As I am sitting here ready to write a new post I have to be honest. This week has been one of my more difficult weeks since I have been in Peru. There have been a lot of late nights, and a lot of early mornings.
The week started as usual. I was with a Scottish group all day on Monday at the boys' home, and they were getting ready to fly back to Lima on Tuesday morning. I called the bus driver on Monday night to confirm the transport from the group's hotel to the airport, but he informed me that there was going to be a "strike" on Tuesday. A strike here in Peru is quite a bit different than what our idea of a strike is back home. Basically, when a group of people is in disagreement with any government decision or policy, they will go on strike; this means that they will march in protest, but it also means that they will often block the roads. The idea is that if the roads are blocked, then Peru's economy comes to a standstill, and hopefully the government will start to pay attention. Anyways, my bus driver informed me that the public transport staff was going to strike for a day because they are in disagreement with a new law that increases fines for traffic violations.
The group's original plan was to leave Tuesday morning around 8:30 to make their flight on time. My bus driver told me that we would probably beat the road blocks if we left earlier in the morning--around 5:00. With no other option, I had to ask the group to wake up extra early in an effort to beat the road blocks. Everything was set until about 4:30 then next morning. I received a call from the driver telling me that he couldn't make it to our hotel because people had already started striking and blocking the roads. At that point, there was no more that we could do. The group was going to have to miss their flight back to Lima. The Scripture Union office worked hard to rebook the flights for another day, but the earliest that the flights could be changed to was Thursday. The group was now going to have two extra days here in the Sacred Valley.
Really, from the perspective of the group, there wasn't much of a problem. They would have two more days here in Cusco, and a couple less days at their second stop--Kusi. For me, the delay brought a couple of complications. Originally I was going to have one group leaving Tuesday and a new group arriving on Wednesday. Because of the plane delay, the new group was going to overlap for one night with the other group. We did not have hotel spaces booked for that many people, so I had to rush around Urubamba looking for extra rooms. In the end, I was trying to juggle between two different groups who were staying in three different hotels.
Going to pick the new group up on Wednesday was also an adventure. Normally I take a public vehicle from Urubamba to Cusco when I go to the airport to pick up a group. Because of the strike that was going on, there were no public transport vehicles running. The trek was quite an adventure. I ended up riding in the trunk of a station wagon with two other men. It was a cramped, but uneventful ride thankfully.
On Thursday the group that got delayed finally left, and it was back to the normal routine--or so I thought! One of the ladies from the new group arrived quite sick. She hadn't eaten for a number of days, and she was incredibly weak. On Friday we decided that she was going to need to go back to Cusco to get checked out at a hospital. We left on Friday morning expecting to be at the hospital for 3-6 hours, but when all was said and done she was kept in the hospital for just over 24 hours, and she was diagnosed with Typhoid Fever--a bacterial disease caused by a certain strain of salmonella that is usually a result of drinking contaminated water. It was a nice hospital, and there was an extra bed in the hospital room, so I just stayed the night there, but I was woken up every 30 minutes or so when the nurses came in to check on the lady from the work team. Thankfully the hospital was very nice, and the lady is feeling much, much better now that she has medicine to treat the illness.
This week back in Michigan was our church's Kids' Kamp that the children's ministry puts on every year. I grew up going to this camp, and I loved it so much that when I was too old to be a camper I began working there as a volunteer. To this day, some of my best friends are the families that are involved in Kids Kamp. I found myself feeling a little bit homesick and missing friends and family back home. It was a long and exhausting week, and I think that all of the business wore my immune system pretty thin. I came down with a fever and nausea last night. I won't go into the details, but I was fairly unwell. It must have been just a 24 hour flu or something because thankfully I was feeling much better by this afternoon.
It has been a difficult week, and I appreciate all of your prayers. But as I was feeling down today, God reminded me exactly why it is that I am here in Peru. After taking the morning off to recuperate from my sickness, I made it back to the Girasoles home in the afternoon. Today we celebrated all of the boys who had birthdays during the months of June and July. There were games, songs, dancing, and lots of cake. They even made a pinata! I got the see the joy on the boys' faces as we celebrated their lives and as we reminded them that they are important and loved by God. I left the home today feeling tired but refreshed at the same time. When I signed up for this job, I knew that it wasn't always going to be easy, but I know that even in the midst of the more difficult times IT IS WORTH IT. God has me here for a reason, and he has a plan for the lives of the kids at each one of our Girasoles homes.
God bless, Billy
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