Real has an anchor department store much like you would find in the USA, similar to Khols or J.C.Pennys. It also has an anchor department store with groceries which you might compare to WalMart or Target. The other shops are small individual stores which are specialty in nature, including men’s clothing, sportswear, children, infants and toddlers, stuffed animals, shoes, purses, ladies, formalwear, watches, jewelry, fruit stands, ice cream, banks, kiosk for the local airline, and a food court with chinese choices, burgers, hot dogs, chicken, pastries, and several restaurants to choose from. You get the idea, I’m sure.

We went specifically for dinner at Pardo’s. We have eaten here before with our friend Rebeca. There is another Pardo’s on the coast at Lacomor where we enjoyed our anniversary dinner but this time decided to celebrate Don’s birthday at the one located in town. This is an upscale restaurant, where we were greeted by the hostess who spoke English to us. She gave us the choice of where we wanted to sit for dinner. It was warm and comfortable. They obviously have heat in this restaurant and for that we were very thankful! The menu was in both Spanish and English. Since chicken is the mainstay of the Peruvian restaurants and family dinners, we purposely chose the tenderloin steak dinner. This is our second steak dinner in 2.5 years while in Peru! Dinner was D-licious! There are no words to describe it other than that. We splurged and enjoyed a piece of cake and coffee.

During dinner the widescreen television was on the sports channel and we watched about 25 minutes of the soccer game between Uruguay and Peru. Another novelty since we do not own a television. I asked Don what better gift could I give him than a steak dinner and tickets to front row ‘box’ seats to the soccer game, with his girlfriend. Peru even scored a goal while we were there! Couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend an afternoon and evening together.

After dinner we walked the mall and discovered the “playland” where children of all ages have many choices of how to spend their time and their money. Families, young teenagers, couples on a date, all seemed to gravitate to this area to relax and have a good time. There was a monorail to ride, bumper cars to drive, flying swings to soar, mini roller coaster to enjoy, air hockey games, many video games, skeebowl, remote control auto race track and other interesting opportunities for a family to have fun, and for teens to hang out with their friends.

The Peruvians in this setting appear to be ‘better off’ (whatever that is!) many of them have furthered their education, hold down jobs in the city, enjoy the finer things in life, have more disposable income, you get the picture. But are they really ‘better off’? They, too, are a group of people seeking gratification and distance from or maybe solutions to their problems. It’s not what they have, but who they need. They are lost, needing to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There are many like ourselves who are sharing their story in this location, the “other” Lima we so seldom visit or talk about!