Craziness...

This week can best be described as "craziness".  It has been a week of learning, that's for sure!

• For starters, let me just assure people that if strange things show up on the right hand side of this blogsite (in the videos/slideshows/photos bar) WE DIDN'T PUT THEM THERE!  If it isn't a video of us and our ministry, it isn't from us.  I don't know what is going crazy over there on the far right, but this morning 4 videos of VW commercials appeared???  Every once in awhile, a random video from YouTube appears.  Who knows???  
• Quote of the month (maybe of the YEAR) from Alejandra, one of the ladies in the discipleship program and a leader in discipleship groups in Huancayo -- "It is easier to work with demon-possessed non-believers than it is to work with church people!"  More on this in the newsletter this month...
• We had a 2 hour conversation with Liz yesterday about the concept of friendship here in Peru.  She has family in the USA, so she has seen and heard about the USA friendship model and she was telling us about the differences between "there" and "here".  So it seems that there AREN'T friendships here... at least not like we know them.  Our USA model of friendship doesn't exist here.  Basically, the conversation started out with us saying that we are missing our friends from home and the types of things we used to do together... cookout on the weekends, hang out at each other's homes, play cards or board games, etc.  After a little of our pining away for friends, she explained that we needed to know that those types of friendships don't exist here - basically, we are hoping and praying for something that probably will never happen because Peruvians don't have that as a part of their culture.  It's a lot deeper than that... we are writing and researching and really digging into this topic now, because it effects how they view the gospel.  It was an awesome discussion, but also brought up so many underlying factors about culture.  We'll let you know more as we dig deeper into this area.
• My math class is in full-swing.  VERY different than the USA model of math!  They are loving the way that I teach math and we are having a lot of fun together.  I don't quite understand the time schedule and the logic behind how things are run, but I'm not questioning it either... just adjusting and learning a new thought process.  By the way, the majority of kids in "summer school" are not there for remediation - they are there by choice because they want to stay on top of things and be ready for the next year!  Wow!  What a concept!  Even in the little kid's classes!

Speaking of school, got to run and catch a combi so I won't be late to class.  It costs me about 25 cents to catch a combi (minivan public transportation) and ride about 3-4 miles up the road to the school, then another 25 cents to get back home.  Ciao!!!

Back to Random bulletpoint posts...

Nothing dramatic to say or talk about, but I know it has been awhile since I posted... therefore, we are back to bulletpoints...

• We are happy to be back from Costa Rica.  We had to attend a regional training for latin america missionaries for a week.  Don't get me wrong - Costa Rica has some beautiful places and isn't exactly "roughing it", but we were in meetings most of the time and WE JUST LEFT COSTA RICA after living there for 10 months, so it wasn't so exciting for us.  We did enjoy having time with the other missionaries and with Judy and Ginger and the other Texas girls who came to support the MKs.  But it is sure good to be home in Peru...
• While we were gone, the Chilca church voted out their pastor and have started closing the doors to "outsiders" (anyone who wasn't born in the church, basically).  They are trying to get rid of the Compassion Kids program and are kicking out all of the leadership.  They don't like the Disciple programs because they don't like the education of the people and how it causes them to question the current teachings (education is empowerment and causes the leadership to lose control).  So we are sad to lose this church and the relationship we had there... maybe in time, they will ease up and we can get back in...
• Yesterday, we took Maria's kids and got them enrolled and paid for in school.  While we were there, the director (Javier) was eager to talk - he had been looking for me while we were in Costa Rica.  He needed a teacher for summer school math (go figure) and I just happened to show up yesterday.  Long story short, I start teaching summer school math tomorrow to 2nd-3rd graders.  So now I'm on a mad hunt for materials and lessons in Spanish... I'm not new to teaching math, just new to math vocabulary in Spanish!
• Today is Miles' 18th birthday!  Happy Birthday, Miles.
• Ryan starts back to school today - Texas A&M Kingsville.  Two challenges this semester - Chemistry 2 and Genetics.  Good Luck, Ryan... hit the ground running!
• Glad to be back in Peru... did I already say that?  Missed the food here - good fruits and vegetables at every meal, very little fat/oil, awesome flavors!  AND the ground doesn't decide to heave and break apart like it did in Costa Rica!  We experienced a 6.1 earthquake in San Jose, Costa Rica on our last day... so lucky it wasn't the day before when we were directly at the epicenter on a trip to the Varablanca area (La Paz Waterfalls).  The La Paz area is in bad shape.  Not something I really want to experience again.  Did I mention that Huancayo is awesome!?
• Looking for an online class in Public Heath and Nutrition in Developing Countries... anybody have any ideas???

Okay, enough of an update?  Sorry not too exciting, but that's life right now... just plugging along. 

15,803 feet above sea level!!!

It was incredibly difficult, and incredibly high, and incredibly hard to breathe... but the bottom line is that IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!  We hiked to Huaytapallana - a glacier range just outside of Huancayo.  With every step, it was more and more breathtaking (no pun intended, but true).  I really couldn't believe that every time I looked up at the glacier range, it was more beautiful than 5 minutes ago.  And absolutely HUGE!  It took 12 hours, out the front door at 6 a.m. and back again at 6 p.m.  It was tough.  We are all sunburned, windburned, and chapped from the cold.  But I wouldn't trade it for anything... it was the hike of a lifetime!  

See the photos at this link...   http://picasaweb.google.com/drumsforchrist/HuaytapallanaHike?feat=directlink

Everyone together for Christmas

We have the whole family together for Christmas!  It's fantastic to have the house full of my own kids.  And it's like they haven't skipped a beat... they still argue about ridiculous things, the boys still gang up on the girls, and they all still stay up into the wee hours of the morning watching movies and curling up under blankets on the couch.  Sarah and I had the house pretty controlled and civilized, but then the testosterone level was raised when Ryan and Miles arrived and now everything is completely out of control... burping out loud and other body noises that are completely disgusting now mingle with the Christmas carols playing in the living room.  We are going through milk like crazy and they never seem to stop eating.  And I love it!  I'm so glad everyone is here for Christmas!!!

Impromptu Teaching/Preaching

In Mexico, we frequently encountered this issue... if you (the missionary) show up to a church service, you WILL be asked to preach the message for the day.  Talk about striking fear into your heart!  We were always able to plead out of this in Mexico because of our pitiful Spanish skills.  However, we cannot get out of it now.  We are fluent (whatever that means) and we are "the resident authority" on the Bible... that isn't our pride or ego saying that - the pastors admittedly tell us that they don't know enough and they need help and training and discipleship in The Word.  So far, we haven't been "surprised".  We have known ahead of time that we would be preaching and teaching, so we have been prepared and have studied the appropriate vocabulary for the lesson.  However, today was a new day...

We got up this morning and decided to go out to the Quechua church in Chilca for their Sunday School time.  We really enjoy this congregation and they have LOTS of kids.  It is a good place for Sarah to attend Sunday School and she has made lots of friends there from previous visits.  We planned to just "show up" and offer to help with the kids in whatever way we were needed.  Okay - so we were thinking that we would help serve snacks and observe the lesson and be "crowd control" with the kids.  But when we arrived, we were asked to teach the 10+ year olds.  Initial panic, then questions... "what is the theme for this week?" - "Whatever you want to do" was the answer.  "How long is the lesson time?" - "An hour and a half or two hours usually."  Again, panic... how do I pull a lesson out of the air and make it last for an hour and a half to two hours with no supplies???

So, off we went and we decided to do The Birth of Jesus.  (by the way, we are very familiar this particular age group - they can smell fear and they can eat you alive in about two seconds, so it was very important to look confident and assured)  We brainstormed a list of characters and they took turns trying to retell the story from memory.  Then we read the story from the Bible - Luke's version.  But wait - where are the 3 wise men?  Disturbing!  So we began to search for the wise men... oh, here they are in Matthew!  Then we had a discussion about the angel/angels in the story.  Exactly how many were there?  Some were ready to defend that there was only one, but others believed there were more.  So off we went again on a search through the Bible to find and count the angels... Wow - there were several!!!  Once we got all of the characters straight and we were able to prove our beliefs through The Word, we acted out the story.  Getting a Joseph volunteer was a challenge, since no one wanted to be married to Mary or be responsible for the naked plastic baby, but we finally got a volunteer and began our drama.  The actors used their Bibles and said the appropriate words at the appropriate times.  The three kings/wise men brought their gifts (two plastic toy trucks and a toy tiger).  It was awesome!

The most awesome part was that God provided all of the materials that we needed to teach this group of 25+ ten to fourteen year olds... the Bible.  And He made our Spanish sufficient to teach for two hours.  Incredible!  So, we survived this time.  Trust me, I will be prepared from now on!!!   I won't "just appear" at a church without having a backup plan, just in case we are asked to preach or teach.  You never know...

Our first Thanksgiving in Peru

We have successfully had our first Thanksgiving dinner in Peru.  It was a much better attempt than we had in Costa Rica!!!  We remembered our Costa Rican "Barbie-sized oven" and were thankful this year that we have a normal sized oven.  We remembered the Costa Rica turkey that cost nearly $70, and we were thankful that we now live where turkey costs less than $25.  We remembered the pitiful attempt at cornbread last year (without cornmeal) and we were so thankful for the supporters that sent packages of cornbread mix in the mail to Peru.  We remembered the lack of orange sweet potatoes in Costa Rica (theirs are white) and we were so thankful for the fantastic sweet potato casserole that Liz and Sarah prepared this year.  I was so thankful, once again, for the time that my mother spent handwriting all of the family recipes in a special cookbook for me.  And these were just the thanks that I thought of during dinner!  There is so much more to be thankful for!

See the photos for our turkey "surprise"... when Billy was getting the turkey ready for the oven, he reached in the carcass to pull out the usual package of giblets/innards/neck.  Instead, he let out a holler when he pulled THIS out!  It really made the whole turkey experience a little too personal.  I don't much like looking into the eyes of what I'm about to shove into a 350 degree oven.

The magic of a projector

This will probably be a bit incoherent, but I don't have a lot of time...

We have been blessed with the ministry finances to purchase a projector for our computer.  In our opinion, it has already "paid for itself" in the response that it has gotten!  

We began working with the Quechua church in Chilca this week.  The pastor asked us to begin helping with their children's ministry - they have several things going on with children and they are pretty overwhelmed with kids!  On Wednesday nights, they have a children's worship service. On Sunday mornings, they have Sunday School from 10-12 and they have so many children that they cannot hold adult services in the same building (adults meet in the evening). This same church also administers the Compassion International children's program in this area, dealing with 200+ children on MWF for bible study, school tutoring, and feeding them lunch.  We will be helping out with the Compassion kids, too.

We started helping out during this past week.  On Wednesday night, we took the new projector to the children's worship and showed the first half of The Prince of Egypt (story of Moses).  Over 250 children showed up to see the movie, and many more children and adults walked in off the street to see what was going on.  We will show the second half this Wednesday and the church is wondering just how many will come this week!!!  They say that the 250 last week was a low number of children, since it was storming outside and everyone has to walk to get to church.

It was such a hit that the pastor asked us to preach this week (Thursday night service) and show the movie "La Esperanza" (The Hope) - an overview of the entire bible and it's application to our lives.  Then the Compassion International administrator asked if we would show it again on Saturday night to the Compassion families, since the majority of them are not Christians and the church wants to reach out to them.  

This morning, we attended the Sunday School class - 200 children packed the little sanctuary and approximately 20 volunteer adults led them in singing, lessons, a drama about sexual abuse, more singing, and serving snacks.  It was an amazing morning!  Again, we are told that the number was low today because there was a regional church "anniversary" program that took many of the families away this weekend to attend the program.  

This week proves to be very busy for us - we have a leadership training workshop set to begin in 15 minutes (AAAHHH!!!), we show the movie on Wednesday, we preach in Chilca Thursday, Billy preaches in another Chilca church Sunday, Thanksgiving (we are going to try to celebrate as well as possible), ... all of this on top of our normal schedule of teaching and leading bible studies.  Pray for stamina this week!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!