Well, what a month July has turned out to be. My roommates and I have been couch hopping for the past three weeks as we try to get repairs completed and negotiations finished with our landlords. After four 12-hour days, the electricians are finally finishing their work of rewiring the entire house, putting in new light fixtures, and replacing the electrical shower heads. The team of electricians was a hilarious bunch, made up of 5 different guys. The “Maestro”, also called “Professor” which was sometimes shortened down to “Profe”, was a man in his mid-late 50’s and was clearly in charge of the team. There was another older gentleman as well whose name/title/nickname I didn’t catch, but he was also very nice. Then there was my favorite; a man in his late 30’s named Chicho. Chico has a dark, curly mullet, a well rounded gut, and wore a green Papa John’s polo every single day to work. He was also very considerate and spent an extra 15 min. replacing a clothes line that they had broken earlier this week. The last two were young guys, Antonio and Fernando, whom I assumed were around my age and joked back and forth with each other a lot. The entire process was completely fascinating to observe – and I remain very impressed by their ability to place new wires within the walls without having to make holes. But they’ve done a good job as far as I can tell, and I’m thankful that we now have light, internet and hot water for showering. Our apartment is still pretty messy, and we now have the physical repairs to get started on: completely washing and sanding down the walls and ceilings and floors upstairs, repainting and replacing doors. There is actually a youth group here this week from a Free Church in Wichita, KS, working with one of the churches of the ADIEL. So we’ve been given permission to enlist their help for two days with the repairs.
After a lot of discussion and prayer, we’ve decided that we will be staying in the apartment for the remainder of our contract and then reconsider our options come next February. Raquel has decided that she is willing to live in the apartment alone after we leave for Tarma, but we would still like to find someone else to live there with her. After the success of our last trip to Tarma, having found a house and arranged for transportation, we were going to make the big move this Friday, on the 24th, but obviously in light of all that has happened we’ve decided to delay our departure by two weeks to make sure that we are leaving things in good order here in Lima. So now we are looking at August 3rd to move our life and belongings to Tarma.
Beyond the house-keeping part of our lives, we have been finishing up other areas of life here in Lima. Last week I had my last two tutoring sessions with Giovanna, and completed all of the steps to get my missionary visa. Since the fire, both Elsa and Julio had their missionary “showers” hosted at their home churches. It was such a neat experience to see each of my friends and teammates honored and appreciated by their own congregations. Each of them received several items that they needed for the move including: lamps, sheets, cleaning supplies and alarm clocks. Julio’s youth group kids made a special presentation for him, and it was touching to see the impact he has made on their lives. And now at this point we have two weeks of class left at the ADIEL Biblical Institute, and then the packing and moving process begins.
August 3rd, Tarma of Bust.
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