Wednesday

It's now Wednesday evening in Lima.

Ron and Christopher left the group for the day so they could visit their compassion child, Dilan.

Luis brought them there in his Volkswagen.
Since Ron was away, he's trusted me to do the bulk of the blog today.

So I should start by correcting a couple of factual errors from Ron's previous posts.

First of all, the single mothers who leave their children at the orphanage pay around 36 cents per day. Ron had the currency conversion backward and had quoted $3.00 / day.

Oh, and Ron mis-spelled our appetizer from yesterday. It should have been spelled
A-V-O-C-A-D-O. Not M-A-N-G-O.

Each morning as we gather for breakfast there's always a bit of morbid curiosity to see who might have been sick in the night and will miss a day. Today we were fortunate that we were all accounted for by the time we loaded up the bus. Bea was back with us after missing yesterday. We were thankful for her speedy recovery. So far our overall health on this trip has been very, very good. We are thankful!

Bea and Margaret have been after me to make sure I capture images of the exotic local fauna. Naturally I oblige them as best I can. Here's a picture of something I believe they call a Germanium or some such thing.

Ken wanted to make sure he could show his mom a picture of one of the big cacti that you see around here.

Our day in Pachecutec started with three groups splitting up:

- Visit to the orphanage

- Construction

- Home visits

Here we have the construction crew starting by hauling more water up the hill. Today is the day we start pouring the new concrete floor.

I was with the group doing home visits. We visited 3 homes. All are members of the Gamaliel church. It was encouraging to see that in all 3 cases the family unit is complete and the employment situation was relatively stable -- although in one case they are relocating to Argentina for better employment. In each case it's the mother who is actively involved in the church -- not the father. The picture below is of Nieves and her daughter Nora. Nora is disfigured with a cleft palette and is also developmentally delayed. There is no social assistance or programming available for Nora. She stays home with her mother. It was obvious from our short visit that she is a handful, but Nieves showed a great deal of patience dealing with her.

In all three homes we were privileged to hear about their lives and to pray with them.

On our way we also walked through the local market and saw the goods available for purchase.

I won't go into detail here since we hope to spend time in a market on Friday and will likely have much more to talk about after that experience.

Back at the church we found the cement crew hard at work mixing concrete for the floor.

As usual, the skilled labour is provided by a local man -- in this case it's Jose.
Benito was also back with the roofing crew as they started nailing on the fiberglass roofing material.


Benito was wearing his flip-flops at the job site but after a couple near accidents he chose to work barefoot for a better grip. Brian has struggled with accepting the lower standards of construction and safety -- but he's been very gracious about pitching in and doing it "their way".

After lunch some of the group started a semi-organized game of soccer out front to help attract the kids to the VBS program. A couple of interesting observations from this:

1) We have a couple of highly competitive and skilled female soccer players. Bethany and Kellina can hold their own with anyone in the group.
2) Once the translators got drawn into the game, they played hard as well -- in spite of the heat and the dust.

Here Christian and Esa (sp?) get tangled up in the action.
Soon the kids start arriving. Many carrying the bags they decorated on the first day to carry their new crafts home again. Often we will see older kids dutifully accompanying their younger siblings.Kevin loaned out his shades.
Once inside, we're back to the now familiar routine: Ines leads some singing, the drama team presents a bible story and then it's off to crafts.Today's drama told the story of the good Samaritan. Here we see Margaret being mugged by Harold. Brian also jumped into the action to make sure she was beat up really well. Good job guys. Fortunately, Ken was there to show some compassion and help Margaret recover.
Then we were off to crafts. This is where things get hectic. Our numbers keep increasing. Today we had well over 100. Eventually we ran out of materials. Most of the kids did all three crafts but some completed only two. If you've been praying for lots of kids to attend, we thank you for those prayers -- but for tomorrow we'd be happy not to have another big increase in numbers. Please adjust your prayers accordingly :-)

The line-up to get into the necklace-making craft.

Some boys with their new crowns. On the left is Raul. He has been bold enough to borrow my camera. From watching me has figured out how to zoom in and out, pre-focus, take a picture and switch to play-back mode and scroll through the results. If this keeps up I'll be out of a job.

Meanwhile, Jose has been busy applying the finishing touches to the new floor. The room is now half done.
The kids have not gotten any less cute as the week moves along.

Finally the children walk home with their new crafts in hand. Many of them have come around asking us to sign our names on the back of their craft.

Meanwhile, we're dog-tired, but ready for one more day of work on Thursday.

I'm sure Ron will have something to add to this post. We'd all like to hear how his day went.

Thank you John for typing up the events of the day. I don’t have MUCH fluff to add this time around, as I was not with the team today. Please click on VISIT WITH DILAN if you wish to see some pictures and read some thoughts about Christopher and my day visiting Dilan, our Compassion Child that we sponsor.

As for today, it sounded like everyone had a good time. Blessings all around. LOTS of kids, which is both exciting and chaotic. We’ve grown from 58 kids on Sunday to 58 on Monday, to 78 on Tuesday to about 104 today. A blessing. From the pictures it looks like everyone continued to work with enthusiasm in spite of the heat, and I continue to commend everyone for their true dedication to staying positive throughout everything. I can’t say enough as to how that has been a blessing to see.

Again, the comments from you back home and in other places have been great. I’ve been reading them to the group. Lots of laughter and sighs. Cindy and Holly have been feeling a bit queasy in the stomach today. We hope this is only temporary. Tonight after the video time, we went out with Pepe to the grocery store to get food to feed the VBS children tomorrow. We will be giving them each a small glass of chocolate milk, a peanut butter and jam sandwich, a cookie and an apple. I already know from the last time that it was chaotic, but it will be worth it. The grocery store was like a sobey’s or Loblaws back home. Felt like we were back at home. Christopher and I, and some others stocked up on Inca Kola for ourselves and families. We passed by the Canadian Embassy tonight as well. A spontaneous rendition of “Oh Canada” broke out as we walked by.

Carmen got a phone call from someone in Lima that knows her. A psychiatrist friend of hers. She invited her to stay for dinner and she has stayed into the evening. That was neat to see.

All in all it seemed like a good day today. Tomorrow will be a hard day. We will be saying goodbye. I’ll write about that tomorrow evening. We will also be handing the suitcases full of clothing to the church, and we will be giving 5 quilts to the orphanage as well as the rest to the church.

Well, it now time to write about our day in the other blog entry. For those interested, please click on the entry noted above. Oh, and thanks John for those error corrections. What would I do without you !!