The Mother Post: Puno

Dear Readers,


(Note:  I am using a new program to post my... well, postings.  I apologize if the format is weird...)
I will have to do my best to cover everything in this one post.  I had been working on a post prior to this, but as we are now living in Zamacola our class schedules and material are a little heavier than before, so that post simply did not get done.  However, I would still like to include briefly what I had had written:

My number one objective to you today is to thank you all for your prayers.  I have noticed God's hand working in many situations.  I want to tell you all that your prayers are affective.  The Lord does listen to His people, and we see the results of those faithful disciples back at home.  Thank you!  And do not stop!  This does not mean that Satan has been vanquished, rather your prayers have helped us fight him.  Please, continue to be our prayer warriors and build us up with the strength of the Lord.
Agh!  I'm just so happy to take a look back at these past two weeks and see how God has given me His wisdom and has directed our group through difficult situations.  He is so amazing in His work!  Praise His Name!

We finished our first week of classes in Zamacola.  At MVNU we have something called J-term, which is a semester that takes place in January.  It’s rather useful if you have a class you want to get out of the way and want to concentrate only on that class for the month.  Our classes in Peru are setup on an even more condensed level as each of our classes only lasts one week.  So, one class down!  It was Foundations of Church Planting (Fundaciones de Plantacion de Iglesias). 
After our first week-long class we had, in our perspective, Spring Break!  This weekend we went to our future home, Puno.  This is where we are going to be doing our mission work and planting our churches.  The plan for this weekend was to meet our future home and get the TOURIST tendencies out of our systems!

We left from Arequipa right after our class ended.  Our bus left at two and our classes usually don’t get out until one o’clock, so we talked to our professor and talked him into letting us out of class a little earlier than normal. 
The bus was comfortable enough, nothing to brag about.  Kristen and I rode together and watched two movies (John Tucker Must Die, and The Wedding Date), played a card game of War and then listened to music until our arrival.
These are some shots I got on the road.
 























Our first real day in Puno we discovered that it is not half as cold as everyone wished us to believe.  Everyone had told us that Puno was freezing cold!  We found out that through out the day the temperature is similar to our Autumn weather in the States and it does get rather cold in the evenings.  I happy to say that I’m not as discouraged with the weather anymore!
We started out early on our first day in the city and went directly to Lake Titicaca to go out to the Uros.  Quick explanation.  The Uros are islands that are made out of layers of reeds that float on the lake’s surface.  We took a 20 minute boat ride to have a little tour.   Here’s a panoramic I took as we were going out to the islands.
 
 These girls were one of the first things I saw.  They look like they are about seven or eight years old!  TO the right of that are the Uros.  They try to make tourists think they they really do live on these islands still, but the truth is they are only there for tourism and go back inland when the day is done.  As Disney-esk as it could seem the culture and idea that people once did live on these islands made it an amazing opportunity.  We had a tour of two of the islands and were taught how the islands were made and how they do daily tasks on the islands. 
 









They let us try on some of their cloths to get the full experience!







You could also ride this boat made out of reeds… it cost S./5… It took the whole group minus Garren, Joel, Fransisca and I.  We decided to save our money, the boat with a motor and cushioned seats took us to the same place… for free.
While we waiting for the boat to go Garren decided to take advantage of the soft reedy ground:

Garren and I thought we’d go to the market with Roy, but when our Peruvians left us behind we decided to hike it to the Condor across the city where we met up with Chad who took up the challenge of The Quest to the Condor!

But we were engañado (tricked)… ooooohmy

607 steps… With the altitude being as high as it was I’m surprised my heart didn’t burst…

I don’t think they wanted us climbing up onto the Condor itself as they had signs threatening electrocution.









As we took our last few steps to the Condor we found this Oracle selling her magic goods!  When I say magic goods I mean candy and cookies.  It was rather surreal as she seemed to be at least 80 years old.  We began to ask ourselves, does she climb 607 steps everyday?  Perhaps the healthiest elderly woman alive.
I told Garren, jokingly of course, that what makes moving to Puno absolutely worth is THIS!

The last thing that I want to tell you all about, and that requires a lot of prayer, is the hotel that we stayed at.  The pastor in Puno that we will be partnered with in Puno told us, after Garren and I had asked him some questions about our future living arrangements, that he had been talking to Brian to buy the hotel where we were staying.  The owners are Christians and are selling the hotel.  After talking to Brian we found out that he is very interested in buying the hotel, not only as a place for us to live, but to also open up more opportunities to expands God’s Kingdom! 

The hotel is in a great central location and is fully furnished.,  If we were to acquire the hotel we would be gaining revenue as well as saving money from having to furnish a whole house for a very very large family of 14.  There is also room on the roof where we could possibly build another level for a new church!



Before we left we all gathered in room 201 of the hotel and prayed over the building and asked God that He would allow us to do more of His work through running the hotel, maybe as another ministry. 

I will leave you with some random photos from around the city.  I’m sorry that this post does not penetrate deeper than the superficial, but I’ve been working on this single post for two hours now.  I bet you wouldn’t think it would take that much time, but I had to go through all these photos.  Thank you all for your prayers and I petition you to please continue praying and also add this hotel to your prayer lists.  I have seen the Lord’s power shown through prayers.  I am still amazed but what He does when his people are faithful and ask Him for their needs.