Common Courtesy, oh how I miss thee

I woke up at 7:30 this morning to a horrendous pounding noise that was shaking the house. I look outside and see Don Dario (our landlord) pounding away at a cement slab outside Meredith’s window, trying to make a hole to take out a wooden telephone pole that lives there. I’m pretty sure he’s waken up the whole neighborhood, and while I’m convinced that sleeping-in is a concept that most people of Tarma do not practice, I was still annoyed by the ruckus so early on a Saturday. I miss common courtesy. I lament the lack of it every time I inevitably compare something annoying that occurs here to the basic knowledge that people back home have of not doing that specific annoying thing. For example, Pacha (our misbehaved dog) likes to wake up at 6:00am every morning. She likes to wake up and PLAY PLAY PLAY! Playing of course involves barking, and barking outside your bedroom door at 6:00 in the morning involves you getting woken up. And a dear roommate who can’t stand to have the dog sleep outside at night, that gets up with Pacha to play with her outside our bedrooms early in the morning, involves me lamenting the lack of common courtesy.
Speaking of Pacha our misbehaved dog, last night I came home to her having escaped her caged-in back balcony after having ripped a bunch of newspapers and a cardboard box to shreds. I was so mad that I decided to discipline her by not giving her dinner and making her sleep outside last night. I put her box out and then tied her leash to the metal railing so that she could move in and out of her box ( in case she needed to go to the bathroom), but was out of reach of anything she could possibly destroy or make noise with. Success! I think I’m going to put her out there for the next couple of nights, at least until the girls get home and the dear roommate starts to coddle her again. I might have been able to really sleep in this morning if it hadn’t been for the pounding. Oh well, such is life in Tarma.

Back in Tarma

Well after two weeks of going back and forth between Tarma and Lima, I’m glad to finally be home in for a while. It’s been a whirlwind month and I’m glad for a slower week to get my head around the responsibilities of July. After being gone I tend to feel a bit disorganized and have long lists of “catch-up” items to take care of. Due to my English classes, I have come back to Tarma sooner than my roommates and will be here alone for the next several days. I’ll admit that I’m glad for a little bit of alone time after having been around people constantly for the last three weeks. Now that I’m back I have plans to get on top of homework assignments that need to be graded, and I also need to write my semester exam to give my students next week. I also need to organize some Bible study material for our upcoming book study on 1 John and catch up with a bunch of emailing!
Part of the reason that I’m excited about a few days of solitude is that in the busyness of the last month, my time with the Lord has been hit or miss, and I’m longing for some deep time in the Word and in prayer over a number of different things. I’d appreciate prayer over the next four days; that God would reveal himself and his will to me through his Word and through time meditating on his truths. I want to get on my knees in prayer over the ministry and the future of my team in preparation for our one-year review with the pastors and missionaries of the ADIEL. I also want to begin praying over some possibilities for life once I get back to the states. I am hitting the 6-month mark and know that these last months will go by incredibly fast. I’d love your prayers as I’m seeking the Lord about these things! Thanks!

They came, they stayed, they went

Wow, what a whirlwind week! I can’t believe the days have flown by as fast as they have and I am sitting in my Lima apartment this morning, alone once again. At 6:00 this morning I said goodbye to my parents and my brother at the airport after a fantastic week together in Peru. It was hard to say goodbye since I would have loved to have had more time with them, but I am thankful that they were able to come at all. It was a busy week and now that I’m at the end of it I’m finding myself a little bit exhausted and thankful that I’ll have a few days to rest before heading back to Tarma. In all my family and I spent two days in Lima, two days in Tarma, and two days on a bus traveling between the two cities. I felt like I was able to give them a good picture of my life, and though the time was short, I think they now can understand what it means when I say “I went to the market and picked up a couple of chicken breasts” (see picture above).
The week started out with a Lima church service at La Viña del Señnor Church (The Vine of the Lord) followed by lunch with my roommate Raquel and the pastor and his family, Cesar, Gabi and their almost 2 year-old son Nicolas. We went to my favorite restaurant in Lima called TANTA, and my family liked it so much that we went back at the end of the week for another meal! In Lima we walked around various parts of the city, did a little shopping and for my Mom’s birthday I took the family to a nice restaurant out on the ocean called La Rosa Nautica (The Nautical Rose), for a fancy dinner. The wait staff sung Happy Birthday to my mom and we all enjoyed the spectacle.
Once we were in Tarma the days passed by a little more calmly. I took the family to the market and it was great to show them what grocery shopping was like. Mom and I spent an evening making pizza together in my little kitchen in Tarma, and I loved watching her washing dishes in my little sink! We had lunch with my team one day, and mom, dad and Daniel came to a couple of my English classes. My brother taught some of my 12 year-old boys some self-defense moves, and we did a little country swing dance expo for them as well.
For me it was a blessing to have my family experience what I do on a day-to-day basis. I can explain my life here all I want, but you can only grasp so much of my reality without experiencing it yourself. I’m so thankful that God provided the means for my family to come and share in my ministry and life here. They encouraged me, uplifted me, and gave me wisdom to chew on in the days to come. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures of our week together!

OH the wheels on the bus go round and round.

So in just an hour we will be leaving ("we", being the NEBC team, Emily, Travis and I) for Lima. It is my official job today to escort the team safely back to Lima and their hotel in Magdalena. As soon as I drop them off and am assured that they will be getting themselves to Cuzco alright, I will be officially on vacation! WhooooHoooo! Please be praying for my family today as they will be spending the entire day traveling to Peru. They will be flying from KC to Miami, to Panama City, Panama, to Lima. And they are due to get in to Lima at 12:30am. Pray for safety, for making all connections and please . . . for NO LOST LUGGAGE :)!!!! I’ll be looking forward to filling you all in on the time with the fam. It’s the first time we will all have been together in two years!

Final Friday

Well the week is almost over and it has indeed been a full week of gospel sharing, workshop giving, translating and mountain climbing! The team has been going non-stop and of course that means that my team has been going non-stop along with them, which is why I am just now able to update the old blog. Today is the final Friday of ministry with the team here in Tarma. We will be going to one more school to share workshops and the gospel, and then tonight will be our farewell event at Chichos, for all of the kids we have met during the week.
Something neat that occurred due to our presence at so many schools in town is that we met a girl who will be having her Quinciñera tonight immediately after our closing even in Chichos, so she invited the whole team! How neat that the group will be able to experience one of the typical cultural aspects of Peru, the all-important quinciñera, the “right-of-passage” of sorts from girlhood to womanhood. It should be a lot of fun.
Also this week has been full of Emily time, and I was also blessed to meet her incredible boyfriend Travis, who came along with the team. They have both spent the week encouraging me, making me laugh, uplifting me spiritually and just being wonderful friends. The highlight of the week for me was yesterday morning when Travis, Emily and I got up early to climb the mountain behind my house. It took us two hours to get up to the peak and make it back down, but the view was absolutely breathtaking. I’m so thankful to have had time to spend with this couple and be reminded of what it feels like to have friends around :)

Updates

So, I finally have more to update.

Life in Tarma is a whirling dervish. The last weeks have been spent preparing for the weeks to come. Now those weeks to come are here.
Tomorrow the team from Northeast Bible Church (TX) will arrive with Meredith and Emily from Lima and we will begin another week of intense ministry in and throughout the city. I’ve been looking forward to the team for a while now because I was so encouraged by the last team (TBarM Camps) that came through. It was great to share our secluded little ministry with “my people”. The past weeks of preparation have been wonderful mainly due the presence of Emily Maddock (picture to come), a seasoned missionary of 26 how has blessed me beyond measure with her wisdom, her humor and her friendship. I have continued on in my daily life in Tarma without friends, and have gotten used to it. But then Emily came and reminded me how wonderful it is to have someone to share life with. I have laughed more in these past two weeks than I have in a while, and have spent a lot of time talking with Emily about ministry, about life in general and about the future. We’ve decided that we are pretty much the same person, and I can’t begin to express to you all how amazing it feels to be understood by someone when you feel like you are misunderstood all day every day :).
Well, like I said, the preparations have all gone really well and the ministry is now upon us. The team will arrive tomorrow evening, and we will pretty much just do dinner and then go to bed. The 6.5 hour bus ride from Lima can really take it out of you, and the altitude often messes with people. So I suppose when I say that the ministry is now upon us I really mean that we’ll get started on Monday. I’ll try to post more in the days to come about how the ministry is going and how God is working. And of course I’ll post pictures too. And maybe even a few videos.

How can you be praying for the week?
- Pray that God would open new doors that would lead to new contacts and new Bible study groups.
- Pray that God would bring men into our circles, men who are ready to commit to something greater than themselves.
- Pray that the team would be safe from accident, injury and illness while they are in Peru . . . I don’t want to have to take anyone else to the emergency room!

After nearly a month . . .

Well my friends, family and blog readers, it has been nearly a month since I have last posted anything on my blog, and I apologize if you have been waiting for an update. I guess there just wasn’t too much to update this past month. It does happen. We are, as you know, in the midst of Bible studies and discipleship groups, school devotionals, kid’s clubs and English classes.
We are hitting a new barrier in ministry as we have had a presence in Tarma for almost a year now, and yet our groups are pure women. There are no men who have taken a consistent interest in our ministry, and therefore we can only advance so far in the work at hand. We need prayer support here because the lack of men is a result of the culture, of time-management/priority issues and of lack of interest in religion. We have several groups of women who are growing and seeking to know more, and we have a successful children’s hour every Saturday morning, but if our goal is to “Develop, Empower and Release” we can only go so far with women and children (and I say that with all the respect in the world). I have been meditating on 1 Timothy and Titus, and Paul’s counsel for the standards of Deacons and Elders and Overseers in the church. These leaders are called to a higher standard, men of respect, humility who are above reproach. But men like that do not exist here in Tarma, and the ones that have the potential to grow into this kind of leader don’t see God as a priority in their lives. So please be praying for our team and the future of this ministry because God and the Holy Spirit are really the only ones that can turn the hearts of these men.
Thanks.