Alameda de Crepúsculo (Twilight Boulevard!!)

Just a quick note to say that we may have finally found a house.

YIPPEEEEE

That's the good news!!!

The bad news is that the street name is unpronouncible and is going to potentially cause us much grief with taxi drivers and friends alike!! It's in Alameda de Crepúsculo (Al-a-MAY-der/ day / Cray-PUSS-ka-low)

In addition, the current tenants have yet to move out (they are due to leave in December) so we probably can't move in until after Christmas.

We put an offer in for how much rent we could pay and that offer has been accepted, so for those of you would like to, please pray that God's will would be done and that things would go smoothly trying to sort out everything legally!!

In other news...

Mark and Jono (our very pleasant host!) got stopped by the police again today for going through a green light. (yes, a green one). They delayed them for half an hour trying to get a bribe off them (probably fancied a posh lunch). They were disappointed.

Trip to the zoo

Last Friday we decided to get out of Lima for the day and spend our day off at the zoo. We travelled to Huachipa, half an hour in land (where the sun shines!!) and spent a lovely day looking at all the funny animals.

It's such a hard life.

That guy's got faith.

Esther and Baruj by the giraffe.

Daddy and Daniel

Us.

Is it God or madness?

Our friend Alfredo, who we are mentoring, (strange but true) is at the moment starting on one of the most ambitious projects I have come across. His vision is to reach people who are in the poorest parts of Peru, planting churches and starting schools in areas that are new and so currently have no churches or schools. Often in these areas the children are left alone in the house during the day whilst their parents work in Lima's centre, 2 hours by bus away. Alfredo by his office (!) on the new plot of land in Nuevo Pachacutec

Alfredo has recently been given money to buy to plots of land in the areas he is currently working in. One area is called Oasis which is about 2 years old, and some houses have electricty, but no running water, and the other Nuevo Pachacutec (New Pachacutec) which is only a year old, and has no running water or electricity. (Pachacutec was the name of the last Inca Leader, of the 14 leaders, before they were defeated by the Spanish Conquisators in the 1500s).

Julio (a new Christian) and Geane outside their house in Nuevo Pachacutec

I (Mark) went to see these plots (both about the size of a football pitch each) in Ventanilla on Wednesday after my Spanish class. (It's the same place that we went to in the previous post) The 2 areas are about 2 hours away from us, and was a challenge to get there on the dust tracks, but well worth when I got there.

Plot of land in Nuevo Pachacutec and the view out to the sea

In March 2008 Alfredo's vision is to open 2 schools, one on each site alongside two churches. This time was very inspiring because currently both of these plots are just sand! This is absolutle madness in normal terms, but Anna and I feel that this is not madness. Miraculously (especially in Peru!!) everything seems to be coming together, and he has managed to acquire the land at a reduced price. He has also found an experienced headteacher who is prepared to oversee the two schools and prepare all the syllabuses just for a financial gift each month. (Normally headteachers would receive 3000 soles a month (£500 a month)) All the money he has received for the plots of land has been by faith and he and his family also live by faith, receiving only a small gift from his covering church in Lima.

Alfredo now needs to build 2 schools, find the money to do this, find teachers, and sort out all the legal documents, before March. (the legal things need to be done before the end of October, so finding a headmaster so quickly has been a real miracle)

If you want to help in anyway, please let us know. Anyone fancy coming out to do a building project before March?!!

A traditionally-dressed lady walking down the path in Nuevo Pachacutec, which is soon going to become a road, as the community are coming together to build it on Sunday so that the church can be built. At the moment trucks can only come so far down the road, so the water truck will also be able to come down to the houses and fill up the large tubs (see below). This is their only water source.

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.

Last week we watched an episode of Charlie and Lola (one of Daniel's favorites from Cbeebies) which was all about things people say that aren't actually true. Like 'if you watch too much tv you'll get square eyes' or 'Don't jump on the cracks in the pavement or the bears will get you'. One scene showed Charlie telling Lola at bedtime, 'Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.' and Lola having nightmares of little bugs biting her. Charlie told her the next day that it was just a saying and that they don't really exist.

Well it isn't just a saying.

Ironically I had been laughing at Mark and repeatingly this saying to him each night as he has been moaning about being bitten night after night. I too had got a few bites, but just assumed they were midges. 'Oh', said Jono, returning from his holiday last night. 'Yes, we did have a problem with bedbugs before - brought in from the Shanty towns. I thought they'd all gone.'

Well they hadn't.

We have the bites to prove it.

I have, however, found out a lot about bedbugs, courtesy of bedbuggers.com (yes that site really does exist!!)

Interesting facts about bedbugs which I didn't know before:

1) they are about a size of a lentil fully grown.

2) they can lay upto 5 eggs a day.

3) they don't just live in beds - they can crawl up to 100 foot to the bed every night, attracted by bodyheat and CO2.

4) they also like sofas, bedding, clothes, in fact pretty much anything you have in your house.

5) they suck your blood and then leave it on the sheets. (nice.)

6) they are very difficult to get rid of. (great.)

Anyway, we bought some powder today which may work and I covered the mattress, floor, skirting boards with it and changed all the bedding and our bed clothes - we'll let you know if it works!!

Just think of us as you sleep in your beds tonight... hope you sleep tight and the bedbugs don't bite.

Hi, my name's Jimmy

Mrs Trunchbull and chicken soup

4 Strange cultural things we have noticed since being here...

1) Any car with a taxi sign is a taxi. These signs can be put up on the dashboard at any moment and taken down at any moment too.

2) Taxi drivers thank you for coming to their country as missionaries, even if they don't agree with your theology.

3) Chicken from the local shop is sold by the kilo, including the bones and innards and feet, which are placed separately into the bag, even if you don't want them.

4) Chicken soups comes with legs, hearts, and other unknown entities floating in it. (Do they put them in because they're given them, or are you given them to make the soup???)

Second the language is different, obviously. However sometimes we can understand something 100%, and still have language difficulties. For example last night I (Mark) was talking to our friend Esther about someone who had a ‘blindspot’ for someone else, and was trying to explain this. In my ignorance I forgot that the idiom 'blindspot' may not exist in Spanish, and after explaining it to Esther, (miming being in a car and looking in the mirrors!) she still had no idea what I was talking about. This morning I recounted this story to Anna, who then told me that Esther was very unlikely to understand as she didn’t drive! Oops.
Finally, on a personal note, despite no officially doing any ministry before Christmas whilst we taken the time to observe and adapt to the culture here, we have still been asked to do some inner healing sessions and marriage prep with a young couple getting married in November. In addition I have been asked to help our friend Alfredo interview prospective head teachers for the new school he is starting in Ventanilla! (When I say start, I mean, build, plan, sort out a syllabus, employ teachers, advertise...- he has only just got the land at the moment, but hopes to start classes next year!) Life here is never dull! Should I go for strict yet fair, super-friendly, or Mrs Trunchbull?!

Who says you can't put a price on health?

The Peruvians seem to be just like all those old ladies who stop you in the street in Britain in the middle of the summer and tell you to put a hat on your poor baby so he doesn’t freeze. They seem to be so over-cautious about health that they want to rush Daniel to hospital as soon as he sneezes, so we had been holding off taking him to the doctor until we would have taken him in the UK. It's only a cold we kept saying to ourselves. Anyway, yesterday the poor thing was very docile and had a temperature that didn’t seem to be going down with Calpol so we tried to take him to the doctors, only to find it was shut on Saturday mornings. Looking at our white skin a helpful taxi driver took us to one of the most expensive clinics in Peru to see a doctor who charged us 120 soles for the privilege of 10 minutes of his time. (About £20, but the equivalent of £120 for the Peruvians!)
“Yes, he's ill,” he tells us (in Spanish of course). “He has an upper respiratory infection.” and proceeds to write out a prescription for some antibiotics in case it’s bacterial.
‘Oh good,’ I think, ‘I’m glad I brought him.’

So I decide to look up Upper Respiratory Infections's on the web last night and what does it say?!
Upper Respiritory Infection, also known as THE COMMON COLD!

PS. Daniel was back to his smiley self this morning, the worst of the cold seems to have passed.