My Birthday -- Training and Chifa!

So yes it has been more than a week since my birthday, but I have just now gotten around to downloading some of the pictures onto my computer. Anyways I have to start out by saying thanks to everyone who sent me emails, letters, candy, facebook messages, and phone calls on my birthday. It was a blessing and a great reminder of how many people that I have praying for me and thinking of me back home. Sometimes it is nice to know that I am not forgotten even though I am living so far away. I also have to give a special shout out to Tyler Tagami and Jon Bradbury for being the first two people to call me on my birthday...kind of. It was 11:00pm my time, but back in Michigan they were already celebrating! I guess they even had some sort of cake that evening.

My friends here were very gracious as well, and they made sure that I felt welcomed and cared for...even in the midst of a pretty busy day. After a nice brunch with my friend David to begin the day, we headed to the main offices of Scripture Union in Lima to begin setting up for a training session for SU volunteers in the schools. As I have already mentioned, I am currently working with the schools program down here which is centered around teaching Christian values and Biblical principles in schools all over the country. Most of the people who enter the classrooms are volunteers from a number of different local churches, and at the begining of each school year we host a training program for the volunteers who will be helping teach the classes. Thankfully the session went really well. We had two speakers--one who talked about the value of sharing the Bible with children and different strategies that we can use and another speaker who is a professional teacher who talked about the mechanics of organizing a lesson plan.

Training Volunteers to Work in Schools!

The training began around 4 in the afternoon and lasted until 9 in the evening, but the night was still young! After cleaning up from the training session, a bunch of the staff people and some of our volunteers invited me out to have Chifa (Peruvian Chinese food)...basically the only restaurant that you can find open until all hours of the night. It was great to spend time with old friends as well as to begin to make new friends. Thankfully I avoided the Peruvian tradition of having a raw egg smashed on top of my head to celebrate the day!

Birthday Chifa!

This coming week I will continue to work in the schools, but I also have the opportunity to work with Scripture Union and a local Presbyterian school to host a weekend retreat for juniors and seniors in high school. Please pray for the retreat that will be taking place this coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It is a private Christian school, but many of the students are not Christian. I am excited to have the opportunity to work with them and share how much God loves them! Pray for the organization of the retreat in the days leading up to the weekend. The theme for the weekend is about making wise decisions.

Thank you all once again for your prayers as well as your birthday well wishes! As always, please let me know if there is anything that I pray for you about! Have a great last week of April!

Servolution

In the past week or so I have been very busy. In addition to my work with Scripture Union in the schools my new church joined with a bunch of other churches all over the world for a week of "Servolution." The motivation behind the entire week was to intentionally do acts of kindness and to be able to show Christ's love to the people in Lima without looking for anything in return. I participated in two of the service projects that the church helped to organize last week. Saturday of last week was the kickoff, and nearly everyone in the church showed up to get involved. We spent about a half an hour in prayer and worship, and then it was out into the city...everyone wearing the same red shirts the read "It is a pleasure to serve you." Some groups walked around the streets and passed out bottles of water. Other people went into local hospitals dressed as clowns to visit the children. One group jumped on a local bus, paid every passengers fare and handed out newspapers to anyone who wanted one to read. We were all over the city!

The Congregation Before Leaving to Serve

On Saturday about 50 of us from the young adults group squeezed onto a minibus and left to paint a community center/public cafeteria in a more needy area of town. While one group of us painted, another group of girls offered manicures to the ladies in the community. We sanded and then painted the entire outside of the building in addition to many of the wooden tables and chairs on the inside of the building. Naturally, a group of 50 people all wearing the same bright red shirt attract a little bit of attention from passersby. The community mayor even came by and gave us all bright green visors to wear when he noticed that we were wearing homemade newspaper hats on our heads to keep the sun away. When people asked why we were there it was really neat to respond that we are doing all of this because we love Jesus and because we know that he loves you!

Painting in Our Newspaper Hats!

Then last Thursday a smaller group of about 20 of us got together to give food out to some of the children and the beggars living on the streets in the center of Lima. We spent the better part of the afternoon preparing sandwiches, buying bottles of juice, and assembling all of the meal packs. We then all headed over into the main square of Lima--again with our bright red shirts--and walked the streets handing out the food in Christ's name!

Handing Out Dinner

We closed the week on Good Friday with a big praise and worship concert to celebrate what God had done through the congregation over the past week. On a side note, though, I do have to say that Easter here is very different than it is in the states. Yes, it is a holiday. Many people did not have to work on Thursday or Friday of the week, but most of the protestant churches do very little to celebrate Christ's resurrection on Easter. The local catholic churches do make a huge deal about Holy Week, but their focus is almost exclusively on Christ's death. For instance, many of the country's stores and restaurants are closed on Good Friday but open on Easter Sunday. I was glad to call my family on Sunday to be able to say "CHRIST IS RISEN. HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

Apart from the church activities, I was invited to a friends 18th birthday party this past Saturday. It was a great time, but there was one noticeable difference between Peruvian culture and the USA. The party was supposed to start at 8pm. I happened to spend the entire day with my friend and his family, so I was ready to leave with them before 8:00 so that the guest of honor would be there in time to greet everyone. Well 8:30 rolled around, and we had still not left their house. We finally walked over to the church where the party was at around 9:00, and of course, no one was there yet. People started to arrive around 9:30, and we actually started the party at 10:00pm or so. This is common practice in Peru for any type of party or social event--even weddings usually get started 2 or more hours after the time on the invitation! We had a great time at the party...I even won in a game of reverse charades (the whole team acted while I had to guess).

Winning in Charades!

To leave you with a few points of prayer...

--First, praise God for the week of Servolution and for literally the thousands of lives that were touched by my church and many other churches.

--Pray for the work teams that will begin coming down in May. Pray that God would use each team as his hands and feet in Peru and that the ministry that they come to do would bring people closer to the kingdom of God

--Pray for our work in the schools--specifically that God would raise up volunteers to continue to grow the ministry. This Friday afternoon we are holding a training for all of the volunteers to help them understand how to manage a classroom of students and how to effectively reach the children.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers. As usual, please let me know if there is any way that I can pray for you.

Settling In

So I have heard from a number of people that they are anxiously awaiting another blog entry...mostly my parents, but a few other people as well! Quite a bit has happened since my last post.

First, I have to say thanks to everyone who has been praying for me faithfully--specifically in regards to my concern over finding an apartment. I bought a Sunday copy of the newspaper, and I shopped around. Being new to Lima, it was somewhat stressful to find my way around the city to look at different apartments and trying to negotiate a price with the owners. After my first day of searching, I thought that I had found a suitable place. It was a little bit bigger than I needed (2 bedrooms), but the price was very good...at least I thought. When I came back the next day to sign the contract, however, the owner included a bunch of extra fees that she had not talked about the day before. So, it was back to the drawing board. I spent one more full day looking all over for another place to live, but I had little luck. Eventually I ran out of contacts to call from the classified ads, so I resorted to just knocking on doors of apartment buildings and asking if there was anything available for rent. Needless to say that accomplished very little. I was about ready to call it a day and head back to Paul and Marty's house, when I realized that I had one more landlord's contact information in my pocket. Praise God, the apartment was exactly what I was looking for. There is not much to the apartment itself, but it has everything that I will need. It is in a secure location in a part of the city that I am already quite familiar with, it came pre-furnished--even dishes and pans included--and they are letting me rent the place on a month to month basis without signing any long term contracts. I have been living here for about a week now, and having a place to call my own is a huge blessing. Praise God that his hand was in this long before I even started looking.

Another big praise is that I think I have found a church that I can plug into. It is a fairly large congregation, but coming from Ward Church in Michigan, a large congregation is what I am used to. I went this weekend with a friend who works in the schools program with me at Scripture Union. I really do desire to make friends and fellowship with other believers during my time here, and before my first day there was over I had already been invited to participate in a service project taking place next week. The youth/young adult group that I attended was also very encouraging. There were probably about 300-400 people there between the ages of 17 and 30. I am excited to go back next week and to begin to learn more about the specific beliefs and doctrines that they hold. God is so good, and I know that he is answering prayer.

The work here is going well too. As I mentioned, I am working in the schools right now in Lima. Peru's school year just began in March, so right now our work involves a lot of administration and organization. Before we actually enter the classrooms, we have to visit each different school and talk with the director to coordinate what hours and what classrooms we will be entering. I am feeling a little bit restless because I really want to get in and do ministry with the kids, but this has been a good time to get to know the people on staff. Traveling to all of the different schools in a relatively short period of time also means that I am rapidly learning my way around the city. There are approximately 9 million people living in this city, and it is roughly 2,900 square miles (slightly less than the state of Rhode Island). I welcome any chance to learn how to navigate through the streets.

In other news, I did have a chance for some fun on Sunday evening. I attended my first big Peruvian soccer game! It was a world cup qualifying game between Peru and Chile. Tensions were high, and the police were out in full force, but for the most part my friends and I had a good time. Sadly, Peru lost the game 3-1. I have posted a few pictures below.

Hanging Out Before the Game

Johnny and I at the Game

Fútbol!

Underneath the Peruvian Flag

At the Game

Well, if you made it this far down this long blog post, then you must really have an interest in my life, or care about the ministry here with Scripture Union. I will leave you with a few prayer requests.

--Pray for me as it is slowly sinking in that I am here for a long term. As you have read in my blog, things are going really well, but there is naturally at least a little bit of homesickness that comes with living so far away. Sometimes it is difficult to know that I can't just call up friends back in the States to hang out for an evening, or see family as often as I have become accustomed to.

--Pray for the process of changing from a tourist visa to a resident visa. So far everything is going very smoothly. I went to Interpol this morning to get fingerprinted and to establish a dental record. Now we are at the point where all of the necessary paperwork has been filled out and turned in, but everything has to move through all of the proper channels within the Peruvian government as well as through the FBI back home. If everything goes as planned, then I should have my resident alien card within the next 30 or 40 days.

--Pray for Scripture Union--specifically in Lima. They have decided to sell the land that the offices and boys' home is currently sitting on in downtown Lima and relocate. Pray that God would provide all of the parties involved with wisdom as they begin to plan the relocation process. Pray that God would provide a great environment for the new boys' home to be located, and pray that a good location will be found for the main offices.

Thanks you so much for all of your prayers. Please let me know if there is ever anything in your life that I can pray for! I will try to get back into the habit of blogging at least once a week.

Here I Am!

Well, I am four days into my three year term in Peru. I have said this many times, but it just has not completely sunk in yet that I am here to stay. I have been down here so many times that this trip feels rather temporary at the moment. I am glad to be here though. Right now I am staying at the home of Paul and Marty Clark. Paul is the director of Scripture Union Peru, and they are both very kind and very hospitable people. I hope to soon move into an apartment on my own, but they have offered me a room to stay in during this transition time until I find an apartment where I can get settled.

One challenge of living with Paul and Marty is that they live relatively far away from the center of Lima where the Scripture Union offices and the street boys' center is located. This has forced me to become acquainted very quickly with Lima's public transportation system. Unless you have been to Peru before, I don't think I could explain it to you. The best way that I can think to describe it is if you were to take a city the size of New York, and replace each taxi with a very old 15-20 passenger van/minibus. Each minibus has the name of a destination painted on its outside, and from there you just have to figure it out. Oh, and during rush hour there are easily 25-30 people on the same vehicle with you. Anyways, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but I have good friends who have helped me out, and I have made it all of the way back to the house on my own the last two nights!

Hopefully within this next week I will have found an apartment in a more central location, and I will be able to have a little bit more independence. I looked at a couple of places today, but the first was more apartment than I need (3+ bedrooms), and the second was a room within a family's home. Living there would mean sharing a bathroom with an entire family and possibly sharing a bedroom with one of the sons who lives there. At this point I think I am looking for a little bit more independence. I think I will keep looking...supposedly all of the classifieds and apartment listings all come out tomorrow in the Sunday newspaper. Please pray that all of that works out smoothly.

Lastly, I now have an idea of what the next two months are going to look like for me. As you may have guessed, I will be living in Lima and working with Scripture Union's school program. There are four full-time staff people working with Scripture Union in Lima's school system, and the enter classrooms on a weekly basis to teach the kids family values and Christian principles. I am excited to start partnering with the school workers, and I will enter my first classroom with them starting on Monday.

Whew...this post is already getting quite long, so I think that I will stop there for now. Look forward to stories of the schools and maybe some more pictures in my upcoming posts!

Goodbyes, Mixed Feelings, and Many Thanks

Well I officially take flight in about 12 hours. I will be flying from Detroit, to Atlanta, and then to Lima, Peru! I have been waiting for this for a long time, and I am incredibly excited to head down and partner with my brothers and sisters down there. I have said so many times how much I love the ministry, and I am confident that God is going to continue to use Scripture Union's many programs to build his kingdom.

In the weeks leading up to today I have been through many different emotions. I have felt excitement about finally being able to take the next step in faith and to follow God where he leads. But I have also felt quite drained and sad to have to say goodbyes to so many friends and family. I just want to thank everyone who has supported, encouraged, and prayed for me over the last few months. I know that it is all of your prayers that have sustained me through this whole range of emotions that I am feeling.

The best picture of all of the encouragement that I have received was my goodbye party this past Sunday afternoon. We sent out invitations less than a week in advance, but in the end I wouldn't be surprised if more than 125 people were there. The entire party was quite overwhelming for me--talking to so many people, catching up with friends, and saying lots of goodbyes--but what a beautiful picture of the body of Christ! I said it over and over again on Sunday, but thanks so much to everyone who participated. Thanks also to my mom's entire small group. With their combined efforts, we had a plethora of desserts to feed all of the guests, the Sunday night youth group at Ward, and then some...and they were delicious!

As I prepare to leave tomorrow, I envy all of your prayers. Please pray for safety as I fly, and for much needed time to just sit back and relax on the plane. Most of all--pray that God would continue to direct my path. I look forward to writing more from Lima!