Christmas!

Hello people of mostly cold and wintery lands.  To all of you, Christmas is probably almost synonymous with snow and winter.  Here in Peru, however, that is not the case.  In fact, here Christmas marks the beginning of summer vacation!  Courtney and I went out to the beach at Huanchaco last week to soak in the sun and do some Christmas shopping at the same time :-)  It's funny seeing palm trees growing from the ground next to the fake Christmas trees covered in lights.  Courtney and I had a very nice lunch surrounded by Christmas decorations, sand, and sun.

In other news, the kids are getting excited for Christmas.  Various groups have been coming here and having all kinds of fun events for the kids, including giving them presents, which they of course love.  We as volunteers see the kids getting candy, cake, and toys for Christmas, which are all wonderful things, but for Christmas us volunteers have decided to get the kids something more useful.  We're going to replace their old, gross, boring, stained sheets from America covered in dinosaurs, princesses, and other such awesome things.  Sheets for 41 kids, brought from America, aren't exactly cheap.  Each set will end up costing about $20.  We as volunteers are working to raise the money to bless the kids in this way.  If you're interested in donating, you can do so with paypal on the link on the side, or shoot me an email if you want to do it another way.  Chau!

We're here for the KIDS

And of course, last but not least in this crazy slew of overdue posts, we've been playing with and caring for the KIDS!!   I (David) get to interact with lots of different groups of kids each day.  When Bryson is busy or isn’t here (like when is in the US for Thanksgiving right now...), I drive the four special-needs boys to their school in town.  We listen to a radio station that plays popular music, and sometimes American music.  They overplay their most popular songs, so the boys now know some of the songs and most of the choruses.  They have various levels of difficulty in speaking clearly, but we all sing along none the less, at times with excessive head bobbing or even all out dancing.  Sometimes in the mornings I get lucky and Jo needs help with the kinder boys, like today, when I supervised their snack eating while staging epic dinosaur action figure fights.  

Every afternoon at 12:30, I walk over to the school to escort the preschoolers back to the orphanage.  The little preschool girl from the orphanage has quite a bit of trouble talking and is very shy, but now we have our routine where I hold her hand, we walk down the path, and I ask her about her day.  She is very particular about holding my left hand—if I happen to carrying something else in my left hand and I hold out my right hand instead, she gives me an impatient look and stubbornly waits for me to stop this crazy right-hand-holding nonsense and carry things with my right hand instead. 

Then, every afternoon between 2:00 and 5:00, I’m in the library doing individual and then group tutoring, as well as monitoring recreational internet time, for the older boys and girls at the orphanage.  My specific tutorial kids are the older boys, but I help with individual tutoring for a couple of the girls and I monitor internet time for all of them.  

In addition to these normal scheduled times, there are other random needs that come up that the volunteers help with.  Last week, Courtney and I spent a couple hours babysitting the baby girl and the three kinder boys.  It was very fun—long enough to be able to connect with the kids, and short enough for us to not get tired and them to not get bored or naughty.  Here are some pictures from our fun:  -D

The kids love "vueltas," where you pick them up and spin them around.  This picture happened after I started with one kid, then had one in each arm, after which the third felt left out so I just added him to the middle.

So cute...and the kids too ;-D

Courtney made an under the chairs obstacle course/maze that the boys very much enjoyed

Gardening

 

Among the hats I wear here at the orphanage is the hat of gardener.  I’ve been working for the past few months to make some sort of edible plants grow out of an underwatered patch of coal-dusted sand in the middle of a desert.  Unsurprisingly, I’ve had limited success.  However, below are pictures of the various small victories that I’ve had.  I’m currently working to clear, turnover, lay down new irrigation hoses, and plant seeds in all four garden-squares, so perhaps in another month or so I’ll have some other gardening things to talk about.  Oh, and the coal-covered mostly dead group of trees that we optimistically call an orchard is still...well...a coal-covered mostly dead group of trees. -D

This is me holding a Nabo plant, which is the first thing that I successfully grew from a seed that I planted.  It's taste is similar to that of an onion, but it doesn't have layers like an onion does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a crate full of carrots that I picked from the garden.  We have slowing been picking carrots and eating them occasionally, but we finally picked all of the rest of them so that we can plant different plants there for the upcoming summer months.

This is the plot that we pick all the carrots from

This is Marcos showing me how to lay new drip irrigation tubes.

 

This is my favorite plant in the garden--the massively sprawling group of tomato plants that I have been staking and watering for a while.  They have been giving us about 10 tomatoes a day now, so that's exciting.

These are a bunch aji plants that I planted a while back, which I hope to successfully transplant in the near future.  They are pretty much the Peruvians' favorite spice, so I'm not going to be worried if these don't pan out....I've eaten far more aji that I really need to in my life.

Driving

So I’m a bus driver now.  Last week, our director Alex said that I should try and learn how to drive the bus, seeing as we only have a couple people here who can drive it.  Three days ago, I took my first try at it when Bryson (the other guy volunteer here) let me drive the last couple miles of the road that the orphanage is on.  Yesterday morning, I drove the bus three miles to the gas station and back, with Bryson copiloting.  When Alex saw me pulling in after going to the gas station, he asked if I would feel comfortable driving the kids the next day.  I said I should probably practice some more, which ended up with the volunteers going out for burgers last night and me driving the bus (from here on “Bob”).  That went well, so tonight I drove the kids to do a parade/practice for their parade—still not clear on what exactly it was.  The worker here who knows how to drive Bob copiloted and showed me where to go, and then left me to bring the kids home two hours later.  However, it turns out that where I parked Bob wasn’t actually where the parade ended, and they didn’t seem to know where the parade was going to end, so they told me to just follow them with Bob.  This completed my steep learning curve of bus-driving.  Yesterday morning, I drove Bob out of the orphanage for the first time.  Tonight, I wove it through tiny streets, in the dark, surrounded by about 80 hyperactive and very difficult to see children.  Oh, and it is of course a manual transmission—before coming to Peru, I drove manual a grand total of 5 days in a my life, 2 of them confined in a parking lot.  Good thing the orphanage doesn’t have a semi...  

Oh, and I don't remember if I've said anything about driving here in Peru, but there are no rules.  Well ok, there are some rules, but nobody really cares that they exist.  Except for one: keep your lights on, all the time.  If you don't, the cops will pull you over and be grouchy at you.  They'll probably pull you over just because you're a gringo, but if you don't have you lights on, even at 2 in the afternoon on a bright and sunny day, they'll do it for sure.  Turns out, they'll also do it if you turn left where you're not allowed to, or if you can't figure out where you're actually supposed to turn left so you just do a U-turn, or if they just can't figure out why you're driving around a bunch of kids.  Luckily, the "I work at a Christian orphanage helping kids" card has never failed.  But anyway, it is totally appropriate to cut people off, and honking doesn't me "I'm grouchy at you" or "hurry up", it just means "I'm here, hi there."  However, if they casually hang their hand out their window, it means "I don't care how fast you're going or where you are, I'm about to move into this lane so you'd better SLAM ON THE BRAKES."  The litter hand wave thing is pretty easy to miss--just ask Bryson what happens...and how much it costs ;-)  So that's my driving post for now--more overdue posts to come -D

Long Overdue Paseo Fun

Here are a bunch of long overdue pictures from a trip we went on a while back.  It was pretty much just a couple fields and a few "swimming pools" stuck in the middle of some mountains, but the kids loved it and it was quite beautiful.  We were divided into four teams, (Courtney and I were on the orange team), and had various competitions involving three legs, balloons, sacks, and other such fun.  We played volleyball, soccer, and spent a very long time splashing, throwing, and dunking each other in the pools.  It was fun, although I ended up with some very strange tan lines from my paint job. -D

Huanchaco

November 1 was a holiday here, so we (almost all of us) got the day off.  Another volunteer, Kelly, invited me to go to Huanchaco with her.  (David, sadly, had to work.)  One hour and two buses later we arrived to a gorgeous stretch of beach lined with shops and restaurants.  It was lovely--check out these pictures! 

Huanchaco has some of the world's best surfing (I've been told).  However, since it's only springtime here, the beach wasn't that busy, although we did see many more "gringos" (white people) here than in Trujillo.

yum!  delicious lunch at a cute little cafe!

These boats are made out of reeds and were/are used for fishing.  I imagine they have quite a history.  Here's a link to an article if you're interested.

Hopefully David and I can make regular visits here; Huanchaco is such a peaceful (read: kid-free) and beautiful place!  -C

Space for God

Hi.  It's Courtney again.

We've been in Peru for almost 2 months now, and one thing that I've been thinking about (and amazed at) is how much more I feel God's presence here than at home.  Wheras at home I looked forward to church on Sundays and Bible study on Wednesdays, here I yearn and count the days until our praise and worship time on Sunday nights and get excited about getting up an hour early for our group prayer and devotions time.

Every time I open my Bible, Scripture seems so alive--so much more so than before.  I see God's fingerprints in the lives of the kids and other volunteers here--God is just everywhere here.

I'm not sure exactly why coming to Peru has made this change.  It could be because i'm here working with some wonderful Christian people who have let their lives be led so masterfully by the Spirit and who are dedicated to being who God wants them to be.  It could be also because I'm just so much needier here than I was in the States.  For example, when David spiked a high fever which refused to go away, I had no 24 hour nurse phone line to call and ask what to do.  I had no convenient ER or Urgent care center with competent doctors who spoke my language, but what  I did have was God right there next to me.  (Thankfully, our internet was also working so I could get David's mom on Skype, but I digress.)  Here in Peru, prayer has become a much higher priority to me, and along with that, much more of a blessing.  I find myself turning to God here much more quickly than I did when we were living fairly predictable lives in the States.

As I'm writing and thinking, I'm realizing that our lives, no matter where we call home, are unpredictable.  I have no more control over my life in the United States than I do over my life here in Peru--I simply feel less in control here.  I guess that sometimes we like to trick ourselves into feeling like we have everything under control when this is just not true. I may have more resources available in the States, but I'm still just as vulnerable and needy as I am when I'm in the desert of Peru.  I need God so desperately in both places, I just feel it more helpless here.

In our praise and worship time on Sunday nights, one of the songs we sing most often is Joel Houston's "From the Inside Out." The chorus of this song always reminds me how much I am made for God, and how awesome of a God He is:
"Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame
And the cry of my heart is to bring You praise
From the inside out, Lord, my soul cries out...to You."

-C