A place of belonging

Well following our period of observation, and reflection, (and lots of time spent at the white board and chatting to different people, as well as praying!) we have felt it is right to put our roots down in a church called Viviendo en Gracia (Living in Grace) which is in San Gabriel, a slightly more advanced shanty town. This is on a regular bus route from our new house, which we will move into in January, when we get back from visiting Anna's family in Sydney over Christmas and New Year.

A view of the local area

We initially plan to work with their young adults and teenagers, as their is a great number in the young church, and will help us to connect with Peruvians of this age, before we start our discipleship/leadership school in 2009. Therefore this year will be a pilot year for the school next year. We don't know how this will look yet. We plan to take all the young people (about 25 of them) from the church on a retreat at the end February, at the end of their summer holidays.

Edgar and Cesar 2 of the key young people.

This will be our main place of belonging, and will be our main work base. We will continue to work with Alfredo and others, but we will concentrate on helping these guys to be better leaders, and ones who will make a difference here in Peru. We will also be doing training and supporting the leadership of San Gabriel and other churches in the area, and other parts of Lima.

One of the Sunday morning services in full swing

The church was started by our friends Humberto and Esther in 2003, and has now grown to at least 70 people, who mostly come from the local area. The church is now led by Esther's parents Santiago (James), and Margarita (Margaret).

Santiago and Margarita (Santiago doing his Doctor Evil Impression!!)

The church meets in a small upper room, however at the moment there is no room for kids work in the building, but they are hoping to rent the 3rd floor room (they currently rent the 2nd floor).
There is a great need for this space as there was 13 children there yesterday, and as new people are joining the church all the time, before we know it, we could be at 25 kids.

The current state of the room needed for kids work

We're off to Oz tonight, so we will post soon from there!

Update on Alfredo and His Work

Last Thursday I (Mark) went to Ventanilla again, to be the official photographer for Alfredo's building project, as well as catching up with him, and see how the work is progressing on the school, still due to open in March 2008.

The school as it currently is, in its rudimentary state in Oasis.

In a previous post I mentioned Alfredo was working on 2 projects in similar areas, one called Oasis, and one Nuevo Pachacutec. The 2nd project in Nuevo Pachacutec has been delayed until 2009, as this is overseen by a Baptist Church who feel 2008 is too soon to build a school.

The view of the local community, desperate for a school, from the plot where the school will be.

The work in Nuevo Pachacutec is being supported by a US church, yet is not being built, while Oasis, being supported by a few friends and contacts of Alfredo is progressing.

Alfredo by some of the construction materials for the Oasis school.

This visit opened my eyes in a several ways. It introduced me to the high level of poverty in that particular area and the seemly injust higher costs for building a rudimentary school just because of the remote location of Oasis. It also made me realise how needed this school is, as I found out that most children who can afford to go to school have to travel for up to an hour or more.

Alfredo with his team

While I was there I spent some time speaking to some of Alfredo's co-workers, Carmen (who arrived about 5 months ago from the Provinces to look for work, which she hasn't found yet), and especially Gladys, the (local representative for this area). Gladys was telling me that her husband works from 5am till 9pm 6 days a week and recieves 20 cents (3p) for every crate of bottles he makes up. He works for Kola Real a cheap coke firm, here in Peru. This means he earns 50 soles (£7.50)a day at best, normally less. This is before he pays for his journeys to work and back, and his lunch (which will cost him at least a fifth of his daily salary) This is to support a family of 5, as well as to help their wider family (blood and those in the community).

Gladys with her family and other children she looks after (for free) during the day while their parents are at work

I also saw the real favour Alfredo has in this area, as many people have talked about building a school, but Alfredo is the 1st to actually start this process. This process is a bureacratic nightmare, with hundreds of pages of documents to be present to the authorities, and materials to build the school have to be carried from the nearest road over 100 metres away after they have been bought several miles away and carried in expensive taxis.



My respect for Alfredo continues to increase as he and his family live by faith, as well as praying for the money for this building project. (I don't believe he could have picked a more difficult location in Lima.) He thinks he'll need 5000 soles ( £800 pounds) to build the school, which needs to be found ASAP. This is not including his living costs.

Daniel's first year

Here is a summary of Daniel's first year!

Daniel's First Birthday

Yesterday was Daniel's birthday and sorry we didn't post photos sooner, but it has been a very busy couple of days and we have been exhausted!! Anyway, Daniel is now one and had a lovely day.
It started about 7am with cards and presents being opened...

Yummy card - thanks Auntie Liz
Ripping off the paper was really good fun!
Look at my lovely new activity cube! Thanks Grandma JeanShowing off my new walker / ride-on hippo. I can now walk along with it by myself and stop every few metres to let go and show off how I can stand myself for a couple of seconds, before I set off again.
'Cat' was what I said when I saw this present from Grandma Sue. Nearly eh!
Daddy proudly decided to wear his Leeds Rhino's rugby top today so we could be twins. What do you think?!

My friend Jordan came over for lunch and to stay for my party, which was lots of fun. A few children came with their mummies or daddies. We played lots of games, like pass the parcel and musical animal statues and then we had a piñata with lots of surprises inside before my lovely cake. (Which was yummy!)

'Rabbit' animal statues. The piñata - everyone pulls a string until the bottom comes out, dropping all the lovely sweets and toys.Look at my lovely cake!

Merk and Ana's first Peruvian wedding

This blogpost comes especially to you by Merk and Ana - also known as Mariana (just run our names together quickly and drop the 'k' to get the idea) or Max and Anita.

Last night we got a special mention on the wedding program of the couple we have been giving marriage classes to. 'Prayers: Merk y Ana' the program said. 'Do you think that is us?' Mark asked ironically.

The wedding was our first Peruvian experience and we won't forget it.

24 hours before the wedding the church had no roof (it fell down after the earthquake), there were no lights, no sound system and no cake.

Thanks to last-minute Peruvian efficiency (and Jono!) when we arrived the church looked beautiful, a marquee of beautifully folded fabrics had been erected and the church decorated with flowers. Lights had been put up under the marquee, the missing things had been acquired and a lovely three-tiered cake (made in 24 hours!) stood at the front of the church.

The first difference was that the wedding was in the evening unlike our UK law that weddings cannot be performed after dark (for fear that the wrong people might get married! - strange but true). When the wedding finally started (two hours after the time on the invitation at 8pm) we had various processions of bridesmaids and page boys, flower girls, the boy carrying the bible, the candle carriers, the family, the padrinos (godparents or sponsors of the wedding), the groom (accompanied by his mother) and finally the bride accompanied by her father. The sisters of the bride all wore identical bright blue sequined dresses, whilst the bridesmaids all looked like mini brides in strapless white dresses.

The rest of the wedding was fairly like a UK wedding without the usual slickness (I'm not convinced the guy leading the service had even read the program let alone been told what to do!) and of course everyone looked beautiful.

At the end food was served to the guests in their seats and amazingly for a Peruvian wedding, it was served even before the service had ended and it had all finished by 10.15pm.

Happy 31st Birthday Mark

Today has been a very full day!

Unfortunately part of that was due to Daniel waking up at 5.30am - what is that all about???

After Mark had another hour in bed later on, and after his 3 presents and 2 cards were opened, we went for our luxury breakfast (£5!) courtesy of Jono at the Marriott hotel, a lovely buffet brunch with a view out to sea. (The waffles with chocolate sauce and strawberries were the best!)

This afternoon we invited our friends round to share a cake and some snacks. Different friends from different churches and ex-pat friends all dropped in to help celebrate.

Singing 'appy bird-day' to Mark Baruj and Anita enjoyed playing together

Daniel loved having so many people around to entertain him

Happy Birthday Mark!

Look what I can do!

Here's a video of a few of the latest things Daniel can do since we left the UK

Man flu + Peruvians = bizarre medication

Since signing for our house we have all been ill with various illnesses and bugs - mixture of colds, flu and the common missionary complaint. Mark has had a tickly cough to go with his sore throat and cold and so headed off to the pharmacy in search of some cough mixture. Now here in Peru, you don't need a prescription to get medication and you just ask for whatever you want. Don't be fooled into thinking, however, that the pharmacy staff have received any sort of training whatsoever, so you must ask for the description to go with any drugs you buy to know how many and how long you should take something.

'I have a sore throat' - Mark says to the lady at the counter, whilst Daniel is trying to grab at anything within reach. 'Do you have anything for me? A bottle of cough medicine?'

'Si, Si' - the lady replied, disappearing into the shelves, and reappearing. 'That'll be 22 soles'.

She showed Mark two packets of tablets.

'These are for a sore throat?' Mark said cautiously.

'Si, Si' - came the reply.

With Daniel threatening to destroy the money tray with one karate whack, Mark hurriedly paid for the tablets and left.

Later on that day...

Feeling his throat getting worse, Mark heads for the tablets, downing the paracetamol-looking one, whilst throwing me the instructions.

'Why did you get tablets?' - I asked reading the description. 'I thought you were getting some cough mixture.'

'I was' - Mark replied. 'That's what she gave me'

'Mark, did you actually read the description?' I retorted, not believing what I was reading. 'Why have you got tablets for chronic bronchitus and pneumonia??'

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.