Trevor In Peru

Site Moved

2011-02-01T14:15:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone!

I've moved my site to www.trevorinperu.wordpress.com

Bye Blogger!
-Trev

This Is Home

2011-01-16T11:14:00.001-05:00

A lot has happened in these past two weeks and I’m slightly dissappointed in myself for not keeping up better tabs with my blog to keep you all better informed. For that, I’m sorry. Yet, there is much to praise God about from this time.

We are now in Puno! We are finally here. I mean, we are FINALLY HERE! Thank goodness.

There are so many things that I want to fill you in on. I’ll try to give you the best of the best of what’s happened. On the 4th we packed all of our things into one big moving truck and sent it ahead to Puno and followed it in route, leaving Arequipa at 2 a.m. on a bus. I was so happy that I took my earplugs, it made all the difference and I was surprisingly well rested by the time we got to Puno.

We get to the house and we are all peeing our pants with anticipation, because remember how we never saw this house? I was in the first taxi to get to the house and the owner, Asuncion, greeted us and directed us into the house. We went up to the second floor, which is accessible from outside, and she tells me that the people that were living in the house are still downstairs and can’t move out for three days yet. This is exactly what we feared would happen. Chad’s taxi pulled up right when she told me this so I just smiled and said, “okay,” and went and told Chad… and then said, “Let’s be gracious!”

Turns out, that the man living downstairs was moving to another place, but that person hadn’t moved out yet, so he couldn’t move out yet. It’s a culture thing we are finding out. So, we brought everything that we could into the second floor and then sent some over to the Pastor’s house for storage. The third floor wasn’t to be open for us, but Asuncion let the guys put all their mattresses in the “living room” type tin roof thing on the third floor and that’s where we slept for the midterm. The Duerre’s took refuge in one of the guy’s rooms with the kids… which was tight, and the girls took the other guy’s room.

Have you guessed it yet? Have you figured it out? You might not have, but if you were us and know what Peru is like you’d have guessed it by now. The man didn’t move out of the downstairs apartment for a little over a week… not just three days. But, if they had moved out promptly, Asuncion and her family would not be doing the work they are on the house to fix it up for us. It is turning out to be the perfect house for us, even though we never saw it. God definitely came through and provided for us again!

Through all this mess Asuncion shared with us that we have been a tremendous witness to her family and the people who lived downstairs. Asuncion is a Christian woman, but her husband and son are not. We have been able to show them Christ’s love through this epidemic. It’s really been quite amazing, though at times uncomfortable.

But, now we are all moved into the house, for the most part. Asuncion is making a ton of repairs on the house and also is adding on a shower room for the Duerre family on the first floor and she is painting everything and she is tiling the patio in the back AND she is putting carpeting down in the Duerre’s bedroom AND she is getting cupboards and kitchen furniture for downstairs. She says that God deserves the best and since we are servants of the Lord this is her way of giving Him the best. Amen!

We have been so blessed with the new family that we are encountering in Puno. Around Thanksgiving I thought I was never more thankful in my life. It’s bee superseded. I have never been more thankful in my life than right now with the people that God has provided for us. The support that we have in Puno. The very second day that we were here in Puno a group of us walked out of the house to go shopping for some things for the house. On our way out the door we bumped into a friend of the Pastor’s, Hermelinda. We greeted each other and then she said she would help us go shopping. We walked around Puno getting prices of everything that we needed so we could come back another day. While walking around the city she shared her heart with us and how she wanted to start an English school to bring people to the church… This was actually one of the first things that she said to me, which at that moment I knew she was a Godsend, because this is part of Joel and my plan for our ministry, teaching English! Later, she tells me that she is opening a restaurant in her house, something in Peru that we call a menu. That means, REALLY CHEAP LUNCH! Her price is S./5 or about a dollar and a half. You get soup, a plate of food, juice and dessert. It’s unbeatable. She only lives six houses down from us. It’s such a blessing… AND she’s a Christian woman willing to help us in any way possible.

Then, there’s the Pastor and his wife. To hear them talk about this city has been a blessing in itself. They are so passionate and loving toward this people and they are so willing to help us as well. We were very scared about getting to know the Pastor, because he is ultimately the boss of us here in Puno. He knows the land, the people, everything. We have to follow him and if he had a false impression of our purpose here in Puno (e.g. building numbers in his own church) then we would be having some difficult head-butting situations. But, Praise GOD!!!!!! He is on board and knows our purpose and is passionate about it as well! They have told us numerous times that if we need anything we ought to let them know.

There’s also a family in the church that invited us over to their house just the other day to bake. They found out that Kristen and I love to make food so we went over to make some brownies. Milagros is the woman’s name and Paul is her husband and they have a little 3 year old boy Mateo. We made brownies and just had a whole afternoon filled with fellowship. They were so warm and welcoming and also offered their help for anything that we need.

We are all so very very very blessed to be working with this church here in Puno! They are all willing and active in the church. We are just so blessed. Praise God.

Here are some pictures of the house. I have a link here that is a photo album of the rest of the things. There’s just too many to put here.

This is the house. I didn’t realize how big it looked until I was taking this picture. It’s HUGE!

(Top Right) This is what our showercurtain rod is hung up with… take a guess at what it is, that’s right, a telephone cord! (Top Left) Our kitchen is a great size. We now have curtains up so people can’t see in at night. Unfortunately, that nice dinning set is Chad and Amanda’s and though it’s still up here, it’s going down soon. (Mid right) This is the view we have from outside our kitchen window. (Mid Left) Our electric showerhead is our second savior. It makes a whishing sound when it’s on… that’s when you know you have HOT WATER!!!!! (Bottom right) We called him Rex. We have no idea what his real name is, but he’s the dog next door that likes to peek out this hole on his owners roof. We’ve met him on the street and he is a BEAUTIFUL boxer. Everyone is scared of him, but I know he is just a ball of dog fun! He is actually really really sweet and friendly. (Bottom left) This is our back patio that Asuncion is going to be tiling. Those dogs are gross, and not kind.

Lately, God has been walking me through fear. This is something that I dealt with when I first got to Peru as well. Today I read through Phillipians in the first chapter. Paul talks about how living in Christ is living and death would be going to Him. I don’t think I’m going to die here in Peru, but I’ve been fearing the encounters we’ll have with aggressive people. In Ephesians I read in chapter six how the battle we fight is not of the flesh, rather it is spiritual. This gave me comfort, because obviously nothing can touch me spiritually. I am safe. We have already claimed victory in Christ on spiritual warfare, the rest doesn’t really matter.

Please, continue praying that God will prepare the hearts in Puno. He is making such obvious displays of his provision already that it’s hard to doubt that He’s going to do more. We are so happy and are praising the Lord in what He’s done already.

Also, before I forget, we were giving our districts for where we will be working. These are probably just names to you, but keep these district names in your prayers as well. Joel and I have Santa Rosa, Ricardo Palma and Juli (pronounced Hhhhhhoo-lee). I’m excited to go to Juli because it is called Peru’s Little Rome! OOOOOooo!

That is all for now! Love you all!

-Trev

It’s Ho Ho H-over!

2010-12-29T12:29:00.001-05:00

Guess what! In Peru, people celebrate Christmas too! - Amanda

This year’s Christmas I would say has been, well I’m sitting here looking at those words and I have a million words that could fit. Here’s a few: shut-up, stretching, blessed, numb, unifying, sad, happy, exhausting, relaxing. I definitely missed the high-strung element of Christmas that most of you in the States suffered through. Sorry!

I think there were a lot of things that went through my head this Christmas. Sometimes I was confused that I wasn’t as upset that I was so far from home for Christmas. Other times I was frustrated with my partner for not being more excited about Christmas. On Christmas day I felt disconnected with him and he went to a church service in the evening… I was upset. But, I was happy to be with people that I love and got to spend such an important day with them.

This year I thought a lot about Mary and what she must have went through. Sometimes, I don’t like that it seems that the originality of thought is gone from biblical stories. It feels cliché to talk about what Mary must have been thinking, and I absolutely despise the song “Mary Did You Know?” Sorry, all you folks out there that idolize this song… it’s actually a song I could do without the rest of my life. But, in the story of Christ’s birth represented in Luke 2:19 that Mary stored up the things the Shepherds told her, about the angels and what they said. It just had to of been wild being her. These people were real humans. I think that something we forget about often. They were not majestic people, but ordinary and simple. They had thoughts and feelings and it had to of been a complicated mess of emotions and thoughts that Mary was filtering through. And yet she was faithful.

Because we did not have snow and all the things Christmas staples that make Christmas-time feel like Christmas-time, we had to put a real effort forward to get ourselves in the mood. One could call it, Christmas foreplay. I decided to take my lunch money and buy some felt to make everyone who would be here for Christmas a Christmas stocking. It took about a week to make everyone’s stocking, but it really helped me get into Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we had a partaaaaaay! Amanda and I baked all day long and even the day before we were working until late at night to make all our awesome cookies. So, on Christmas Eve we all got together and had communion, then read the Christmas story. After that it was a free-for-all to the spread.

Then after we were all done eating, we played a few games. First, we played Bing-o. There were prizes to be won! We played like you play the White Elephant. Prizes could be stolen. Franci ended up with a soap case and a wash cloth, Joel got notebooks, Allison got chapstick, Ella got a pen, and I got a keychain! Then we played a game Sixto suggested. His games are always interesting. I’ve written three attempts to explain the game and it’s just not worth the trouble. The gist is you pass two rags around the circle and you have to untie and retie knots in them and if you are caught with the two rags in your lap, you are out. If you are out, then you get a punishment. Lindy was a statue and had to let us put him in whatever possition we put him in, Franci had to chug a glass of soda, Joel had to put on lipstick, Vincent had to do push-ups, Gladys had to walk like a duck, and Geremias had to hop like a bunny.

We had fun fun fun fun! Later, Garren put on his Christmas pajamas he had gotten from home and joined the kids in their new pajamas. Then, the kids put out some cookies and milk for Santa Claus. Thomas had to have chocolate milk in his cup for Santa.

Then, Garren’s family in the States always watched “It’s a Wonderful Life,” on Christmas Eve, so following this tradition we sat down to watch it. Amanda decided right away she was going to not make it through the movie, so went to bed. Chad followed soon after, but both were awakened to the following bustle in the streets. I tried posting the video here, but it’s not working. Just check out my facebook wall, I have the video there.

On Christmas Day we were all supposed to get together at 7:30 am to open presents, but it’s apparently not as exciting for the Peruvians to wake up really early in the morning just to open presents. So, we ended up opening presents closer to 9:00. Chad and Amanda had setup a pretty sweet presentation for us.

We all got a blanket, toothbrush, razor, 2011 agenda, Choko cookies, and some candy.

And Chad and Amanda got these stellar hats.

Then, we crashed and I skyped with my parents! There was really nothing I could do for them for Christmas, sending wise, it’s even more expensive sending from here to the States, at least it seems to be so. This is what I decided to do for my family.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! And I hope everyone has a Happy New Year! We officially are moving to Puno the 5th of January! Please pray that all of our things arrive in Puno safely!

Pre-Christmas

2010-12-19T22:40:00.001-05:00

Can you believe that it’s almost Christmas? We have been working really hard to get ourselves into the Christmas spirit. It’s strange, almost like a chore. I’ve wondered the years that I was in college why Christmas never seemed the same, and now I’m realizing that if you just let it pass by it’s not going to hold much meaning. Last year I put up a tree in our humble house and I had friends come over to help me decorate and we made pretty little decorations as crafts. It was such a good time and I’m making myself sad thinking about it. Dang it!

I’m glad that I happened to have these pictures handy form last year. They make me feel good. The white stars were made out of ribbon, something my mother and sister and I used to make for Christmases. The white flowers and ball were origami. The red and gold ornaments were Wal-Mart provided… that dear store. Now, I’m listening to Owl City and it’s taking me back to the winter drives back and forth from Mount Vernon to home. I was really naïve to think that the Christmas season wasn’t going to be hard. If I had known last year where I’d be this year then I would have done better to appreciate it. Our tree here stands at a lowly two feet tall. Ooooo. At least it is thicker than a Charlie Brown tree.

Maybe not much more… But this is my favorite picture of the kids with the tree!

There have been quite a few people that have gone home for the Christmas season, so now it’s just Garren and I as the only two North Americans and then the Duerre family. I think it’s been good for us though, having our time together. My Christmas wish this year was a DSLR camera, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, I’m going to have to keep on stealing Kristen’s and Amanda’s. This Thursday is our baking day! We are making Pill Bottle Cookies, these awesome Soft Sugar Cookies with a Frosting I found, maaaaybe Autumn Cheesecake and some other things Amanda has up her sleeve. Check out the links, you might find something you like and remember to check out The Handicapped Kitchen every once in a while to see what I’ve got going on in the kitchen. I’ve also been working on making everyone who is here a stocking. I got some felt and beads and went to work. I’ll post some pictures later this week!

To help us get into the Christmas spirit the kids had a Christmas program at the church where they go to school. I was so excited to go!

“Jo jo jo, yo soy la Navidad, porque tengo muchos regalos para todos los ninos” “Vamos hasta Belen, para que veamos los que ha sucedido”

Thomas was Santa Claus and Ella was a pastorcita or a little shepherd. They both had lines in Spanish too! We are so proud of them, even though they never speak Spanish in front of us.

I believe that I’ve shared with you that we found our house in Puno. One hardship down… here’s another! One of our best here in Peru has gone home to deal with a difficult situation. Roy’s mother has been in and out of the hospital and they are now trying to dissolve some clots that she has in her lungs. His family has said that she seems to have given up hope and he has decided to go home for some time to see if he can turn the situation at all. He has until the end of January to decide if he can come back and still be able to join the Puno team. If not, he can join with a future team to a future city project. Please pray that he is able to make an easy decision. We are behind him no matter the result.

Thank you all for your prayers. I love you all so much and hope you have a very Merry Christmas! I’ll be sure to post later this week with cookie and stocking pictures!

Three Days in Puno

2010-12-08T09:53:00.001-05:00

Do any of you like to travel via Greyhound? Believe it or not I’m posting this entry from a bus on the way back to Arequipa from Puno. Chad has a Internet key you can plug into the USB port of your computer and anywhere we have Claro phone service we have internet service as well. Who would have thought in Peru we’d have this kind of technology? We tried watching some T.V. online but it wasn’t strong enough a connection.

I figure I should give you a heads up on how our house search went in Puno. We left early Sunday morning to get in Puno in the afternoon and still be able to go to their church service at 6 pm. Saturday I woke up with the start of a pretty ugly cold. Sunday morning I woke up feeling the worst I have yet in Peru. I don’t know what it was, whether it was a cold or allergies, but Sunday morning I laid there and begged God to lay His healing hand on me. Now from Arequipa we go 7,000 or so feet above sea level to 12,000 feet (don’t quote me on that). With the heavy contrast in the change of altitude my congestion felt like it was turning into the jaws of life prying my head open. Some of the others were getting ill too. So, we definitely were seeing the spiritual warfare as we were trying to find this house.

The first day of searching the city was Monday. If you’re asking how we knew how to look for homes here in Puno, I was thinking the same thing. Basically we were told to walk around the city, knock on doors, and simply ask people if they knew of any places available. There are very few places that will actually advertise in newspapers. There are also walls around the city where ads are posted.

(I just quickly want to add as a side note the poster we just passed. Apparently, coming soon to a city near me is some kind of midget parade… don’t try to read too much into it, it means exactly what it says. A midget show of some sort.)

We spent the day walking around the city asking everyone we could about houses. Joel and I didn’t have any luck at all the whole day. We were assigned to an area where it was basically just commercial buildings and nothing residential. At the end of the day we all got together and talked about what was found. One group found an anticresis, but we didn’t know if we would be approved for it.

By Tuesday I had woken up feeling nearly 100% better, which I believe was seriously a divine healing from God. So, Tuesday we sent some of the 40/40’s home, because we had already scoured the city and only had a couple appointments to look at a few places. Chad, Garren, Sixto and I stayed and in the afternoon went to look at this one house. It was a house the our Pastor used to live in, and he assured us that it would be a good fit. We met the landlady there and she told us she had to ask the tenants if it would be okay if we could look in the house. Well, they refused to let us in. Throughout this whole ordeal we were thinking this would never happen in the States. Are you kidding me? Your landlord is here and is telling you to let them show their own property and you are saying no? You are ridiculous.

So, the landlady (her name is Asuncion) asks us in to her apartment, which is the third floor of the house she owns. There, both she and the pastor try telling us it’s a great place and it will definitely work for our 14 people, but we were trying to be insistent that we couldn’t sign a contract for two years if we didn’t see the place. Apparently, the renters had let Asuncion in with some other interested parties several times before and they were sick of letting more people in their house. It was very frustrating… very Peruvian. This house was kind of our last option too, so we were getting very upset that we couldn’t even see what potentially could be the best thing we had found yet, besides the anticrisis. So, Asuncion told us we could sign on for three months and if we didn’t like it we could find another place. We did it.

We had been praying for so long for the perfect place and the fact that God hadn’t given us anything quickly has been speaking to me that we needed to be faithful and believe that He would provide. Now, this was the fifth time that we had come to Puno looking for a place and the one place we didn’t look at is the place that we decided on… and we all felt at peace with it. Now we just have to tell everyone else on our team!

My lap is getting hot from the computer. Thank you all for your prayers. We still might have to make another move after this, but praise the Lord that He has given us at least “a place to land,” as Chad says. I’m excited to actually get to see this place, but we will have to wait until at least the 4th of January. So, it looks like we are going to be spending Christmas in Arequipa!

Want Want Want

2010-12-04T00:38:00.001-05:00

I just posted a few days ago, and I was going to hold this post for another time, but I think I need your prayers now… so I´ll post it now. I’m writing and backspacing what I’m writing here because I want to choose my words carefully. I’ve not always been the most humble of people. To be quite honest, sometimes I can be vain. It’s probably just growing up, but I’m learning that some of the crap I used to worry about doesn’t matter (i.e. how I look in pictures, the compliments people give me, etc.) I’m coming to realize those things give me a temporary thrill and then quickly fade… and the hole then quenches further confirmation of self. It’s exhausting, and my only confirmation I need comes from God.

All of that to say, I’m a really talented guy. It’s a shocking statement for me to look at too. Maybe I’m not as talented as I think I am though, maybe all these people have been lying to me all these years. But, what I’ve been told is I’m talented. I: sing, play music, write music, write story ditties here and there, draw, cook, design, learn languages quickly. Basically, that all falls within the art realm, so we could say… ART and everything therein. Why am I telling you I’m talented? Do I need to learn more humility?

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with my life. Some people feel they have a blank canvas of abilities and don’t have anything to choose from, it’s just as hard having a splatter paint art piece and trying to figure out what to let your eye focus on. Satan really likes to play with me here. Our insecurities are his playground.

Recently, I’ve found myself painfully wishing or perhaps desiring to build on one of these talents. That’s fine! I’ll go through periods where I love to draw and others when I’d rather do other things. The problem is how it turns into covetous attitudes. It’s an ugly feeling. I hate it. I love photography, I don’t have the camera I need yet to practice and get better, maybe something I’ll have to wait to get in the States, but I just saw some pictures online that were gorgeous and I had that deep-set pang in my heart. I wanted that. Not the pictures, but the ability. The ability to capture that beauty. It´s fine wanting to take beautiful pictures, but this strong compulsion is really messing with my focus.

Satan is doing a good job of picking out my past dreams and aspirations and placing them in my mind as what I want right now. I can’t afford having this when I’m about to set out on the true purpose for my being in Peru. I can’t start out like this. I want to take beautiful pictures here and write beautiful songs about this experience, but not to the point of self-glorification. Do you understand? I feel like this has been hard to explain. I need your prayers. I want to be able to use these gifts, rather for my glory for His. My glory can never quench my thirst, but His glory will satisfy.

Coming To A Close

2010-12-02T15:43:00.001-05:00

Turkey, ham, sweet-potatoes casserole, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, paper clips, stuffing, bricks, pumpkin pie, apple pie, booger pie, we ate EVERYTHING for Thanksgiving. Thursday morning we woke up and all came together as a family to share our Thanks. Being away from home and being in an unfamiliar place was harder than I thought it was going to be for Thanksgiving. It was unlike any other Thanksgiving that I’ve ever had, I suppose that goes without saying, but I was stunned by how thankful I was for things like this supporting family here in Peru and even very simple things i.e. hot water. Thanksgiving, this year, was certainly the most meaningful of the other 22 I’ve had.

Now, I’m following in the good American fashion of making everything Christmas-like right after Thanksgiving. So, I’m on the couch writing you this update with earphones in listening to… oh must I say it, Celtic Woman Christmas music! I’ve been stuffing my ears with other Christmas music too, of course. I’ll let you in on a glimpse of what I’m listening to right now.

This Chloe Agnew (in the pink) has an absolutely beautiful voice!

Tomorrow is the last day of class as we get ready to move to Puno!!!! WOW! I can’t believe that these classes went so quickly. It’s really amazing. This last class that we are in is a instructional class about discipleing. I’ll be quite honest, before this week I was really questioning the call. I had a pit in my stomach about the work in Puno, the unknown. This week I went to our cell group and I gave the lesson and it was so encouraging. I don’t necessarily want each of our cell groups to be so “by the book” or stiff. I want to people in our cell groups to be asking questions and learning about things that they are interested in or understanding hard concepts they don’t understand. That’s exactly what our cell group was this week. Ordinarily, I am the one who stays quiet and if there is any question I let Joel take it, but this time God had been preparing me for this discipleship. I think even before I would have been unlikely to let ourselves get so off topic, but I was so content in just listening to these people ask these questions and I was so excited to have the answers! It pushed me back up on the horse for sure.

Has it snowed yet there in the States? I wish I could be there for the snow. I want to stand out in the light snowfall and smell the chill in the air and make a snow angel. Five minutes of that would suffice and then I’d be good for another year! HA! I was talking to a friend the other day and told her that my favorite season wasn’t fall until I left for Costa Rica and had to miss it. Having missed the fall made me appreciate it so much. So, all you winter snow haters you might just have to leave your cold State and go to a place where you won’t have snow for a while so you can come to LOVE driving around town in your rear-wheel drive, squirrely, out-dated clunker in the snow. You should be getting the hint of the experience I’ve had… my parent’s got rid of that thing so that’s done with! When I get back I’m sure they are going to buuuuuuuy me something shiny with great MPG and smells like a new shoe inside… that’s another hint.

I want to delve into this a little more, but I want to get this post up ASAP and I’m about to head out the door. We still have not found a house in Puno. We are going this Sunday, the whole team, to look for a BIG house for all of us to live in. Please pray that we can find the perfect house!

Lastly, I have started a new BLOG! Woooooo! It’s called The Handicapped Kitchen. Check it out. Bookmark it. You’ll love it. If I check my stats and see no one has visited it I will be very upset! It’s a food blog. Need I say more? Now GO!

Two Posts for the Price of One!

2010-11-14T22:05:00.001-05:00

The Expensive Woman Named Lima

We call ourselves lucky as we had the opportunity not only to get our residency in Peru, but also to fly to the capital city, Lima, to start our paperwork! It’s been the itinerary for every group that’s gone for their residency to go by bus, which is a 18 hour drive. The Duerre’s, thinking of their beautifully behaved children, knew that even angelic blondies like their Thoma and Ellas (Kristen’s new nicknames for Thomas and Ella) would quickly grow horns and pointed tails, breath fire and give an early start to the Apocalypse, decided it would be best for at least them to make the one hour flight to Lima. Lucky for the rest of the Puno family we found the cost to fly would be just as cheap as to make the 18 hour drive… so why not fly?

The one thing that we all had in mind when we found out that we were flying to Lima was the Starbuck’s stand in the Lima airport and everyone make it the first priority getting off the plane to book it over to the Starbuck’s counter as fast a possible. Not having seen the beauty and splendor of the shiny Starbuck’s sign nearly caused a frenzy amongst us as we practically ran to the counter and me in my infinite intelligence blurted out, “Do you accept money?” when I really wanted to ask, “Do you accept dollars?” My unintential slip up turned out to be pretty funny and I followed along with it and asked the barrista if I could exchange my bookbag for a coffee. It was a great ice breaker and Kristen told the barrista what we are doing here in Peru and that it’s been six months since we’ve had Starbuck’s and we were just dying to have this elixir of life slide over our tastebuds. We were almost peeing our pants with anticipation. Kristen ordered her drink and moved to the otherside to pick up her coffee (even the mechanics of Starbuck’s was beautiful to us, I mean if you know anything about Starbuck’s and how you move to the other side to pick up your drink…) and then I tried ordering. I ordered a caramel frap and pulled out my quarters to pay and the lady at the cash register said… “Oh no, we only accept bills!” I was devastated, but quietly she said “It’s okay, I can pay for you…” I was SHOCKED!!!! I asked her what like three times. Then I asked her if she was sure five more times. She said she would take care of it and said not to tell anyone. I said…. “I SWEAR!” But, now look at me… I found out her name is Liz and that’s all I really know about her, but I’ll tell you she was such a blessing to me that day.

To be completely honest, the flight and the fact that Liz paid for my Starbucks coffee… which turned out to be a caramel coffee and not a frap (which I enjoyed much more than I would have the frap!!!) the rest of our time in Lima was rather depressing. I named this first post part of two The Expensive Woman Named Lima because this city was very much like an expensive girlfriend… We all ended up spending all of our money, not out of frivolous irresponsibility, but because it was such an expensive city! We took taxi’s everywhere and they were 10 soles each. I don’t know if you know what that means, but it’s a lot of money. By the end we had to pull out money from a future trip to Lima.

As much as we all were disappointed by the time we left we all know it’s worth actually being residents of Peru. Also, I had to come back to Arequipa by myself, long story as to how that happened, but basically things got messed up in the booking of the flights. On the way home I got to meet three great people. Two when I was waiting at the gate for the plane to come and then a man on the flight back, who turned out to be from Puno and we had a great conversation about what I would find there. Lately I’ve been trying to be more loving toward strangers. When I first arrived I put on an unapproachable face and tried to drive people away from me rather than attract them, because I felt that everyone was out to get something from me. Now, I’m realizing that is going to hinder this work I’m doing here. I read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and memorized it as an attempt to remember what love is. I’m seeing that this is helping already! So, pray that I can be a better lover! I mean that in the purest way possible for all those thinking… “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!”

POST TWO! Brigadeiro

We made this dessert a month ago, but what reminded me of it was when my friend Billie Beth was hankering something chocolaty. I had found this recipe two years ago and always wanted to try to make it, but never actually got around to doing it. So, I decided to finally give it a try. The first time we made it we rolled some of them in peanuts, and then put bananas in the center of others and left the rest just normal. These things taste like those chocolate Reisen’s that you find in the States. They aren’t like truffles, but kind of like chocolate taffy, caramels! They are so good!!!

Did I mention this is a really simple recipe? These are the ingredients you need. Only three things: cocoa powder, butter, and sweetened condensed milk. Now I’ve heard that in the States the condensed milk is not sweet like it is here so you will probably need to figure in a little bit of sugar in there too. But here’s the measurements. I found this on www.allrecipes.com

- 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 (14 ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk

I wish that I could have taken pictures while I did this next step, but if I had tried I would have ended up scorching it. But, you just throw all this stuff in a medium size sauce pan and put it on medium heat. Just stir stir stir STIR!!!! So, you’ll want the butter to completely melt and the cocoa powder to mix in completely as well. You’re basically just cooking this mixture down into a thick cream. The recipe asks that you cook it consistantly stirring for ten minutes, but I found the best rule of thumb is to cook it until it’s so think that as you are stirring it that if you tip the pan a bit and the “dough” seems to pull away from the pan and tries to maintain it’s blob then it’s time!

So, it basically comes out pretty thick like this. Be careful now, this stuff is pretty hot coming out and you don’t want to stick your finger in there. At this point if you do a taste test it kind of tastes like tootsie rolls. It tastes a little different when it’s all said and done.

This is the chocolate dough placed in a pre-greased bowl. This is left out on the counter for an hour or two until it is room temperature and then you grease up your hands with butter or oil and pull out little pieces and roll them into about 1 1/2” balls.

You can roll these things in anything your little minds can fathom. We rolled ours in peanuts… but then this didn’t work out for me because I placed the dough in the fridge to maybe spur up the cooling process… the dough got too hard to allow anything to stick to it. So, I acutlaly just took some of the larger peanut pieces and stuck them inside. It was just as good! You can also envelop pieces of banana inside the balls or any kind of fruit or goodie that you dream up!

When you get them all rolled up you want to place them on a pre-greased pan, bowl, dish, whatever, and then place them in the fridge for at least 5 or 6 hours!

Featured Post: Epistles of Joel

I had told you all that there would be a new feature called “Epistles of Joel.” Well, I would like to direct you to this link to read my partners first letter to you! I’m so excited to get him involved in this special communication that we have. Just take a jump over there and see what he has to say! He writes this letter out in Spanish and then I translate it into English for all of you! Enjoy! (I’m still in the process of formatting his blog… so it’s a little messy, but I just want to get this out there!)

Motion Sickness

2010-10-26T11:10:00.001-04:00

I have been blessed with the ability to do ANYTHING in the car, plane, boat, train, blimp, helicopter, submarine... anything that moves. I can read, write, watch movies, anything that might give other people a headache or send them scrambling for a brown paper bag. My mother has always called me out on this and doesn't understand how I can do it. I claim that it's from living in the country, so far from anything valid to call civilization that it came down to survival that I entertain myself in the car. Long car rides were always a part of my childhood.

This week I've found myself in the center of change... a different motion. So, here's a quick breakdown of what happened this week:

Monday a member of the Arequipa team, Daniel, was sent home. I am at peace with the decision now, but don't necessarily agree with the decision. He was sent home for his attitude. I don't really want to get more into it, but please pray for him as he readjusts to American living... to be honest I'm slightly jealous of the food he is enjoying right now!

So, all week we were dealing with Daniel having been sent home, the Cusco and Arequipa team were more effected because he was from their cohort, but it was still upsetting regarding how many others had been sent home... it's never good. Saturday, we all knew there were two major changes, but that doesn't mean we were prepared. We packed up all of our things and moved over into a new apartment! The girls have their own floor and the guys theirs. We took down all of our beds and moved the dressers over... it was a ton of work. But, at the end of the day we had to say good-bye to another part of our family, the Cusco team. It was hard to let go of a piece of our family, but it's encouraging to know they are not too far away and that they are doing their mission work. Please pray for our Cusco team as they start their work! On top of that... we had moved to an unfamiliar place, which really isn't helpful when your faced with new uncomfortable situations or loss.

To top off a week of change, Sunday, the pastor of the Umacollo church, the church I have been attending, died. This is also the man with whom Garren and I had lived while we were in language study. Garren and I were walking back to the new apartment building when we ran into Cristobal on the road and that's where he told us the news. It's still hard to believe. We went to a service last night and got to grieve with my adopted family. There are a lot of mixed emotions concerning the death of Pastor Genaro. Maybe I'll expand upon that in another post. His funeral is today. Please pray for the family of Genaro and also the church congregation as we all deal with this sudden change. He was just re-elected to continue his pastoral ministry not even a week ago, and now they have to find a new pastor to continue with the church. He died Sunday afternoon and his birthday was Monday... he would have been 60. A praise came from the apparent hopelessness of Genaro's passing. Pastor Solano spoke at the service last night for Pastor Genaro and gave an invitation for salvation and a woman gave her life to Christ. In the past I've been critical about the amount of people that accept salvation... but I was so happy. The angels were rejoicing.

This week has truly been a storm. I can't believe how much change we've been confronted with this week. Please pray for us as we continue to plant our feet in the firm foundation of Christ. Satan has been working on us this week to discourage us, but we remain strong in the Lord.

Things I Love and Don’t Love About Peru: Churros/Coffee

2010-10-14T00:17:00.004-04:00

Hello Readers! This is an idea that I had a while back after one of my journal entries. My friend Garren had made a blog about things that he liked and didn’t like so much about Peru and it inspired me to make a list. Along the side of each point I had drawn a little picture and thought I could make my creative perogative a form of entertainment for my blog readers. After all I want you all to be a part of this journey and have as much of a glimpse into my life as you can. So, I decided that every once in a while I will post a segment called “What I Love and Don’t Love About Peru.” Along with an explanation of my loves and not loves, I’ve been tuning into my creativity and will post these cartoons I’ve been making with Aviary! (Check it out! It’s like a free Adobe Suite!)

Note: It is not my intention to make this a complaint segment. I hope you don’t view “What I Love and Don’t Love About Peru” as “I Don’t Want to Be Here” or “I Hate Peru.” Instead, I want you to get the best idea about Peru and what it’s like to live here!

So, that is my intro to this new segment. I hope that you like it and that you ask questions if you have any! I would LOVE to share this experience with you anyway I can… so put that on the list of things I love about Peru! On with this segment!

Love: Churros
Introducing, the churro. This is also a dessert that will be included in another segment I am developing called “Pieces of Heaven In Peru.” These little pieces of heaven are a snack that us poor missionaries are crazy about, not only for their deliciousness, but also for the cheap cheap cheap price! Are you ready for this? Sixty cents each! But wait! It gets better! That’s before the exchange rate! So, they are more like a little more than twenty cents! You just can’t beat that… and they are a five minute walk down the road. Right, well, let me tell you what this thing is. It is an elephant ear rolled up and closed at the ends with… hot-lip-burning-caramel inside and then rolled in sugar. Yea, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare, a kids loftiest dream.

Not Love: Coffee
So, you thought Sanka was bad? Peru has the worst instant coffee in the world. You know, that may not be true as I’ve only seen a small portion of the world, but of the world I’ve seen it’s the worst. I mean, they have this coffee called Ecco here that’s not even real coffee… it’s coffee flavored barley. Come on now. On the other side, Peru does have their own REAL coffee, but it’s so sad… so so so sad. However, all their great fruit juices make up for it!

*NEWS FLASH*
While writing this post I got a phone call from Saul, I wrote a blog entry about him maybe a month ago. Well, he had sent me an email that he would get in contact with me and at the time it seemed like he was saying, Leave me alone. So, I got a phone call from him as I was writing this up and he said he wanted to talk! We are meeting this Friday at the Plaza de Armas at 4:00p.m. so, your prayers would be appreciated!
Also, I just got out of a meeting with some 40/40’s that I’ve been working with closely to unite two cell groups that we’ve been working with that would get us to the first level of a church plant! This is huge! Well, there are some church leaders that are getting involved and starting to make things difficult for our goal. A lot of the church leaders here in Peru think our work as 40/40s is to grow their church congregation… we are not on the same page when it comes to goals. So, please pray for us as we meet with these leaders and try to explain to them our Final Goal… a church plant. If you have any questions, please ask!

That is all for this post! Here are some other new segments that are coming your way!

Pieces of Heaven in Peru
Epistles of Joel

Wow, I only have two? I thought I had more when I started that list! This is where you come in! HELP ME! Give me some ideas about what YOU want to know about my LIFE in PERU that I could do a regular segment about. I will still be giving you heartfelt entries, so don’t worry I’m not leaving you out of the loop in any way!

Also, look along the right closer to the top of this page and you’ll see the archive for “Things I Love and Don’t Love About Peru” underneath Pages called… Things in Peru!

One more thing! The story I posted in my last entry got published with Engage Magazine! Here's the link, if you read the last post you've already read this, but I think it's still noteworthy.

Ketchup!

2010-10-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

It’s not very often when you feel your life is impacted in a short matter of time. There are just those certain events, and I’m sure you all know from your personal stories, when either a person, a lesson, a decision or a mistake seems to alter the way you think. I feel like someone took a pile of spiritual manure and dumped it over my head this past week. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is I experienced some intense spiritual growth!
Most of my readers have kept up with this blog and know that every week I have a new class, yes a different class each week. This past week our class was Spiritual Development of a Missionary… or something along those lines, I’m translating this from Spanish. Our professor’s name was Jim Lynch. He is gringo and TALL… very startling sight. But, honestly I felt a closer connection with him in comparison to the other professors that I’ve had because… well we are both gringo!
In our class we talked about the importance of prayer, reading the Bible and meditating on it, fasting, healing, and sanctification. There’s a slight possibility that I may have missed something there, but you’ll forgive me, I don’t have my notes here with me. One of the things that I learned most about was holiness or the sanctification. I always thought that holiness was something that only old people could attain or, I’ll say bluntly, was boooooooooring! I’ve learned quite the contrary, however, that holiness is something that God calls us to. We read I Kings 8:54-61, you can read it at home too, it was eye opening.
Later that week we did a study on healing. I normally would have been saying, “Whoa, hold on here!” But, having seen how much I had learned prior to this lesson I was open to hear what the professor had to say. The thing that resounded in my head above all was that God as never changed, and the God we see in Acts working through the disciples healing broken people can happen all the same today. We ended up gathering in the back of the room in a circle and the professor asked us if there was anyone in the group who needed healing to step inward and we would pray over them. We prayed for an hour and a half anointing people within our group. We know for sure that one person was healed!
Part of the healing lesson the professor led us through had to do with casting out demons. Again, God has never changed and he can still do the same work through us. Well, this past weekend Roy had gone out with Tricia and Lindy and had come across a man who, after hearing about his actions, appeared to be demon-possessed. I was scared when Roy was telling me about this and I thought… I need to go! We went out looking for the man, but we couldn’t find him. I was a bit disappointed, but happy because I answered God’s call and was obedient going out to look for the guy.
*FLASH FORWARD*
Well, I started this post about a week ago. But this past week we went to Puno to look for prospective homes. This is the story of what happened while we were there. It is posted on the Extreme Nazarene website, but I’ll do you the favor and post it here as well.

We have a praise from the city of Puno! We recently traveled out to Puno to look for some prospective living places and to get to know the city better. During some of our free time, we decided to explore the city. From our explorations, we discovered the most authentic “Punonian” souvenir shop! Garren and Roy initially discovered it, and then Kristen, Francisca and I met them there. By the time we had gotten there, Garren, in an attempt to get a discount on a hat, had told the store owner that we were missionaries working in Puno to plant churches.
The store owner, Hector, showed immediate interest and started asking more questions about what we were doing there. Francisca, being our only native Spanish speaker there, took the opportunity to share more about who we are and what we believe. Then, she asked him if he was ready to make a decision to give his life to Christ. There was no hesitation. He immediately said yes as he wiped away tears. We gathered around him, and Francisca led him through the sinner’s prayer. Afterward, we were joyful and shared more with him about our Christian walk and tried to feed him spiritually as much as we could in the short time we were there.
I think one of the most amazing things is how he shared how he had been looking for the truth in other religions. He had gone to Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon, and Living Water churches, but he didn’t find what his heart we looking for there. He told us that he could feel God’s presence with us. Then, I think the most amazing thing is that he told us he never has his shop open in the mornings… and that he knew that that day he needed to open his shop. I told him God had a plan and wanted him to come to him that day!
We gave him the address to the local Nazarene church in Puno, took down his information, and gave it to the Pastor. Pastor Herman said he would be in contact with him!
We are all blown away with this blessing. Not only was it awesome to see this man come to Christ, but also to see how God is preparing Puno for us before we are even there! His hand is working, cultivating the hearts of these people. It is so encouraging to see the evidence. Praise the Lord! He is so GOOD! Keep praying! The Lord is listening!

It is so true. The Lord is so good. I am so excited to see what else He has in store, I know I say that a lot, but how could I not!? Joel and I are getting along a LOT better. Today we went out into town and stopped at a restaurant with Kristen and had some Chocolate Fondue. It was pretty delicious! So, I’m just excited to be spending quality time with my partner. Thank you all for your prayers, they are every bit appreciated!

A Leader Is Born

2010-09-23T13:16:00.001-04:00

I used to think I was a pretty helpless case. Watching movies, sometimes I get jealous of the main character or hero or his courage and how he brings his vision to reality. On the other end of the tube I’d feel weak and foolish imagining myself pushing through the same obstacles. I never thought I was adequate.

My eyes have been opened to a truth I never thought I would stumble upon. For so long I had been the follower, just a kid, someone who would find consolation in the shadow of the leader and letting someone else take control. Over the past couple of weeks I have been seeing a different side of me. I am surprise, but also am very thrilled to say that I am a leader.

In my interview process of becoming a 40/40 I confess that one of the subjects I was most uncomfortable talking about was my leadership abilities. I never took on leadership roles in high school or in college. The only example I could give them of my leadership was a paper that I had to write with two other people my senior year at MVNU (how I delegated power, assumed the leader position etc.). I think a large part of not considering myself a leader was how I viewed myself.

Since being in Peru I have found myself forced into leadership positions. During Love Extreme I was thrown into situations having to direct people about the city of Arequipa that I myself had only been accustomed to maybe three weeks more that these short-termers. One day I had accidentally taken four short-term missionaries out into the mountains about an hour and forty-five minutes away from out Headquarters. Also, having a pretty decent grasp on Spanish I am often dragged into having to interpret for people.

After seeing how capable I am of leading after being thrown into similar situations time and time again I’ve been awaken to the concept that I am a leader. I’ve also noted this when I’m working with my partner. There are things that I have to iron out in my leadership skills such as control. I do like to have control and working with a partner is not about having control all the time. I’ve been working on letting people have some control and not caring what they do with it, but making it their own.

I am floored at how liberated I feel knowing that I’m a leader. I feel like I could do anything. There is nothing to be scared of. I’m ready to take on about anything.

Attention To the Dreamer

2010-09-21T23:45:00.001-04:00

Since I was in junior high I can remember being very intrigued by dreams. The story of Joseph interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams always stood out to me and made me wonder, how come God doesn’t talk to me in dreams? I’ve always been a detailed dreamer and when I write out my dreams it takes me a while because I remember a lot of information. So, about a year ago I went into a Barnes and Nobles Bookstore and found an awesome leather bound journal to record my dreams in. I remember I had done something similar when I was younger, but I fell out of it. This happens to be something that occurs with me frequently… that is the falling out of plans, because I started to forget to log my dreams again.

I haven’t had too many dreams that I can remember since being here in Peru, so these past two weeks when I remembered several of my dreams I took notice. Usually, my dreams don’t really connect with real life. They may, in a under-the-hood kind of way, be a glimpse into one’s conscience, but these have been dreams that have directly tied into my life. In one dream I had I bought a car and was driving it around, the next morning my mother sent me an email saying they got a new car! When I looked it up online I realized it looked a lot like the car I had dreamed of. Crazy thing is, I remember looking at the odometer in the car and it had 40,000 or so miles on it (I don’t remember the exact number, only that it looked something like 4*,***… does that make sense?) and when I asked my mom how many miles this car has she said 43,000! This dream really started to make me pay attention and the next dream I had helped me make a decision about a difficult situation.

Well, last night I had another dream. I dreamed that I was being persecuted for doing our mission work in Peru and we were being sent to be executed. While we were walking I remember thinking how I didn’t want to be a missionary anymore if it meant I was going to die. I caught myself instantly and knew that I had to be faithful to God and trust in Him. I remember I was crying and was in hysterics, but I kept telling myself that God wasn’t going to leave me. I think we escaped, but we ended up getting caught again and then we escaped and then I woke up. There’s a lot of other details, but that’s the gist.

I was rather freaked out when I woke up, to say the least, knowing how relevant the others were that I have had recently. I knew this morning that I needed to write these dreams down in my dream journal (which I so happen to bring with me). When I sat down to write the down I looked at the last entry… September 22, 2009. Today is September 21, 2010! I know it looks like a coincidence, but I think God is really calling me to pay attention to my dreams and this is how. I never thought I would ask you to pray for me like this and quite honestly I would think I were crazy on the other side of this, but pray that if God is trying to use dreams to talk to me that I would have the ability and wisdom to interpret them correctly.

The End of a Drought

2010-09-15T21:44:00.001-04:00

My friend Kayla sent me a package… I think I mentioned this in the past post too. Well, she sent me coffee and I forgot that my friend Ashley had given me a Starbucks personal French Press. This was the whole reason Kayla sent me coffee too! Well, I’ve been using it like no one’s business. Here’s a glimpse of my ecstasy:

It’s beautiful I know… I weep every time.

On with the serious news though! We are in the middle of a new class called… Transcultural Relationships and Communication. We’ve been talking about communication and what it means and also how God communicates with us and why it’s important to communicate transculturally. So far, class has been interesting… but today really touched my heart in a special way.

There are some below the surface things that have happened, but to save you the trouble I’ll get to the point. Cristobal was emphasizing how important it is that we spend a lot of time together with our 40/40 partner… and to be honest, when he was talking I was having an internal battle. I have not been spending enough time with my partner and I’ve been in denial and stuck in Satan’s lies about the whole matter. I have had this looming grudge over him for no reason that I could clearly identify. Towards the end of class I realized how horribly wrong I had been and that I needed to change some of my mindsets. Here are some lies I was trapped in:

We are from two different cultures… I can’t relate to him.
My American friends can understand me better
He’s too legalistic
He is really awkward
I JUST CAN’T RELATE WITH HIM!

I didn’t make this list until now, and the truth is I really didn’t even know these were lies that I had circulating in my head, they were more like feelings. Now that I have them in front of me it’s rather ridiculous to think this is where I was. I mean, this is one of the things I was most excited for… learning about other cultures!

After class Cristobal (I failed to mention that he is our professor for the class) told us that we should all talk with our partners. There is always something to resolve, he said… So, after class I told Joel that I wanted to talk. We went to the roof of Zamacola and I opened up to him. I was honest and told him that when Cristobal was saying that we needed to be with our partners more that I didn’t want to hang out with him. I told him that when I was preparing to meet him that I was excited to meet him and have the great friendship, but what I found was a person from a very different culture. From our conversation I realized that I had prejudged him. A lot of these Peruvian guys are very legalistic and because he hung with them I put him in that same slot. I’ll talk about legalism another time.

It was great to talk to him so openly. I feel like we made a step in the right decision. I told him that I want to get to know him more now and that I didn’t want to have to put aside a time specifically to talk… I wanted this relationship to be natural and authentic, nothing superficial.

Now, I’m on the right track again! Kudos for Christ! He loves to work things out. I should have known. Other exciting news? I found measuring spoons aaaaand cups! Can you believe it?! I was utterly shocked and have found a piece of my domestic soul in Peru, finally. We are still not in our new home, we are expecting and hoping to move in by the first of October (a whole two weeks behind schedule).

Also, and I’ll leave you with this, you will note that along the top right hand side of my blog there is a Link that says, “Needs in Peru.” This portion of my blog is where my supporters/readers/family/friends can check out my needs while I’m here in Peru, whether it be clothing or snacks… not that snacks are a “need” but there are things that are hard to find in Peru and well… you should just click on the link there and it will explain further!

Push!

2010-09-11T16:15:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, pushing yourself to go to work can be so hard. I remember when I was working at Bob Evan’s in the states as a server and absolutely dreading the drive to work. I knew in my head, however, that I was going to be fine and I would be with all my friends and I’d end up having a good night at work, though I can’t say the tips ever made my night I would walk out of the restaurant with a smile.

After not having to really work for some time now, and I mean real work other than just going to class with friends, I found I’ve gotten a little lazy. Uh-oh! Wednesday our pastor at Umacollo church told my partner and I to meet him at Parque el Catolica to get on a bus to go to Paucarpata for our first cell group. He also invited us last week, but things came up and we couldn’t go. The truth… I was relieved last week that we didn’t have to go.

Let me briefly explain what the cell groups are. These are practically our church plants. A plant starts out with a cell group that we work with through discipleship lessons and baptism then through membership classes. This is the Level 1 of church plants. Level two is 12 or more people meeting in a designated place once a week and then Level 3 is 30 people, but there’s more regulations that I’m not 100% sure of so I’m not going to try to expand upon that. But essentially Level 2 is our goal and 3 is our ULTIMATE goal. Level 3 is a immature church but more a church nonetheless.

This past Wednesday, when I heard we were going out to Paucarpata I was not excited to say the least. It’s about an hour and a half bus trip to the other side of the city. I started getting frustrated with myself for being so negative and by the time class was over that day I was somewhat happy to be going out to see Saul.

The more I write the more I realize I have to explain! Saul is a 20 yr old guy who has come to Umacollo church several times and we’ve run into at the Plaza de Armas as well. He went to one of the churches first retreats and gave his life to Christ. He was really excited about it. Well, he is the one person that we have in our cell group in Paucarpata… he is our main focus.

So, we end up leaving Zamacola, (our residence) an hour and a half late… that’s another story, and pick up Pastor Genaro at Pq la Catolica. We travel out to Paurcarpata and end up meeting Saul right when we hop off the bus. I don’t think that we had ever set up a time with him to meet him anywhere that day so I thought that was pretty amazing.

From the people that I’ve talked to about this whole mess that this became, I’ve found out that when Saul made his initial decision to come to Christ at the retreat he was very very excited. His parents are not supportive at all about his decision and being so far from the church he has no daily support spiritually. We couldn’t meet with him in his house so we went to a dark cold park to talk where he shared with us his doubts and worries about his decision. The pastor was giving him a watered-down talk about our spiritual walks and tried encouraging him by telling him after the storm comes the “good.” I didn’t really feel like he was talking to him from the heart…

An hour and an half later we are on the bus coming back home and Genaro tells us that there are people like this when they make their initial decision and that we (Joel and I) should come to his cell group in Gustamante with his wife. When I asked him what we were going to do with Saul he said that since we have his e-mail address then we can send him encouraging messages and pray for him… I believe he worded this… “Well, we can just pray for him.” This was only the second time that he had visited Saul. I was perplexed that he was so quick to let him go and leave him by himself. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me that we needed to push to continue visiting Saul. Joel was thinking the same thing, I found out later.

This is where I am right now. This Sunday I’m going to be talking with the Pastor. The other cell group he wants us to get involved now is the largest cell group the church has running and is also being lead by leaders in the church already. Please pray as I talk to him and try to tell him that we believe there is much more need to stay in touch with Saul. Even though it doesn’t matter what the pastor says and I can certainly continue to have a personal relationship with Saul, I would like however, for this to be my main concentration.

My friend Kayla sent me a package… it was so nice. It is the first package I have recieved since being here, which happens to be a hard thing watching other people get packages allllll theeee tiiiiiiime! Here’s something special she sent!

¡Loco por Panorámicos!

2010-08-28T17:34:00.001-04:00

Well, it’s Saturday and I’m sure all of you at home would love to smack me in the face for saying this, but I’m bored. I’m sitting on Roy’s bed sipping on my Altomayo Instant Coffee. This stuff is a lot better than the previous “cup of coffee” I displayed months ago (it deserves placement between quotation marks as I really wouldn’t ever don it as anything resembling coffee). But, I wanted to put up this post with some panoramic photos that I took today. The first one here is from the rooftop of the church building where I’m living.

This is our classroom. It is really rather large. The floor is also just as slippery as it looks. I have taken a spill or two here on this ice-rink. We just finished our second class of the fourteen that we have to take. The grading system in Peru is a little strange, as I’ve found out. The grading scale is based on a scale from 1 to 20. And that’s it. Well, the final for our last class, Biblical Basis on Missions, was a shared test. Each of us worked with our partners. Joel and I scored an 18. The highest score was Kayley(sp?) and her partner Ester with 19. I’m super proud of Joel and myself for taking second place!

This is our dining hall! It’s really too small for all of us. When there are no seats for all of us at the tables along the right that you see some spill over into the chairs and sofas to eat. This is also where all of our internet surfing happens if we don’t want to be in our rooms. Also, this happens to act as our entertainment room where we watch movies together. So, I suppose this is more like our Dining/Study/Move Watching Hall.

Here’s the guys room. On the far right you’ll notice there are three levels to the beds. Count carefully, it looks like there’s only two. I sleep on the top third bunk on this very far right set of beds. Roy and Jeremias got lucky and only share a double-decker. Sadly, Roy’s bed gets invaded a lot by vagabond Peruvians and North Americans alike. It’s very often you walk into the room and find someone who is not Roy sitting or laying on his bed. I, of course, asked permission to be here, so I’m cool.

You know, that’s all the panoramic pictures that I have for now. I guess I can give you a bit of a glimpse into how this week went. As I said we just finished our second class and that’s pretty much all this week consisted of. We had two presentations for this class, one where we had to read a book about a missionary and the other on a biblical theme. The presentations are done with our partners so Joel and I did a presentation on Richard Anderson, who did mission work in Guatemala in the early 1900’s, and then our theme presentation was Repentance. All of our presentations went well, but I’m quickly realizing just how different I am from my partner. It’s all a cultural thing. I love him, I think he’s great, but there are things that they laugh at and I’m left thinking… seriously? That’s funny? I’m praying about this a lot. I hope you would as well. I want to be able to connect with my partner and for me connecting with people hugely depends on humor. That sounds silly that I’m upset that I can’t kid around with my partner, I suppose, but it’s more than just joking around, rather I need to make a connection and relate to him. I’m hoping that maybe doing Bible studies with him in the morning will help. Please pray.

Other than that, everything is great. Friendships are flourishing and I’m not out of control maintaining them. God is teaching me so much. I’m excited to see what this next week brings. We are starting our next class Monday, Strategies for Biblical Studies. Catch ya next week.

The Mother Post: Puno

2010-08-23T22:41:00.003-04:00

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.

Welcome to Zamacola

2010-08-14T22:30:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I should wait to give you guys a full update on Zamacola, but I'm just so excited I want to let you all know how this is going to far. We are all moved into Zamacola and I have my new Peruvian partner! Whew, the Lord is so good.

First, the move. There is good news about this move here in Zamacola. It has a soon approaching end! In one month we are moving, all of the 40/40, to a new home just one block away from the church. The first floor of the apartment complex is for the guys, the second floor the girls and the third floor for the Cluster Support Family (Chad and Amanda). This is amazing considering that we have had so many problems with relationships and stuff forming here where we are now because the girls only live in the same building but in different rooms. How many of you parent's would want your kids going to a coed Nazarene school? It just didn't make any sense. So, now we get more privacy and also a better chance for hot showers! The guys scored big from the luck I got by extracting from my host family an extra electric shower head that they had. They are letting us use it for Puno also! So, the happy news is we will have reliable hot showers, privacy, better living situations to keep Satan to himself and well... We have a whole apartment to OURSELVES! It's so awesome.

My peruvian partner. I am so excited for what is to come. His name is Joel and he is 21 years old. Earlier today at the pizza shop I was trying to tell Kristen, "It doesn't look like he's 21 years old does he?" and instead I said, "It doesn't look like he has 21 years, does he?" which is the very Spanish way of saying it! Joel Antonio Piña Guerra, is his name. Upon meeting him he asked me for a hug, this is perfect. I'm so happy about the match. The Lord is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo GOOD!

A Need For Prayer

2010-08-10T22:44:00.001-04:00

You all must be thinking, This Trevor kid doesn't blog forever and de repente (suddenly (I know you don't really think in Spanish, but indulge me here)) he has two blogs in one week?! I know right? Well, I've updated the look of the blog and want to show it off! That and more importantly the Lord has been at work and I just want to share with you what exactly that is.

Roy studying hard.

Kristen being cool...?

Two weeks ago we had our weekly bible study (on Thursdays). The Whites brought in some avocados and made some guacamole, which was delicious. Right before we started the bible study the Whites (Tricia and Lindy), Kristen, and Roy got called down to the office for a meeting. This is the whole Tacna group, so we didn't really quite know what to think if the ordeal. Needless to say the guacamole was devoured by the Puno group. A day later I asked Kristen what the meeting was about but she said that she couldn't tell me... I almost couldn't handle that. I said something along the lines of, "Well, I was hoping maybe you all were coming to Puno."

You all should remember the amount of losses we've had so far, and I don't just mean from my last post. We lost Ashley from our Puno group and we lost Denina from the Tacna group. I've been praying that God would fulfill our needs in each of the groups by providing some extra help if that would be His will. Well, I had been praying the wrong way, apparently.

Today we had a meeting. All of our Cohort 4 got together, that is the group for Puno and Tacna, for an announcement. The Lord has answered our prayers, but in a way that I never thought would have been the solution. Kristen and Roy will be joining the Puno group!

I am so excited to be sharing this experience with two people that I have grown so close to. I had actually thought the past week about having to leave them for Puno and it made me really sad. I am so thankful for our God who provides in such miraculous ways. He is so good.

The Cluster Support for Tacna (Lindy and Tricia White) will take on other positions with the Extreme Ministries. Lindy will take on a position as a constructor and Tricia as a nurse. In a year they will meet a new team for Tacna for the Peru 2 project. They will still serve in Tacna, but will be spending more time in Peru in the end, of which I am slightly jealous!

Something Amanda had brought up in the meeting was that we need to start praying for the strength of the unity of our family. This is where you come in. I need my prayer warriors! I have already been faced with spiritual warfare. At first I didn't recognize it as such, but then after Amanda had talked about Satan working to pull apart our unity it became clear to me. I won't talk specifically about the situation but I had to confront an issue that tore at my heart and made me scared that I would ruin everything. Well, the Lord has been keeping us in His hands and directing that situation, but it could have been ugly.

I urge you so STRONGLY to pray for us. It is imperative! I cannot tell you how much we need your prayers. I think that folks in the States when they hear missionaries say they need prayer they tend to lean more toward the impression that they are asking heavily for financial support, but the honest to goodness truth is WE NEED YOUR PRAYER! Your financial support, of course, is greatly needed, but your prayers are what combat Satan and his forces.

With all serious things aside, here are some pictures I'd like to share with you. This is the new Bible that I bought from my host family. It's so little and it's got a little clasp. It's so pretty and it's in Spanish. I love it!

This is a typical looking plate of food here in Peru. I've only had the purple stuff twice (Russian Salad), but the portions of rice are dead on. We eat a lot of rice. The Russian Salad is made of lettuce, beets and peas. I thought it was such a pretty dish I had to take a picture. The green place mat looks nice as a background too!

My Spanish is coming along very very nicely. I'd even say that I'm more fluent than I ever had been in Spanish. There have been several times in the post where I've had to backspace a Spanish word out! Uh-oh!

Well, friends and family, like I said, PRAY PRAY PRAY! We are meeting our Peruvian partners this weekend and we have our "partner fusion" sessions. It sounds rather scary and I think most of us are a tad apprehensive... this is, after all, very similar to a Japanese arranged marriage. Yikes!

Prologue to Chapter 2

2010-08-01T19:49:00.007-04:00

A thousand apologies to my readers! It has been too long since I've given you an update on what is going on in Peru! I'm so sorry. I've been waiting and waiting for something action packed to happen so you folks at home aren't falling out of your chairs, passed out dead asleep and get a concussion. Well, to be honest I don't think that my life is that boring, but I wanted to write something that would maybe make your heart palpitate a couple beats faster per minute.

I have just been going to the Spanish school five days a week. Last week the 29th was Peru's independence day so there were two days where the city was rather tranquil. It was very difficult to travel across town, everyone stayed at home even taxi drivers apparently. Garren and I went to the Plaza de Armas Wednesday, a day before the holidays, to go to Serpost (the post office) to pick up his collection of packages. They told us the office where he could pick up his packages would open at 6 so we stayed out and about in town so we didn't have to walk all the way home and come back later.

We went to the Plaza center and sat down on a bench next to an older gentleman. He thought we were French, which I took as a huge compliment, Garren not so much (he's not a fan of anything french). We found later that his name was Percy. He was a dirty old man, but a blast to talk to. He told us about his family and a little about the weather of Arequipa. It's a universal conversation filler, the weather that is. Well, when we left him to go back to Serpost at 6 we found out that 1.) The packages had been sitting there for 6 days... and 2.) The office opens at 3:30 pm. We weren't too thrilled, but it was nice spending the afternoon in the Plaza... getting pooped on by pigeons.

This chapter of my Peruvian life is about to come to a close. We have two more weeks of Spanish class then we are moving across the city to Zamacola (about ten-fifteen minutes away on the bus). When we first got here until about three weeks ago I was excited about moving into the Zamacola church. You see, all of the 40/40's go to live in Zamacola after their language schooling is completed. We will be moving in with a handful of other missionaries that we have become good friends with. So, what's the draw-back? Well, I'm not 100% thrilled by the change of menu... our host family's food is pretty good. The thing I am not looking forward to the least is the cold showers. I've been told they are ice cold. Oh boy. Anyway, two weeks from now I'll be there in Zamacola accumulating a smell some may call B.O. (body odor) but I'll simply refer to it as C.R. (comfort retention).

Let's take a swim over to the deeper side of the pool, shall we? You may remember some of my posts talking about friendships and how I've had to re-prioritize relationships and how loco I can become which turns into Control Freak Monster. If not, here's a quick recap:

"As for the self-exploration I've realized that I've begun to loose a bit of my own self, in that I'm fading from my own individuality. I've been putting so much of my energy in building relationships with others that I've even been neglecting my relationship with God. And I'm right where I began maybe three months ago. Can I tell you how frustrating that is? Leaving my best friend at home was a wound that I started to patched with a new friendship."

So, I have been incredibly happy with myself since Mollendo, that's where this "self-exploration" took place. I've been able to stand on my own and not have to depend on what other people do to have fun or make decisions. The Lord has been filling me with Himself, which has been so satisfying. This new family of mine has become so precious to me and though it is just that important to me I have to remember where it is in line with God. I think about our future Peruvian partners and sometimes I get a rush of dread that they could put a drive between some of these friendships that I've made, but then I think to myself, "What the heck are you thinking?"

There have been ten people sent home from the mission in Peru. Seven of the ten are due to breaking a very simple rule on the field, no dating. I hope I don't get in trouble talking about this here, but I just think this is something very worthy of your prayers back at home. I don't know what happened in three of those but of the five I do. I think the most frustrating of them all is the most recent two that were sent home this past week. They were having a secret dating relationship even after we had a HUGE meeting to clarify what exactly "dating" means. All of which is rather silly, who needs to be told what dating is? But, I'm not so much mad at the people. Satan really was able to make a mess through this issue.

But, what I've realized is that having any relationship have priority over God's and mine can be detrimental. Anything that keeps me focused from the mission that I'm committed to in Peru can be just as harmful to the ministry. It's sad that some of my fellow missionaries decided they would break some of the rules, but the Lord has a plan and if it's to make a point to the rest of us 40/40 then I suppose that's a price we will have to live with.

My beloved Cluster Support father and mother, Chad and Amanda, took me out to eat last night. We went to a Sushi restaurant! I love sushi! When I left the States I was sad, because I thought I would have to wait two years before I could sample the wonderful alaska roll, or any sushi roll for that matter, again. But, lo and behold, Arequipa the city of life does have a sushi restaurant. It was so wonderful eating one of my favorite foods with my parents and their two lovable children (Ella 5yrs and Thomas 3/4yrs can't remember). I had some great conversations with them about adjusting to Peru and also got to discuss some general concerns. Overall, I was so happy and felt like we had bonded so much. I am a huge believer that food has that mysterious property of bringing people together. I tell you all with so much feeling in my heart that I love my new family so much. The Lord is so awesome with His provisions. They are not only great friends, Chad and Amanda, but are teachers through how they live. I could not have asked for better mentors.

I know this is turning into a rather long post, but you've been out of the loop so long, I'm sure you don't mind! But, I would just like to cover this one last thing. When the 40/40 missionaries come down to Peru usually part of their "Orientation" is going to El Mercado San Camilo (The San Camilo Marketplace) and tip back a refreshing glass of jugo de rana (frog juice). Doesn't that sound wonderful? Well, here are some pictures of the event.

Pre-faces:

Well, why does everybody look so apprehensive? Hmm

Here's the drink that changed our lives... forever

Apparently, the drink consisting of different cereals, eggs, coca leaves, and of course frogs is very good for your health and also... sex drive. Maybe this is why so many people have been sent home?

Here's Garren scoping out the impending torture. This really is the best representation of how we all felt.

Don't you love that they put an horribly vile drink in such pretty glasses? They thought they could fool us, I suppose, by making it look very gourmet.

After Faces:

You will note that Kristen very cleverly brought along gum. We all took a piece eagerly to cover the froggy taste enveloping our mouths, I love having my mouth enveloped (House Bunny anyone?). Johan and Brian also joined us, I just didn't get their pre-faces. But, the truth be told the drink was not that bad. We all downed our glasses in a matter of thirty seconds and nobody had a gag reflex. There was a general consensus that it tasted like a protein drink. I took mine in two tragos (gulps) and the second time I almost lost it only because the drink had gotten cold along the bottom.

Here's a video of the frog massacre.

Cooking with 40/40

2010-07-10T14:27:00.002-04:00

Here's a special entry for my dear readers!

During the Extreme Mega-Event that we had a few weeks ago we didn't have classes. Some of us were worried that we were going to loose out on what we had learned in our Spanish classes, but as we found out the two weeks were kinda like a class in itself. When we got back to classes Garren told our teachers that we had learned a lot about the language outside of the classroom by actually using what we had learned daily. It's true. I even saw a difference in my Spanish.

These are our professors! Johan and Julissa. So, Johan, our professor, in his awkward way threw out ideas of things we could do. He asked us if we wanted to go to a university to meet kids our age... none of us really wanted to touch that, it would just be weird. He also asked if we'd like to go to the market place sometime... that would be nice, so we earmarked that idea. Then, he suggested having a cooking class... HOLA!

Garren, Kristen and I were in the more advanced class and we came to the food section of our book first, so it was our class the headed it up. We found some ballin' recipes and took the lead. Two from the other class decided they needed meat so they did their own thing... we are cheap so we went veg.

Menu

Locro de Zapallo
Tortilla de Platano
Espuma Helada de Chocolate (recipe listed at bottom of post)

Locro de Zapallo

This is a very typical peruvian dish. It is made out of zapallo (a type of pumpkin), potatoes, chaclo (a type of corn), and cheese. This is not the picture of what we made... I could not find an appetizing picture online and I never thought to actually take a picture of the finished work... DUH! I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, that is all cooked down to make this. Note: I've posted the links to the recipes in the list of the menu above if you want to give these a try. For zapallo you should be able to get away with using a normal cooking pumpkin or butternut squash.

There's the zapallo all cut up. It's such a pretty color of yellow. You wouldn't believe how hard it was to actually cut the silly things. They were very duro (hard). See? Kristen is stabbing one... Ashley, the curly haired girl, is a rollin'!

There it is all cooking! About halfway through everything we cooked we ran out of propane. To the left of the stove there is a cupboard where the propane tank sits... just a little one like you have for your grill outside. When you run out you call one of the following Llamagas, Masgas, Limagas, and there's some other creative ones. Well, we got lucky because the guy who came with our gas gave us a FREE PLATE! It was amazing.

Locro de zapallo is typically served with rice. You can also just eat it by itself like a soup. Either way this is a excellent dish! I love it.

Tortillas de Platano

Okay, so Garren and I stole this from our mama. I mean, we asked her for it, but it's so good that she really shouldn't have, therefore we stole this sucker! When we were first told about this assignment Garren came home and asked mama if we could have the recipe and she told us it was really easy. Well, we sat down with her one night and were amazed when she told us what it was... It's just bananas and flour!!!!!

This delectable piece of heaven is just your normal looking tortilla. You bite into it and you find it's like a cake! The outsides are crispy and crusty and the inside gooey and beautiful, glorious CUISINE!!!! You really have to try it. I posted the recipe on www.allrecipes.com but just click on the link under Menu and you'll get there!

Garren was in charge of this one because it's his favorite thing in our house. I mean, it's my favorite too, but he had it first so... Here he is aplastando (mashing) the bananas. The truth of the matter is we, ehm he bought the wrong bananas. Really, you go to Wal*Mart in the states and you want bananas, you go to one section where it says bananas you get your bananas. Well, here in Peru not only do they have over 100 different types of potatoes (I do not lie), but there are several types of bananas. You know that platanos are not like bananas, but who knew that bananas de isla would be different! Needless to say, our tortillas were not the same as mamas... Since then though I have helped mama make this splendor of splendors and all turns out well the way we did things, just with REAL bananas.

Second step so EASY! Add the flour! After this you just fry it in the pan.

Espuma Helada de Chocolate

Yes, I'm a cheat. I did not take this picture either. I need to get better at documnenting things with my camera. Well, this dessert was so fun to make! It translates directly as Frozen Chocolate Foam! I didn't get any pictures but I did get a video! ENJOY!

Espuma Helada de Chocolate
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp flavorless gelatin
- 1 can evaporated milk (left to chill in the fridge a few hours IMPORTANTE)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- cherries or chopped chocolate for garnish

1.) Whip the evaporated milk until the volume doubles and it has the consistency of a thick cream.
2.)Add the sugar slowly as not to weigh down the fluff you just made.
3.)Then little by little add the chocolate.
4.) In a separate dish, dissolve the gelatin in a 1/4 cup hot water. Add the gelatin little by little and mix well.
5.) Put the mix in whatever mold you wish.
6.) Put in the fridge for two hours or until firm.

----------------------------------------------

Lastly, I would like to share with you what I am drinking right now. You all may think that being in South American I have access to the greatest coffee in all the world. The horrible truth is that our coffee in Peru is mostly exported out of the country. Unfortunately, I get instant coffee every morning.

Look at those wonderful clumps of undissolving instant coffee...

Anyway, that's all hem-haw. Our cooking day was a success and we learned a lot of new words!

Thanks for tuning in! And join us next time for COOKING WITH 40/40!

Vacaciones en Mollendo

2010-07-06T22:44:00.001-04:00

After two weeks of a lot of work, Brian Tibbs decided to give the Extreme Staff a Extreme Vacation. It was meant for rest and relaxation, and for me I was able to do some self-exploration. The photo above is the Castle de Forga in Mollendo. I don't really know anything special about it except the mayor of Mollendo, Jose Miguel Forga, built it in 1908.

Beth and I climbed up to the house and went inside. This was a spectacular sight to see. I didn't take these pictures, but I found this online and it's actually I bit more beautiful that what I saw. If I had seen this...

The weather wasn't the best that anyone could have asked for. All this past week the Peruvians were telling us that it was going to be freezing in Mollendo, that it always is this time of year. It actually started to make me mad after a while. Who tells someone when they're going on vacation that where they're going will be horrible?

From the moment that we drove into the coast I could tell we were not going to have much sun and there would be little of tomaring of sol (sunbathing). I've not been to the ocean very many times in the States to make an accurate comparison, but the fog made me think of what I thought Maine would look like. It was so pretty. The air was brisk and heavy with moisture, a welcome change from the arid climate of Arequipa. My lips finally got a break from kissing the Carmex tube every ten minutes.

As for the self-exploration I've realized that I've begun to loose a bit of my own self, in that I'm fading from my own individuality. I've been putting so much of my energy in building relationships with others that I've even been neglecting my relationship with God. And I'm right where I began maybe three months ago. Can I tell you how frustrating that is? Leaving my best friend at home was a wound that I started to patched with a new friendship.

I took this weekend to force myself away from some people and learn what it is to be me again and to do what I want to do instead of always following people around. Along with wanting to be myself again has come some instances of anger... I'm still figuring that one out.

On the 4th we had a bonfire to celebrate our Independence Day of the US! I, however, was bothered and decided to lay down on the beach away from everyone else. I prayed a lot about what I have been doing to myself, putting priorities on the wrong things and why I was getting so angry about stupid things... and it came back to me again. It is out of my control. So frustrating that I have to repeat this lesson. Overall, I think it was a great weekend and I've had a good time redirecting my heart.

Finally, the second best part of Mollendo was our S./20 (20 soles... it's money) allowance that Brian gave us... mine was spent on ICE CREAM! The restaurant next to our hotel had a freezer filled with ice cream wonders. I ate in total six ice cream cones, and five ice cream bars... and two small tubs of ice cream too. The lady in the shop was amazed at my gorging abilities and my apparent stamina to the chill of Mollendo enough to eat tons of ice cream and not be affected.

I guess this ranks with the second best part of the trip, but I had the most amazing steak I think I'll ever have in Peru.

The waves were rather ridiculous.

New Lesson Learned

2010-06-28T20:00:00.001-04:00

About a week ago one of my fellow 40/40 missionaries pulled our cohort to the side after church and told us that she would be going home, that she was outside of her umbrella of support, and could not handle the change, call, pressure, whatever you want to call it. We were devastated. The cohort's become a family, really, and it was hard to have another person taken from us.

Our group that is stationed for Puno lost a person, making our number three. Tacna only had three and it was their team that lost a member, making their number two. I never thought we would loose anyone else. It made me start thinking about the rest of us and even myself and I wondered if any of us could be next. This occasion has made me realize just how fragile we are on the mission field. Things can happen and can so easily get out of control.

Our loss has brought to mind the story of Gideon. His army was so large that if he went into battle they would win and the glory would have gone to the army instead of God. So, God has Gideon cut down the number of the army so that only He could be recognized out of the victory. We are the smallest cohort that has come down to Peru. I think the other cities have six North Americans in their assigned areas, which with their Peruvian partner makes them 12. If God wants our numbers for these two cities to be small then so be it. He will be glorified.

All the while that I was contemplating this story I was also praying that it be in God's will that he give us another 40/40. As you all know, we had our Love Extreme not too long ago, and they announced the other cities that Extreme will be going to next. They gave the short-termers the oppurtunity to sign up for these projects ahead of time as 40/40's or as short-termers again. One of the girls said she was ready to come to Peru now to be a 40/40. They interviewed her and after much prayer they decided to add her to the Tacna team! Isn't God good?!

Our number is still small, but God answered our prayers. I don't know if anyone else was praying for another 40/40 but I have been just amazed at the power of prayer since being down here. First with Love Extreme, now with Kelsey our new sister! Your prayers at home are so important. Please, do not stop praying for us. My new lesson learned is the power of prayer and what an amazing tool it can be. It sounds cold to say it, but it's something the Lord has given us for combat with Satan.

Whoa Nelly!

2010-06-24T14:13:00.001-04:00

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

This is my point of view right now. I think it's interesting how monotone our room is... and a weird color at that. I don't think I gave you folks an update that I made a move. I changed locations with another guy in our cohort to help my old roommate learn the language a little faster. I'm living with this amazing guy, Garren.

The window, that is the blur of white light in the photo, might as well be a hole in the wall. It does nothing to block the sound of the busy street outside. Garren said when he and Micah had moved in he told Micah to close the window. It already was.

So, I'm sitting in my room listening to the garbage trucks go by playing their little melodies and the taxistas blowing their horns. And my insides are restless. I tell myself... easy, easy. And I realize, I'm a horse!

Pray that I simply listen to God. His voice is here in my ear... rather His hand is behind me pushing me forward and my head is saying... I'm not ready yet. I need to be at ease. Necesito estar tranquilo.

P.S.- The culture is so exciting again! One of my professors gave me a history book to read on Peru. It's all in Spanish and the words are rather beyond my level, but I want to learn them. The love for language is coming back as well. I'm excited to see the Lord moving in my love for the people. I think today is another necessary step toward loving this country.

A Job Well Done

2010-06-21T00:41:00.000-04:00

This day is nearly halfway over. I am sitting at our computer desk and am sighing praises to God as I think about this weekend and the way that it unfolded. I think I gave you a general idea of what this past week looked like, but let me update you.

Love Extreme is the project we've been preping for in Arequipa to jump start the church planting that is going on here in the city. We want to flip this town and start a revolution for Christ. This Mega Event is the largest event that the Nazarene Church has put on in this city, ever. The goal was to get 10,000 people to the event. People were coming to speak such as Nick Vuijicik and Felix Vargas. Nick was born without arms and legs and Felix is an ex-cartel worker that left the drug industry and found Christ.

This past week was soaked with hard work. There were at least 10 different projects going on daily. We had 300 short-term workers come to the city to help with the event. We were doing promo events where Taxi drivers were given packets of fliers and whoever got the most people to come to the event won a laptop, we hung 30,000 signs across the city, some people were involved in construction projects in churches and some were sent out to future church sites and annoited the ground with oil. There were some days where we simply went out to the Plaza de Armas and passed out fliers. In total we passed out 96,000 fliers!

Yesterday was the big day. Garren and I were in charge of the Cuy mascot suits. (Don't know what cuy are? Check it out) We just made up a schedule and posted it on the wall for the short-termers to refer to and helped Dennis and the rest of the staff with last minute details or emergancy errands. There were food courts, a children's festival, medical clinics, informational desks, men's and women's conferences and the big events like Nick Vuijicik.

From the first few people that came in the gates I saw some young kids that I had met earlier that week at the Plaza when I had been passing out fliers. They were really excited to see me and they brought a video camera to document the day. They interviewed me... I don't know how well that went. I thought it was so neat to see some of the people I had invited some to the event!

At 5pm Nick spoke. It was very powerful. I thought it was pivital how Nick's story could relate to those in Peru. He has experienced an oppresion that not many people in this world can say they can relate with. It's undeniable that the people of Peru are searching for something. There were hardly any people that would not take the fliers and every person who took one would read it front and back. They are under a heavy oppression and I think they could relate to Nick in a distant way. Nearly everyone at the event asked when Nick as going to speak.

When Nick spoke he gave the salavation message at the end. At the very end he gave the oppurtunity to say the sinners prayer. From where I was I could not hear the people in the crowd repeating the prayer with Nick and I was a little disappointed, but then at the end he asked those who prayed to stand up... I didn't see that either. A few moments later he had people raise their hands who said the prayer and that's when I saw them. About 3,000 people gave their life to Christ yesterday.

Later, when Brian Tibbs was taking Nick back the airport he asked Nick how he thought it went. He said that usually when he gives the salvation message and asks the people to stand to pray he gets about 10%-20% response. He said last night he got an 70% response from the people in the audience. I had noticed this also, but he has repeated how important and real this decision was to give one's life over to Christ three times, because he wanted to make sure that the crowd has understood what he was saying! He was doubting the amount of people that stood! God is so good!

Today, we had a huge celebration. The church service was really long, but it was worth it. There is a team of people that are following up on those who dedicated their lives. I'm so excited for what God is doing. Now, I'm dead beat tired and have mustered all I could to get this post up. I hope you all had a wonderful father's day!

Amor Action

2010-06-14T23:22:00.000-04:00

I had really wanted to post a new blog this past weekend after the first day of the start of our big project, however, I have been extremely busy and this is the first moment that has risen to taken update everyone. Each day I am getting more and more excited for the event. It's this coming Saturday! Please, everyone, PRAY PRAY PRAY! We want to turn this town around for Christ! We are trying to get 10,000 people to the event. We can only do so much, but just pray that these peoples hearts will be turned and their interest peaked as we promote the big day.

I feel like as a 40/40 and not having been entirely involved in the planning process until this point. The past few weeks I have been stuck in a classroom reviewing the language. Other than that my time has been spent hanging out at the office studying with others or walking to and from our host family's homes. This is the first taste of activity that we have gotten.

These past few days God has revealed to me that He can work through me and that He will. Everyday we are assigned to a project. The first day of preparation for the project we had all gone out to the airport and picked up all the short-term missionaries from the airport. Once we had them at their hotels I was assigned to a project to promote the event by getting taxi drivers to participate in our contest. The winner gets a laptop. So, these taxi drivers just have to give fliers to their passengers. We gave each of the taxi drivers a packet of 100 fliers. The taxista (taxi driver) who gets the most people to the event wins the laptop. I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO TAXI DRIVERS! I was so nervous... I did it anyway and I did fine. No problem. Today my assignment was to take four short-termers around town on a combi (bus), one of them dressed up in a Cuy (guinea pig) mascot costume. I DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS! This meant we had to get in a tight space with a larger costume and tons of people packed on board. I did it anyway... and this time I thought, God has placed me in the circumstance and I know that He will be me through it. I prayed a lot on the bus... I fell in some mans lap when I wasn't holding on the the bar... (extremely embarrassing) and I got to share with a ton of people about the event!

What I've realized is that I've been putting a limit on what God can do. I also have realized that my thought patterns are more directed toward the flesh. I have found myself saying that I cannot do that... instead of giving myself over to God to use me. I can't do these things, just myself, but what I've forgotten is that God is working through me and that it's Him that is doing the work. I'm just there as a vessel.

Beside the falling in some man's lap today I did another taxi promotion. We got a total of 50 taxis to join the contest today! My friend, Garren, has an interesting story of what happened to him today. It's pretty neat, I hope you'd take some time to read it. The Lord is at work here. You can see it in the issues that are arising. Satan is really trying to keep his foothold here in this city. I urge you to pray that his power is bound here.

A Group Realizes...

2010-06-10T00:28:00.000-04:00

When you go to class (or when you went to class) what did the view look like out the window? Well, this is mine. Our Spanish classes are at the office, but we don't have enough room to have the two classes inside the office, so one group (my group) has to meet outside on the veranda. This is Misti Mountain. Garren has conceived that this is the very mountain that J.R.R. Tolkien writes about in his book The Hobbit. There is a secret door in the side of the mountain that leads to a heap of gold with a dragon sitting atop that's missing a scale. Shoot an arrow through the scale and the gold is all ours. At least this is the theory.

This past week in our bible study we all mutually agreed that we were kind of stuck as to what our next step should be. We all have worked hard to get to this point. I know for me that getting to Peru was my goal for a long time and now that I'm here it's shocking and confusing as to what I should be doing now. We realized that we are still missionaries and that we have plenty of opportunities to share with people on the streets etc.

Having this discussion in our bible group was a great preparation for the meeting that all the staff had yesterday. We are getting ready for a Mega-Event here in Arequipa. I talked a little about it in my last post, but we are expecting 10,000 people to attend all of our events. There are 380 short-termers that are coming down to assist the project. Our goal is to flip this city for God and to help those who will be stationed in Arequipa to plant churches. This meeting that we had yesterday was a discussion on what needs to be done and what we will be doing throughout Love Extreme (the name of the project). I found out I'm going to be helping promote the project on the streets with fliers, posters, and megaphones! Megaphones!!! I'll also be one of the leaders (along with Garren and Micah) to organize the Rico Team a.k.a. guinea pig mascot suits! That's fun.

So, to all my readers I urge you to pray for this event! This is the largest event that we ever have had and it's extremely important. The staff has been working ridiculously hard to get this project up and going and there's still lots of things that need to get done. Pray for the hearts of the community that they will be open to hear the words that will spoken to them in these events and feel God's amazing love. This is EXTREME LOVE here.

Aside from the BIG event we are having here is Kristen playing some Pictionary.

Or how about Garren with THIS guy? Can you guess it? The answer is at the bottom of this post.

I have been trying to keep a journal for myself everyday. I thought I would want to post everything on here, but I realize that it's an amazing practice to sit down at the end of the day and just think. I've been writing everything in my journal in Spanish to help facilitate the learning even further. It's working well.

I would like for you all to pray for Love Extreme, like I had said, and also for those of us who are having trouble learning this language. There are some of us that are really struggling. Also, pray that we remember why we are here in Peru. You may think that sounds ridiculous, but we are in a transition time until we are on the field in Puno. What we have to remember is that we are actually on the field right now. I have noticed that people are watching us, and people do know who we are. Pray that we are sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is guiding us toward and our ears will be tuned to God's voice.

Give up? Ugh, looser. The answer was AVATAR!

Thanks To My Hacker Friend

2010-06-06T20:45:00.001-04:00

I do have the horrible habit of leaving myself logged into my gmail account on other's computers. And if you haven't read "my" last post, do so and you'll understand. Here's a photo of the perpetrator.

Well, that's my attempt of payback. :) Garren is really a great friend. Very sarcastic at times and hard to read (except in the above picture). He is a very huge blessing to me on this trip, though. His entry is a compilation of things that have happened thus far on the trip... not all are entirely accurate though, I am not growing a rat-tail, you will be glad to know.

Anyway, things are going great here in Peru. Some of us are having a hard time with the language, others are doing everything they can from throwing up what they're eating and then others are adjusting simply to the altitude (which includes near overdoses of Imodium and Peptobismal).

The other day we went out to Zamacola for a lunch after a morning of fasting. The dinner was a soup and then a plate of fried chicken, rice and a salad. Well, the soup was good for me. One lucky girl, Ashley, got a chicken foot in her bowl. I can hear the resounding gasp imparting across the world. Yes, folks she was served a chicken foot with nails still intact. She did not eat it, but was very intrigued.

A couple days later at dinner I was talking with Lala, the host lady I live with, and she asked me if I have ever eaten chicken feet, liver, heart, or gizzard... I told her no. After a bit of a conversation about the ethics of eating chicken odds-and-ends she asked me if I would eat these things if she served them, because this is something they eat occasionally here. I told her that I would make no promises to like it, but I would try it nonetheless. I figure, why not be adventurous.

And here's one last random thought for the day. I was walking across the bridge on my way home today and I was amazed at how effortlessly I could walk. I mean, it took no thought whatsoever. Take ping-pong for example. We had an intense match a couple weekends ago, and it took so much concentration... Walking, on the other hand, is a breeze... you just go... no other thought needed. I guess this is a good thing to think about as within the next couple of weeks we are putting on our Extreme Love event here in Arequipa and this guy Nick Vuijic. He was born without legs or arms and has a very uplifting story. Also, there is going to be Felix Vargas, an ex drug cartel worker.

That's all for now. And if you want to visit Garren's real blog you can find a link along the right or just click here.

I Like Turtles

2010-06-05T21:51:00.000-04:00

Trevor stayed logged on, on my computer. So I will post a little bit about Trevor.

First off, he is very much Swedish. Like it or not.

Trevor's favorite thing to do is to walk around el cercado all day los sabados.

His second favorite thing to do is to put cotton in his mouth and chew on it back and forth.

His third favorite thing to do is to say, "Oh man, oh man, that's great."

His fourth favorite thing to do is to be very gringo and very pavo.

His fifth favorite thing to do is to fold brochures.

His sixth favorite, last but not least, is to find out where Kristin's tattoos are.

You like that Kristin? I got you in this blog. I even bolded your name.

In reality, Trevor is quite joyous and passionate about being here in Peru. We have become great friends even though we are four years apart en edad. I like to say my maturity makes up the difference, but in reality I like to say his immaturity makes up for it. Trevor and I are growing mustaches together, and we're also beginning the process of growing rattails. Yay for european style. Trevor is also my assistant for Operation: Acquire Dog for Puno. One that isn't so big that it can see the table when it stands up, but one that isn't small so you can't punt it. The next two years we'll develop a great friendship between Trevor and I hope he chooses to keep this post up.

Sincerely,

Garren

P.S. I hope you can comprehend sarcasm.

Mountains and Sunshine and Blue Skies Ohmi!

2010-06-02T14:01:00.000-04:00

Months ago I thought to myself... Self, when you get a blog in Peru you're going to have so much to write about. I realize now my err. It's a little difficult picking out of all the things going on something to write home about... beside the interesting cultural differences. So, here I will try.

First, I'll tell you about some things they do differently here.

Everyone, everyone wears their shoes in the house... so it seems. I haven't heard this explanations yet, but it was the same in Costa Rica, that if you walk around with no shoes on the cold will come up into your feet and make you sick.
We do NOT throw toilet paper down the toilet. I don't even think they call it toilet paper here... I believe the name is personal paper. That sounds much more modest, doesn't it? But yes, they do not put toilet paper down the lou. There is, instead, a waste basket beside the toilet where you tirar (throw away) the paper. It makes for a confusing time in the bathroom.
There is no such thing as ice cubes. I'm not sure if this is a hard fact, but I have been wanting a glass of ice cold water for a week now and it just doesn't happen. The refrigerator at my house is too small to fit any kind of pitcher inside so the water sits on the counter. The coldest drink I had was a sip of a frozen lemonade at this wonderful restaurant in town called Capriccio.
Garbage trucks are Peruvian Ice Cream trucks! They go around town playing... Barbie by Aqua. Ivan (the host I live with) told me that they used to make an awful sounds, so to not annoy the neighborhood they play this song. The reason they make any noise at all is because there is not set time they come and it just lets people know they are coming.
Arequipa's weather is 60-70 F. We wear sweaters and parka coats regardless... because it's cold.
Buses are built for 12 year olds. I'm too tall to fit in these things! I step on and have to bend my head down to stand on the combis, as they call them.

That's all I can think of for now.

Two posts ago I spoke of having culture shock. I wanted to give it a couple days before I wrote anything about it, because I wanted to analyse what I was feeling and have an accurate grasp on the situation. I'm not sure how many of you know, but when I was in Costa Rica two years ago for school I was robbed at knife point. It wasn't as horrible as I thought such an event would be, rather the after affect is what's been the worst. There have been times that I'll be walking in a parking lot at night and someone will be close behind me and my heart rate would go through the roof. The idea that they could rob me was all that I could take.

This is something that I knew I would have to deal with being in South America. The day I made my initial post about being in culture shock was a result of feeling extremely anxious about being in a place that reminded me a lot of Costa Rica... where it was a viable possibility I could be robbed, again. I think I confused the feelings of fear with culture shock. I was ready to go home on day three!

After I made the post we headed out to Kristen's house, out in Zamacola... it's out in the country. And I was unnerved because we were going to be out after dark. We were just getting on a combis and Krsten courageously went up to the cambiador (the guy who collects the bus fair) and asked him if the bus went to Zamacola. It just made me realize that I needed to be like that. I cannot live in fear! I talked to Kristen and Roy about it and their encouragement helped me so much. The next day I came to school and Kristen had done her devotions the night before and read a piece of scripture out of Joshua where God commanded him to be courageous.

I have never had a fear wiped away 100% so quickly. I believe with all of my heart that God intervined in this situation and took my worry from my heart. This whole situation just makes my faith in Him even stronger and I'm so thankful for that. Maybe this is the reason why God allowed me to get robbed... so that I would learn to put my trust in Him even more. Isn't He amazing.

Anyway. I love you all. I thank you all for your prayers. I see His hand working in Peru. Ask me questions if you have any!!!! Email me at ruhlandt@gmail.com

Que Retrocedemos (Let's look back)

2010-05-29T19:17:00.003-04:00

My great friend, Garren, has given me confidence enough that I won’t fry my computer if I plug it in. The voltage is different here in Peru. I don’t know what it is in the States but here it’s 220V. Apparently, this little black box on my cord automatically transforms the amount of voltage coming into my computer. Wow, Portuguese (Garren), you’re a life saver.

So, let me back up about a week here and fill you in on what has been going on! I understand now why it’s so important to keep up with this blog because now I’m not sure where I left off or how to begin.

These luggage tags my friend, Claudia, gave me before I left made my bags so easy to find, and also a target for humor. I don’t care what anyone says, I like them.

It took us in total about two or three days to get to Arequipa, Peru officially. We left from Florida on a bus at about 2pm on Saturday, May 22 to go to the airport. We flew to Houston and got there at about 8pm.

Here are some of my new friends. (From left to right) We have Roy, Micah, Garren and me. This was our bus ride from Hobe Sound Florida to the Fort Lauderdale Airport.

Here’s Garren and Ashley waiting patiently in the Fort Lauderdale airport for our airplane. This was when we still had some energy.

The Duerre’s are the Cluster support of my new family in Puno. They are like our mother and father. I love them so much and am so excited to get to know them more. Again, in Fort Lauderdale.

These are their children:

Their daughter’s name is Ella, and she is four and there’s Thomas who’s three. They were playing with something… I don’t remember.

We got into Houston at 8pm, like I said. The van that came to pick us up couldn’t fit all of our things in one trip so they had to come for us in two trips. Roy, Garren and I stayed behind with the rest of our luggage for the second pick-up. Most of this luggage was from Amanda and Chad Duerre, because they are moving their little boy and girl down to Peru with us. They have loooots of luggage! On the second pick up we got to hear some Italians chatting behind us. I was surprised that I could understand a lot of them. Oh, nearly forgot to explain this photo! This is Micah on his computer. He was waiting patiently for us to get back from the airport in our hotel room.

The next morning we drove over to the airport in Houston to get there by 12pm. International flights require that we get there two hours early, but knowing that

Chad

and Amanda had a ton of luggage we had to leave earlier.

Here is a ejemplo (example) of the amount of luggage we had. Welcome to the mountain. Poor Thomas was beginning to get tired here. It only got worst for the children.

Thomas is so cute. Today he told me he doesn’t like me though. Haha! I’ll have to win him over somehow.

Our flight took off from Houston at 3:45 and it was six hours long. It started to get dark so I wanted to take a quick picture. I got to sit next to the wings, which I always thought was a cool place to sit on a plane. Que chevre! (How cool!)

This is flying into Lima. We got in at about 9 or 10pm. We got into the airport and went through customs. I was the only one in our group that spoke Spanish so, I had to really work my magic. I’m not going to lie, I was really nervous… we’ll talk about that in another blog.

When we got past customs, which comprised a system of push-a-button-and-if-the-light-turns-green-you-can-keep-on-going-but-if-it-turns-red-you-have-to-open-all-your-bags, we found out that we couldn’t check in our bags until 4am…

Since we could not check in our bags we could not go to our gate to sleep… so we had to find a place somewhere in the airport and sleep somehow… This is the second place we visited. The first place we got kicked out of because they needed to mop the floors.

Garren was able to wrap himself up like a mummy in a sheet and sleep on the floor. I wish that I had gotten a picture of it, but that was at 2:30 in the morning and I was too tired to care. However, this was not where we ended the night either. They had us move to the other side of the hall because they wanted to mop this area too. The children were cranky and we were all very tired at this point. I think overall the appropriate description would be miserably tired.

This was after we went through immigration.

This is a new friend, Amy, that we picked up along the way. She is not with our group, but will be participating in Love Extreme, a project that the Extreme organization is putting on here in Arequipa and some other cities. I think she’ll be with us for a couple weeks?

And finally! We arrived in Arequipa. I don’t have any photos for when we stepped off the plane, but we left Lima at 6am and got to Arequipa at 8am. We were all very very tired. The amazing thing was we came off the plane old-school with a set of rolling stairs set up against the plane! I felt like a movie star. Walking into the airport the other 40/40 group was waiting for us there. They screamed me name as I rounded a corner coming into the airport and I nearly fell on the ground! It was very emotional.

So, I’ve been here in Arequipa for about five days now! We started our language school Tuesday, so that is all going well. When I first got here I was feeling regret. The moment I stepped off the plane I just had a pit in my stomach. I kept thinking… What are you doing, Trev? Yet, Monday, after we arrived in Arequipa and after they let us sleep, we had a meeting with Brian Tibbs, the man in charge. He talked us through what we would be doing and even gave us a sort of orientation about how Extreme is formed and what we are doing as missionaries. I’ll inform you all of that later. After our meetings I was much encouraged.

I also spoke in my last post about culture shock. I want to revisit that another time. First, I just want to update you all on what’s going on and give you some cool stuff to look at. Here’s a look at my room too!

My bed is the blue one and Roy’s is the red one.

And that’s my closet space. I feel bad because Roy only has this little end table with drawers that he has his things in. I’m telling him right now that he ought to put his things in this closet area too. There’s still room Roy!

Here’s the rooftop. We are living with a host family in La Arboleda in El Cercado of Arequipa. I’m very happy with the people I’m living with. Their names are Lala (Gladys) and Ivan. They have a son Matteas??? I think that’s his name. But here in the background you can see Misty… the mountain. Garren and Micah have a beautiful rooftop view at night. I’ll have to take my camera over there next time and get some pictures. So, so, so pretty.

We don’t live very close to the office where we are taking our classes. We are about a 15 minute ride on combis (bus) away. Taxis aren’t expensive, but with the allowance we are given we really cannot afford to take them everywhere. Taking the combis forces you to know where you are and give you a better idea of the area too. It’s difficult to get used to, but it’s the best way to get to know our way around.

Well, I’ll leave you with all of this. This is a very very long post and I hope that you were entertained. I will try to do better at updating frequently. Now that I know that my compute won’t burn up with it plugged in here I can do my posts at home and then post them at the office where I have my Spanish classes. I’ll also try to take a lot more pictures for you folks!

Continue to pray for me. I felt great today about the culture shock, but I know this is something that will rise again. I will write more about it later, but I want more time to think it all over, what’s going on with me, I mean.

Your prayers have already been at work, I can tell. I love the people I’m here with, and my fears about friendships at home have been consoled. The Lord is so faithful. Anyway, I don’t want to make this too long! God Bless!

El principio

2010-05-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Culture shock! Woot! I'm a little surprised that I am feeling culture shock so quickly. Usually, it takes a bit more time for it to hit. Please, continue to pray for me as I'm pushing through this.

My travel from Florida to Peru was loooong. It took, in total, 3 days for us to get to Arequipa. Sunday night we had to spend the night in the Lima airport where we slept on the ground. It was pretty sweet. Haha!

I'm so sorry that this is so short. I'm kinda in a bind where I'm using someone else's computer right now. My host family's house has internet so I will be able to use that service with my computer when I get it all set up. The electric is little iffy... I don't know if it's really safe to plug my computer in. My roomie Roy plugged in his alarm clock and it burned up. We coul smell the heat... uh oh. So, we have to get a converter and also there's not plug for the third grounding prong. So, I may have to cut that off?

My host family is very very nice. I love the house that we are living in. It is definitely very different from the house that my Tica mama had in Costa Rica.

Again, please keep me in your prayers as I go through this time of adjustment. I am also dealing with anxiety from when I got robbed in Costa Rica. That's another story though.

Here's a friends blog if you'd like to follow along with that too! http://www.garrenmoore.blogspot.com/ He has a little bit more of an interesting log up that you can get an idea for the area. I'm just pressed for time ;)

I'll have pictures soon!

Onward

2010-05-21T18:08:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe that it is already Friday. This week has gone so quickly, even though when I first got down here I thought that I would only be in this place for about three days. It was a little comforting knowing that we were going to spend time together for a little while before we set out to Peru.

I am so emotionally drained from these past two days. The first two days of orientation were listening to two guys talking about the Extreme Program very very ambiguously and telling us about the Nazarene missions corps. These past two days though, have been centered on getting to know our team members through counsel-like settings. We did a lot of "processes" and activities where we talked through emotional blocks, fears and expectations. Two whole days of digging inside oneself and throwing out those emotions to others has taken its toll and I am exhausted. I said in one of out sharing sessions that I felt like I had taken an emotional ipecac and today I was dry heaving.

Sunday we go to Peru! But first, on Saturday, we fly out to Houston, Texas where we will spend the night in an hotel. We are all so excited to get started in the school. It's amazing how close we have gotten as a team in such a short amount of time. I realize that it's probably a honey-moon period, but I am still excited to see where these relationships will go. We are all so excited!

I'm Here!

2010-05-18T20:25:00.000-04:00

Wow, I'm in Florida! I cannot believe it. It's really strange being here with all these people that I have seen on facebook and now are tangible objects sitting in front of me. They are like fictional characters that I've only read about coming to life out of a book or a movie. It's rather surreal.

The flight down was smooth. That was the first time that I had ever flown by myself. Every other flying experience I've had I was accompanied with other people, so relying completely on myself was an interesting experience. The most surprising thing about it was that I was completely calm! Nothing too stressful about it, just an afternoon of flying and waiting in airports.

When I met everyone it was rather awkward, I think. Not because I didn't like them or that they didn't meet up to my expectations. In fact, I'm elated with the people that I'm here with. I'm so excited to get to know everyone more. The strangeness about it was that we are kind of a predetermined family. They said something similar to this in one of our orientation sessions earlier today, but I thought it first! This family was chosen for me! I suppose that's how real blood families are too, but there's a connection of blood there. There is history and connectedness. When I met one of the guys, Garren, I was just thinking to myself as we were walking... We are supposed to become family. A strange concept considering I really know nothing about these people.

I am not sad at all. That's relieving. I'm so thankful for the lessons that God has taught me and how He has prepared me for my departure. If I had left my friends all at once, I would have been a complete mess. This is all good.

The orientation sessions are really good too. I've had a lot of time already spent with my new family that I will be with in Puno, Peru. I really like them. As part of an activity today we had to write on a poster board the city name we were going to and then come up with a name/mascot and write it on the poster board in permanent marker. Somebody said The Puno Posse... Well... I heard The Puno Pasta and that's what I wrote and now that's what we are! We all thought it was pretty great and decided it truly defines our group.

Well, that is all I have for now. The next time I post I will probably be in Peru!

Procrastination or Sanity Maintanence

2010-05-14T16:07:00.000-04:00

I am trying to get things done. This past year the thought occured to me that I may possibly had A.D.D. It might be the stress also. My brain feels like a mass of water slushing around in my head as I walk into my bedroom to try and organize what things I want to take. Where do I start? I simply hate this part. On top of trying to get my head together I had to figure out what I was going to do for another suitcase. I went into the crawl space last night and found there were two suitcases... one new and one old. When I confronted my mom about it she told me I could only take the old one. I guess I understood that... and I can't really complain too much about it because I know she reads this. That's right Mom! I can't believe you would try to send your son out of the country with one suitcase! Well, I tried taking it lightly and thought about the sacrafice it would be... I still hated the idea. However, my loving grandfather had a suitcase even bigger than the new untouchable suitcase I couldn't have. It is a blessing.

I called my two other banks about my student loans and found out they are alllll deferred. This is such a praise. Everything is coming together now.

As much as I'd love to be on top of all this stuff, right now I just needed to take some time to reflect. I just found one of my dog's eye boogers on my shirt... See? A.D.D!

Alright, I really haven't done anything to merrit this time for procrastination. It has definitely helped to vent and get all my frustrations out.

And a special message to mothers out there... please just be chill when your son/daughter is trying to pack. You have the uncanny ability to stress them out. :|

It's Undeniable

2010-05-08T21:40:00.004-04:00

I uploaded a video to YouTube of my song that I wrote recently. It really just encompasses everything that I've been feeling in terms of leaving for Peru and has been an extreme comfort/release for me. I hope you all enjoy (it's on the bottom)

My parents came to the house today and took my bed, dresser, and some boxes, so now everything looks terribly empty. I thought that today would be another one of those revelation days, but it's funny the numbness one can feel when an oncoming change ensues. I remain blind to the oncoming change and cannot wrap my head around the reality of it. I hate the divide I've encountered between logic and my emotions. I know in my head I'm going to Peru, but the comprehension of that fact still escapes me. At the very same time, my emotions are obviously in the know and are on a rampage. Why can I not wed the two?

I've been consistently praying when I get down that God come to my aid as my best friend. It sounds silly, but my prayer legitimately goes like this, "God, you are my best friend. Please come be with me!" I am at time very lonely and feel the withdraws on my social atmosphere. I have depended too long upon physical relationships... I just wish my mind wasn't so involved by feeding me lies about what will happen to friends here at home. I should not care. Or should I?

I am coming up to the bend on my road. I have been able to see up until this point what was ahead of me. God clearly marked my path by saying that I was going to go to Peru. The preparation is almost over and I have yet to see the next step!

I wish there was an immediate means to attaining my comfort. I know how I could find my comfort easily. I could just call Rachel Kuhn and tell her that I'm not going to go to Peru, that I've renounced my faith and I'm turning to Buddhism and then I could stay in Mount Vernon where my friends are and build my life around relationships that will fail me in every way that the Lord's would not. And as much as I want to believe so dearly that that would be the answer to my prayers and that I would be my happiest there... I know it's the biggest lie ever fed into my brain. And it hurts... It hurts that where I think I could be happiest is where God denies me. God's will is not for me to find comfort in temporary things but to draw near to Him. I can only do that in Peru. It's simply undeniable this calling. I have seen too much to count it all as trivial coincidence. In fact, that term is lost on me. I now only believe the Lord's amazing hand guides me through everything.

Pray that I can overcome my sadness.

It's Undeniable
It's undeniable this feeling,
That something's on its way,
It's change, I can feel it in my bones,
I walk away from the carnage,
Of a weak and bludgeoned heart,
I'm mortified that this was never mine to own,

If I could turn my clocks,
Back so I could be,
With you an hour more,
Would I still have to leave?
I gotta learn to look,
Past what's in front of me,
And realize where I should be,

It's unavoidable this whisper,
But no one heard the sounds,
My voice broke when I said,
"I gotta do this alone,"
I hear the voices of a million angels,
Betroth me to the call,
My bags are hardly packed,
But I know I've gotta go,

If I could turn my clocks,
Back so I could be,
With you and hour more,
Would I still have to leave,
I gotta learn to look,
Past what's in front of me,
And realize where I should be,

If I could go through life,
Back a month or two,
Could I have more time,
More time to spend with you,
Let the truth be told,
Deep inside I know,
I gotta let this go,

It's undeniable this feeling.

Almost There!

2010-05-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

I think this is the third time that I have started this post. I would get about a paragraph in and I'd realize I didn't really know what I was going to say, or that I had no resolve to my thoughts. I'm sorry that it has taken me so long.

There has been a lot of emotional rollercoaster rides these past few weeks from dealing with faith and trusting God to saying goodbye to friends. My worst week was this past one when I had to take my best friend to the airport. He went to Japan for two weeks for his brother's wedding. If it wasn't bad enough to know that I'd have to say goodbye to him early his return flight was scheduled for the 17th... the same day I fly out. I was simply angry at that situation. But, it's what I've had to deal with.

Elaborating more on this past week these are the things I've been working over in my head:

God wants to be my best friend
This is such a silly thing for me to have just now realized, but it's so true. I have been so focused on my relationships and had placed them so high that I became extremely dependant on them. I knew three months ago that something was going to happen to some of my friendships... I just had the feeling that a bridge was to be crossed soon.

I was in church this past Sunday when I had my recent revelation. The service was titled "Speak." The series is all about hearing God speak to us. This past weekend's service was about decerning the voice of God. The guy who spoke, Ryan, started out with the verse John 15:12-15, which didn't really seem to fit to me. At the end of the sermon he brought this verse back up...

John 15:12-15 (New International Version)

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

I realized then He wanted to be closer to me than any of my other friends. Why am I running from this? Why do I keep looking elsewhere?

This is not mine to control

I realize that this was what my last post was about, but this is still something that has been circulating my thoughts. I think I am more at peace about the idea that if my friends need me I will not be that person that can be in direct contact with them.

People keep on telling me, "You'll make new friends," or ,"Your friends will still be here when you come back." These are not words of comfort for me, unfortunately. Two years is a long time for my age group and change comes quickly. I am living proof of that. Nevertheless, it is out of my control. God has given me these friendships here and they can be a tool for me while I'm in Peru as well. It just hurts to have to leave.

I'm still encountring little challenges along the way. One week and a half to get through and I'm off to Florida for Orientation. Then one more week and it's off to Peru.

Freaking Control Freak

2010-04-22T16:44:00.000-04:00

Ohmigosh. I don't think I've ever realized how much of a control freak I can really be! It's not absolutely horrible, such that other people would know. I think this is why I'm the wack-job that I am these days. I blame my mother for my disposition. I am tightly-wound and wired and find that I get anxious over little silly things. I am afraid that when I get older I'm going to have heart issues because of this.

Anyway, I've been focused on this issue the past few days. It's not that I wish to control physical things, it's more like situations, or relationships. I am so afraid that one of my friends will need me and I will be unable to help them from my distance. How do I be a friend one can count on with all this distance! I want to tell me friends, you can call me if you need to talk, but the real truth of the matter is... they probably can't. That makes me sad... and I have no control over it, and that makes me mad.

I want to be able to help my friends, but I have to realize that God has called me on elsewhere and He will take care of the rest here at home. I'm going to have contact, but distance makes things hard. My prayer these past few days has been that I do not loose any friendships.

The other place I've realized I have way to much control over is the kitchen. Good luck future Mrs. Allen.

Revolution By Resolution

2010-04-20T11:40:00.000-04:00

For the time being, one little heartcase is tended to. (I'm horrible with ending sentences with prepositions, I've heard it's an Ohio thing) Everything seems neatly tucked away in it's little space and I feel like it's ready to be shipped off. Praise the Lord. Resolution feels good.

I think I've arrived at a temporary peace. I am holding it close and trying to teach myself to remember this feeling, because it will not last. I am fearful that this feeling is going to slide away from me too soon, but I accept that. From Romans 5 and James 1:2-8 I have found that pain and crappy situations are what I need. It's unfortunate.

The Lord has placed me in peace! Today is my birthday... what a wonderful gift to have peace. I am so filled. I simply cannot express myself well today, but I just need to share this blessing.

Just Give It Up Already

2010-04-17T12:20:00.000-04:00

Good morning... while some of you may have been up for several hours now, I have just woken up and it is noon. I had a late night lastnight and slept until I had a phone call that I had to take. So, I hope that this entry is gramatically correct and what I try to say actually makes sense.

I had told somebody yesterday that sleep is the biological reset button. Not just that it recharges our batteries, but it gives our minds the rest needed to make big decisions and even time to allow emotions to dispell. Have you ever gone to sleep feeling extremely emotional about an issue and the next day you wake up on the other end of the spectrum? I'm an extremely emotional guy, something I was complaining to God about yesterday, and have found sleep to be my greatest solace when I'm feeling down.

All day yesterday I was feeling a little bit emotional about Peru. It was just a pang in my chest. There was a sense that something wasn't quite put together, that I was missing something. It was because I was thinking about what I was giving up to go to Peru. About a year ago I would not have cared what I left behind, but now I am worried about my great friendships, specifically one new strong friendship. I have so much love and time pent up into this friendship and I fear I'll loose it. This relationship has changed me in such a way I would never had recognized a few months back, and the importance to me to retain that is extremely high.

When God first called me on to this project this was the main reason I didn't want to go. But, I heard Him tell me that I was being selffish. I know that He is calling me from my comfort and is asking me to sacrafice something to come to Him. I am sitting here and I'm telling myself... HELLO! This is the God who died for you... He sacraficed for you. Who knew that sacrafice was so heart breaking?

So, on my ride home I was thinking about why I was so emotional. I realized that it's because I haven't fully placed all of this into God's hands yet. I started praying telling God that I would place this over to Him and fully sacrafice this feeling of need for this friendship in His hands. The way the Lord has provided this friend I know that it will not dwindle and expire in the wind. I just have to remember that that was the price of this trip. This is my sacrafice... not an inconveniency.

I would ask that you pray that the Lord comforts me in this time. Pray that I remember that the Lord is in control over everything, even my relationships, and this sacrafice will only bring blessings. I am broken... what a better place to be with the Lord. He will help me through. I just give it up...

Repacking Heartcases

2010-04-15T01:03:00.000-04:00

A few posts back I had mentioned packing up and getting ready to leave for Peru. What I've come to realize is that as I'm preparing for this trip I am having to repack these heartcases. Once I think that I have everything put away nice and snug, something else comes along and doesn't fit... or meet the 50lbs mark.

It's amazing how quickly one can forget what God has spoken so clearly. I've been struggling a lot today with my confidence. This raising support thing is beginning to wear on me. Not entirely, but enough to make me stop and try to redirect myself... repack my bags.

When I met with my youth pastor the other day over lunch to talk about the trip he told me something that I laughed about at the time. He said that I would probably be tested with my faith trying to raise this support. Here we aaaaaaaare!

Here's what I am thinking today:

I have no power over this situation.
God has all the control.
I have no ability to push this any faster.
It is my human nature that desires that my trip be covered as fast as possible.
It is very possible that God will provide at the very last minute.
I only have to maintain my faith.
Just do what I feel God is leading me to do and believe that He will take care of the rest.

His repeated confirmation to do this trip is undeniable. There is nothing else that I need to know. My doubts are foolish.

Gotta Have Faith

2010-04-11T19:44:00.000-04:00

I wasn't really planning on sitting down and writing this blog right now, but I don't know if I'll have the oppurtunity later tonight. Today has turned out to be a beautiful day. I didn't really expect it to, but that's the nature of life these days.

I woke up this morning at seven to leave by eighty thirty so I could drive 2 1/2hrs home to attend church at North Mar. I loaded as much in my car as I could to save myself from having to pack as much when that BIG day comes along and then set off. On my way out of town I just felt God was calling me to commun with Him. I put on some Christmas music (Joy To The World - Jim Breckman) and was instantly right where God wanted me.

Here it is. I began asking myself, "Do I really have faith that God is going to pull this whole Peru thing all together?" I started wondering about myself because, I wasn't worrying the amount that I thought I should have been.  When I understood that I sat there and thought, "Am I preparing myself for failure?"

This is something I've been dealing with a lot this week. The fact that this money has to come from somewhere, and it's not out of my own pocket, is heavy on my shoulders. God keeps showing me that He is going to provide through conversations I have with friends and coworkers who want to give a hand, but I have built this structure in my mind. I've prepared myself by saying, "Well, if this doesn't work out then God will have something else for me." Yes, this is true. But, my conviction laid thick in my mind anyway. I started asking God if he wanted me to give Him 100%.  There was a point in my drive where I told Him that, yes, I give Him all of my faith and trust.

Fast forward and hour and a half later and I pull into the church parking lot, fifteen minutes later, and a little upset that I may have missed a crucial segment of the sermon. My Youth Pastor was speaking today so I really wanted to make sure I heard all he had to say. I walked in a sat by myself. I'm so happy that I did.

From the very first slide I knew that God was with me. I was in awe... EVERY stinking church service that I have been to has had a major role of speaking to my soul for ease and comfort. This one was no different if not more so. The first slide read... "Faith [God is a God of impossibilities.]" Something to that effect.  Again, I was stunned. My ears were perked and I grabbed an envelope from the pew in from of me to take notes.

Basically, (I'll just give you the meat of the whole thing) it touched on the very subject that God had placed on my heart in the car. I just want to scream to you that this is no way in anyway possible just coincidence. These past few weeks have been too PERFECT to be coincidence. God has an amazing plan. Anyway, the series at church has been based in Romans, apparently. The segment we looked at today was Romans 4:16-21. We had to go back and forth from this passage to Genesis 15 to get the whole idea.  This was about God's promise to Abraham that he would have a child at the age of 100. The mere impossibility was laughable, but here's the amazing thing. Abraham BELIEVED God.  Romans described the situation as dead. That Sarah's womb was dead, but God takes death and makes things live.  He takes things that don't exist and brings them into existence.  At this point I had well fallen out of my chair. I was floored.  This was absolutely God's voice speaking to me.  Then in verse 20 of Romans 4 it said that Abraham did not doubt. Rather, his was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. Sigh... He is so good. FINALLY, the most amazing thing was this... verse 18... it actually said in the passage "Against all hope..." Abraham still believed, and verse 21... He was fully... FULLY persuaded.

The Lord has spoken to me once again today. His perfect will is making itself known to me. Faith works when it comes to this God who specializes in impossibilities. My financial burden is a dead situation. I cannot do this on my own.  But, He has the power to bring this situation to life. I am calling on Him, 100%. I do not doubt that I am going to Peru and that He will provide.

I have an amazing group of friends... I am so blessed that God has given them to me. He is to be given glory folks. I will do as Abraham did and give all the glory to Him. He will do everything needed to get me to Peru... and I will have done nothing.

Amen?

Ah, My Solid Rock

2010-04-09T00:21:00.000-04:00

Today, oh today. This has been a day that was undeniably planned by the Lord. Things started out normally enough. I got up and went to work, sat down at my desk and then started to worry. I believe I have inherited this trait from my mother... Sorry Mom, but I think you know it's true. I really worry that I'll have heart problems when I get older if I don't get this stress issue under control. What a vicious cycle! I worry that I worry to much.

Anyway, I digress. But, through two people the Lord encouraged me. I've been telling a lot of people about what I'm doing, and a lot of the time I get blank looks and empty meaningless words. But, today, the sincerity was present when I was approached about Peru when they had heard of what I was doing. I didn't have to say a thing, rather they came to me and were interested to find out more.

I also found hope in relation to earning support. I have only had three definite answers from people saying they would commit to $30 a month for my trip. Only 23 more to go! If you would like to help financially or in prayer please visit my support page. A donate button will be appearing there in the next two days.

The Lord has provided such an awesome amount of support. I hope that I can refer back to this post in the future when I'm not quite feeling supported and remind myself of everyone's prayers. I appreciate everything everyone is doing. You all are a blessing to me and to this mission's trip.

Pack Your Heartcases

2010-04-06T22:50:00.000-04:00

It feels like this is going to be the hardest part of this whole experience. Preparation. I hate... hate packing. Anything that has to do with putting clothes into boxes to be moved miles away makes my heart falter. I'm not the most organized person that you will ever meet. I like things neat and tidy, but that just means my junk is all put away, not that there is any sort of order. Packing means putting an order to my chaos... I suppose the same can be said about my heart right now. I don't mean to say that my heart is a wreck, but there are plenty of things that I want to work on before I leave for Peru.

I just got off the phone with a friend. We were talking about our days and he asked me how I was feeling about Peru and if I felt like it was still where I am supposed to go. The answer, of course, was yes. It's undeniable how the hand of God is working in my life right now.

When I first decided that I was going to go to Peru a lot of my excitement was emotional. I felt such a God-high, which is good! Then, after it wore away and I started telling people about it I was slipping toward the wayside in doubt. I had been reading Hebrews and the first few chapters were about faith and that's what kept me going. Something that God has been working on me a lot with is a passion to be working with these people. When I got the call after my interview I was stuck in the revelation that I didn't know anything about this culture, I wasn't intrigued, and I really didn't much care. I knew my heart was looking very ugly.

Over the past week and weekend God has just been opening my eyes to see with His eyes in clarity. Today I was reading through some of the blogs of one of the missionaries that is already down there and just the way she was talking about her host family and the culture and traditions started getting my cultural interest pricked. I was telling my friend tonight that I had honestly been perfectly okay with the idea of not going to Latin America ever again, and being called there by God was a bit of a conflict of interest. I really wanted to go to Europe. But, this is just one area where I've packed my heartcase... I have a few more rounds to go.

The weather lately has been a blessing. The rain last night was so refreshing. I opened our living room windows last night to let the house cool off. It smelled so fresh in the morning. God's creation is beautiful.

2010-04-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

January 11, 2010... a.k.a. prior thoughts

Briefly, and completely outside the realm of relevance, I just wanted to state how sad I am that my last post was a complete failure. I feel like that blog was such a good idea, but nobody really caught on. The link posted there doesn’t even work anymore. Another tangent, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve sat down and read a book. Where am I heading in my life? Perhaps I’ll answer my own question in this post.

Recently, my friend Joe went to a mission’s conference in Missouri (maybe called Urbana) and came back with a fresh look at missions. His first explanation of his experience and how he felt was, “I wanna quit eating so much.” I responded saying that he needed to eat, and that I thought it was kind of silly. He also said that he wanted to start showering military style (get wet, turn off water, soap up, turn on water and rinse). I was beside myself and took the opposing view telling him that if God has blessed us with having free water, why not use it, especially when he isn’t paying for the water he is using. His response was that it was practice for the real world. That money that wouldn’t be used, or dare I say wasted, on the luxury of long hot showers, could be reserved and used for ministry. The more that we talked about it, the more my spirit has dwelled on the issue. We talked about what luxuries we could give up and how we could lead minimalistic lives. At first, I approached his enthusiasm with raised eyebrows and questioned his zeal asking myself if his will to cut out anything abundant in his life was necessary.

My spirit has become unsettled by the weight of our discussion and it’s only been getting more agitated. Joe has since asked me to go on a mission’s trip with him with the Mercy Ship. I know a lady who has done this ministry before. I’ve heard her stories and always thought it would be neat to do. But, I would have to give up everything. Isn’t that what God calls us to do?

I went to small group last night. I almost didn’t go, but I fell asleep on the couch before I could text Laura and tell her I wasn’t coming and she’d have to drive herself. Instead, I woke up to her phone call rushing me out of the house. God is so amazing. Last night we talked about a book Katie was reading called “God Is Closer than You Think,” by John Ortberg. It seems like a really good book, but the base idea is that God has placed himself on earth in the flesh twice, once through Jesus Christ, and second through the Body of Christ. We marvel over nature and God’s creation, but we never stop to fawn over God’s greatest creation… humans. We are His creation, and as Ortberg says, we are God carriers. Hmmm, it’s just so interesting. I really want to read that book.

Yet again, the issue of “giving it all,” came up again last night. I can’t even remember how it materialized out of the conversation we were having in small group. All I know is that God is knocking on my heart again. Joe had brought up the physical and financial surrender to put toward a spiritual cause, while last night small group drew up an emotional and spiritual surrender. We need to reach out to our world and to do that we need to give it all.

America, we are so profoundly stuck in our need for comfort that we have forgotten how to trust in God alone. We trust our jobs to provide us with good wages, we trust our friends to always be there for us, we trust our schools to give us good education. Where has our faith gone? We have placed our faith so strongly in what makes our lives comfortable, and yet God calls us to Him for comfort. How sad does our Father feel when we turn to material things for comfort instead of Him? He wants to take care of us, and if we let him he can do it so beautifully and we will never want anymore!

Psalm 107 5-9

5 They were hungry and thirsty,

and their lives ebbed away.

6 Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

7 He led them by a straight way

to a city where they could settle.

8 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love

and his wonderful deeds for men,

9 for he satisfies the thirsty

and fills the hungry with good things.

I just found this verse on www.biblegateway.com . Isn’t it interesting that the psalmist describes the people first to be in dire need of a Savior? They are hungry and thirsty, and they are dying! Then we see our Savior step in and rescue His people and He satisfies their thirst and their hunger. AH! God is the only thing we need in this world for comfort, but we have tried to put a harness around our needs and pull them in ourselves, but we are incapable and we only find ourselves in the mud, dazed and confused wondering where our happiness went.

I wonder if this is just a temporary God high, but I do want to give it all away. We hold on so dearly to the American dream and we forget that our treasures are not stored here. I do want to be successful, but I want to do it with selflessness. This is what is being laid on my heart. God’s ministry is here, knocking on my door and I have to answer it.

Sad Easter

2010-04-04T13:48:00.000-04:00

Happy Easter everyone! He is RISEN.

I got up this morning with more time to get ready than I ever had to go to church. In fact, I had time to stop and get gas on my way and still had fifteen minutes before service started when I got there.

When I was getting ready this morning I had our bathroom window open and the neighbors were cutting wood. I wondered to myself... aren't they going to church today? Don't they have Easter baskets waiting for them?

Also, I was struck by something when I stopped at the gas station. There was a group of high school boys, maybe ten of them, who were dressed up in some sort of uniform... I think baseball. They were in two seperate cars but they are all out of the cars talking while the tank was filling. It seemed rather normal, nothing out of the ordinary, but it's Easter. In my mind I asked a silly question, don't you get an Easter basket today? Why aren't you home trying to find it?

I got done filling my car and the rest of my way to church I was just soaking in my surroundings. I noticed that nobody had Easter Eggs in their lawn... there were no children gallivanting around with baskets trying to collect their plastic encased candies and no decorations. It was so odd... almost eerie to me.

After church I was driving back home and everything that I had noticed earlier this morning had come down on me. I just suddenly realized how lost our world is. Everyone prepares so much for Christmas and throws a big fit about the tree they get and what they are making for dinner. Everything must be perfect for Christmas, but the birth of our Savior means nothing without His death and resurrection.

It made me sad. Driving along I just noticed that people were carrying on with their lives as if this were any other ordinary day. Walking their dog, running an errand, riding their bike... Maybe they had gone to the earlier service? It just hit me as odd... maybe I've been blind to how the world really views Easter.

Before this moment, I believed that everyone pretty much knew about Jesus and what He did for us, but now I see the ignorance in that idea. I am so shocked at the amount of people I saw not going to church today.

I think this is a good mindset to be placed in going down to Peru. God has opened my eyes today to the tremendous need our world has for His love and His gift of life.

Pass Go Collect $200

2010-03-30T10:50:00.000-04:00

A year ago from now I was probably sitting in a classroom taking notes. I was getting ready to graduate. I didn't know what I wanted to do then. Graduation was a surreal eclipse of a life that laid dormant on the other side, and the thought of taking on full responsibility for myself was scarey. After being handed my diploma and moving home for the summer I ended up in Mount Vernon again.

People say that college is the best time of your life. You learn who you are and what you believe, and you learn how to be independant from your family. This is all true. I learned all of these things, and the experience was life changing. However, my move to Mount Vernon after graduating has been the most stretching experience I've ever had in my life.

Last year around this time I was going to Peace Corp informational meetings, learning about the program and what it could do for me and how I could get involved. I was dead-set on going overseas, preferrably somewhere in Europe, to do community service. I wanted to teach English. I had a lot of support from friends, and my family was behind me too. Expenses were taken care of and one of my loans would have been forgiven up to 15%. But, God had a different plan.

About a month or two from the time that I moved down to Mt Vernon my dad had told me that it he had seen on the news that getting into the Peace Corp was becoming more competative because of the current employment situation of the country.  I was surprised at how much that discouraged me. So much so that I stoped the application process entirely. Plus, I didn't feel like there was any motivation on the Peace Corps' side to contact me about my application process. I apparently had a guidance counselor, if you will, that I never talked to on the phone, only recieved automatic e-mail messages from. It was very impersonal. But, I believe that God killed that dream, because he had something better.

I'm going to Peru May 17th. About a month ago my friend Joe had shown me this information about a program called Extreme Peru 40/40. The idea is that 40 North Americans are sent to Peru where they are trained in missions and learn Spanish. After, each North American is matched up with 40 Peruvians (thus the name 40/40). These partners then go out into communities and minister and plant churches. The whole mission lasts 27 months. To find out more information go to http://www.extremenazarene.org/

At first, when Joe showed me this program, I looked at it and pushed it aside uninterested. It wasn't until a month later that I saw my friend Brandi on facebook and she told me she was in Peru and what she was doing that I had gotten interested.  I read her blog about it and she said she was only kidding when she told me to come down to Peru, but I heard God's voice through her words and my spirit was stirred.

When I got out of work I called my friend, Laura, and told her how I was feeling. I wasn't sure whether this was a real call by God or if it was just emotions, but after a word of prayer I realized that I was being selffish by refusing this oppurtunity that God had given me.  I didn't want to leave my friendships behind... that was my main reason for not wanting to go.  God spoke to me through this and allowed me to see my err.

Over these past few weeks God has been building me up in His strength, pointing me in the right direction. All of the chruch services I have gone to have inexplicably been aimed toward direction and where God wants us to be in His will. Everything seems to be pointing in this one direction, and it's so comforting to be in God's will and see where He wants me to be.

The other day I was sitting with my friend, Vicki, and we were talking about Peru. In the middle of our discussion she just stopped and told me bluntly that I am right where God wanted me. And in relation to our conversation I realized that it was true. God's truth is undeniable.

I am passing go... now I just have to collect $17,000. I trust God will provide. I fear, but I trust. I am looking for 20 people who would be willing to support me with $30 a month while I am in Peru. If you are interested in getting involved in this missions oppurtunity and would like to become a part of my financial support, let me know and we can get together and talk about the options.

-Trev


“Jo jo jo, yo soy la Navidad, porque tengo muchos regalos para todos los ninos”	“Vamos hasta Belen, para que veamos los que ha sucedido”