Just Another Update

Didn’t have time to write for real so here is an update on my life!

-Had thanksgiving dinner...one week early...well kind of…we had it Friday…because the dental team was leaving today…had some real deal thanksgiving food from the States…cooked for 40 people…took all day…the Peruvians thought the food was gross…guess green bean casserole and stuffing doesn’t appeal to everyone…

-That night I opened up a box I got….it was from some really amazing friends…don’t worry, I only opened the granola…and the chocolate….and the window stickers….I am seriously waiting on the rest...(p.s. Nick, everyone loved your card)

-I also put up my Christmas decorations…we don’t have windows so I had to duck tape up the window stickers…also put up some really awesome pictures my grandparents sent me…sadly think the only snow I will be seeing is the snow in the pictures…and I thought TN had it bad…

-Yesterday I went on a boat ride….one wooden boat…one shallow river….and 11 people…it was a lot of fun…found out that there are electric eels that live in the river…they can kill you instantly…but luckily they only come out at night…

-Just finished our first week of our nightly evangelistic series…harder crowd to reach this time…lots of young people…things going well though…

-Have found out they have these wonderful things here called curiches….they are like coconut popsicles…I think I could eat them every day...actually I have been pretty much!...when I get back, I promise I will make them for all of you!

-Started…or at least helped continue…two arguments this week (you are off the hook Brittany for my once a year blow up ;)…learned the importance of not opening my mouth before I have thought things through…got to offer a couple of apologizes…communication is a good thing…when done correctly…

-Found out I might get more free time for our Christmas vacation!....really excited only three more weeks!...lots more reading to do in my tour guide book…

-Was informed that a fellow SM passed away this week…kind of solemning for all of us down here…have run by myself a lot….think I am going to cut that habit…praying a lot for the girls friends and family and hoping that God brings good from the situation…..send up some extra prayers too if you get a chance...

Well that is about it for the week...over and out

Working for the Big Guy

This past Thursday God amazed me….

My partner in crime, Edward, on of the Peruvian Bible workers, had decided to go into the next town to visit some families. That left me wondering what I should do for the afternoon. I really wanted to just sit down and write out some lessons plans, but I did not think that my boss would be too excited about that, so I forced myself to fill up my water bottle and headed out into the heat. The day before we had promised this one girl about my age that I would come and visit her the next day, so I figured that was a good place to start. Well, when I got there, I found out that she was not there at the time, but I started talking with the older guy who was there. At first we talked the weather, then politics, and then we started discussing religious beliefs. The first thing the man brought up was eating meat and such and I figured that he was going to be one of those people who ask you a question and then when you cannot give adequate responses in Spanish, they wham you with a bunch of Bible verses. But this was not the case with this guy, he actually invited me to come sit down and talk. With nothing else to do, I accepted the invitation.

Ends up the guy used to live in Iquitos and had talked with David Gates once upon a time so he was slightly familiar with Adventism. I am not normally one who likes to talk directly to people about my religion; I am definitely more about showing people God’s love through action. So as I started conversing with this guy I sent up a quick prayer to God asking Him for wisdom and the words to speak in Spanish! Well, three hours later our conversation ended. We talked about everything from marriage, divorce, personal testimony, taking care of our bodies, dancing, the Sabbath, we covered it all! Several people came in while we were talking and listened in as well. It was crazy! I was amazing first of all that this guy seemed so open to so many Adventist ideas, and secondly because we had conversed for all of that time on varying subjects with no problems! Needless to say, that when I left I was on cloud nine.

Next, I rushed off to meet with Edward for a Bible study. That evening we studied the Sabbath with an Evangelical family, quite a touchy subject. At the end though, the husband spoke to us. He told us that the lesson was beautiful, then he went on to tell us about a dream that he had recently. Ends up before we had come he had a dream about God telling him to guard the day of rest. In his dream, God also had given him the name Edward…..as I heard this, I got goose bumps. I remembered back to our first day when we had stopped to visit the family to ask if they wanted Bible studies, Jehovah Witness style. The had not looked friendly, but when we stopped to talk and Edward had explained who we were and introduced ourselves, they had warmed up immediately. Since then we had been studying with the whole family, all six kids included! As we finished up the Bible study, I was once again up in the clouds.

The stories for the day were not over yet though…As Edward and I were walking back to the house for supper, he also shared something else with me. As he had been giving Bible studies in the next town, Bellen, he had a touching interaction as well. When he had been studying with a mother and daughter, the daughter began crying throughout the whole study. Afterwards, Edward asked her if she was okay. She pulled him off to the side and told him the story that as a young girl she had been beaten and raped several times. She had never told her mom. She felt worthless and lost. Edward explained to her that God could help her through this and asked her if she wanted that. She agreed and Edward offered more comfort…another door opened to spread God’s love.

This past Thursday God amazed me…I can’t wait to see what else He has in store!

Living in Fear

11/6/09

This past Monday was our first day of visitations in Kilometer 15 (Tupac Amaru-sorry not to be confused with the dead rapper ;). It was great, we got to go around and just meet people. Our goal was simply to make new friends-no pressure, nada, I was loving it. As we were walking around we came to a brightly colored house, it was a great mixture of pink and teal. I know this would probably be considered an absolutely hideously colored house in the States, but here it was a wonderful change from the plain brown wood ones. As we walked by, an old lady came out and invited us in.

At first, we just kind of talked about every day life and then she went on to tell us about being robbed that day while in town. That then led into her talking about how the day before a girl had been raped out on the main road. I brushed it aside though, thinking a girl had been stupid and out walking by herself. That night though when Mike (another SM) came back and repeated to us once again the story of the girl, and in addition told us about another assault that had taken place out on the main road, I realized maybe it was a little more serious. As Mike went on, I had to admit that I was getting kind of freaked out. Ended up that there had actually been a problem along the road into Tupac for about four to five months now. This time a bunch of guys had put on masks, hid in the bushes and then threw logs in front of motokars. After getting motokars stopped the men would then come out with machetes and guns.

By now, Mike had my full attention. None of the other girls seemed too worried about it (but they also don´t care if they don´t get showers every day :), but I was honestly scared half to death! I even made the serious statement that I might just stay in Tupac the remainder of the six weeks without leaving unless the truck came. Lauren stated that she was not too concerned though, because she felt that God would protect us. That gave me something to think about…but I really didn´t come to a conclusion how I felt about that. We talked to the people back at the base and they said they would also try to come get us in the truck more often. That was that for the time being and nothing else was said.

Well, yesterday was our day off and I really wanted to go back to the base to call my parentals. No truck was coming…I hadn’t fully decided what I thought about this road situation, but the call of the telephone and an oven to bake cookies in was too much to bear. So I found myself in a motokar on the forbidden road. As Lauren and Mindy sat back and enjoyed the ride, I literally prayed the whole way and held tight to my pepper spray (as if I could really do much with it :). As we made it safely to the main road and hopped into a taxi, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

Sometimes I think about all of the risks down here, and I get really paranoid about everything. I get overly freaked out when I see one of the poisonous spiders in our house or have to go outside in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and not go anywhere for the rest of the year. But truly, there are just as many risks up in the States as well.

One day when I was working at the hospital before I left, a friend that was a PT asked me why in the world I would go abroad for a year. He thought I was young and it was stupid of me to go and put my life at risk somewhere. I tried to explain to things to him, but he did not seem convinced. A few weeks later though, I was working with the same guy and he brought up the same topic again. This time though, he had a different take. He told me that he had just talked to his brother who had a friend who had been a missionary in Africa for 18 years. For all those years while being in Africa he had never had any safety issues, but then within a month of returning to the States he was robbed and shot.

So really anywhere you go there are safety issues-Africa, Peru, United States…perhaps concerns are just a little different, but the underlying problem still exists. So things aren´t really going to change much when I am done here either. Does that mean I should never get out of bed the rest of my life? I definitely don’t think that is what God wants us to do. God wants us to live life to the fullest and to not live in fear. We need to take daily risks for God and trust that He will protect us. That doesn’t mean we should be stupid, we should just focus on claiming His promises more. I think another part of this is, when things do happen we need to accept them as part of his bigger plan and realize that however long our lives are here, they are nothing compared to our long life we have to look forward to in eternity. If I can bring glory to him during this life here on earth, it doesn’t matter how short my life is here, because the best is yet to come!

“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Psalm 34: 17-19







(Above are pictures of the road to Tupac, motokars in Pucallpa, us celebrating Dane´s bday with Mexican food and a rice crispy cake, and picture of how amazing pinapple season is here!)

Tupac and the Crazy Lady

11-31-09

Well, finally finished our first campaign at Kilometer 8 (Puerto Correo). In total had about 50 people baptized, that part was pretty amazing. Was actually bittersweet leaving…we were definately ready for a new place after being there for 11 weeks, but found myself close to tears several times as I said goodbye.

This past week we moved to Kilometer 15 (Tupac Amaru) and had a medical clinic week. I got to play doctor a few days, which was pretty scary and intimidating, but glad afterwards us nurses had the opportunity! We had a dental and a eye clinic too so a lot of the other SMs from Kilometer 38 (our home base) came to help out. Do not get to see them a ton, so was awesome getting to hang out for the week. Luckily, was a bit of a slower clinic but still saw about 400 people. Were told that not as many people came because they are afraid of us as white people. Down here they have white people that come and pose as tourists and then kill people and steal their organs to sell. Seems like something from a horror movie, hate being associated with them just because we are white.

Tupac is actually a really beautiful place, but is pretty far out in the sticks. Takes about two hours to get into town from there. With living so far out are living a little more primitatively. Use a well now for wáter, take swimsuit showers from a bucket, use outhouses without doors, wash our clothes by hand, and do not have a huge variety of food available. Lots of bugs, snakes, and incredibly large ugly spiders, but have a river to swim in complete with a mud slide.

Overall, all of the people in Tupac are very friendly. They have already cooked us several free meals, in fact yesterday forgot someone offered to cook for us so ate two huge lunches back to back. The people are also letting us live in their community center. The only problem with it is that it has windows all around and that people can look in at us all of the time! Decided to pitch up some tents to help out with that a little.

Anyways, the first day of clinic found out that the town has a crazy lady. Luckily is the sweet kind of crazy. Usually she runs around smiling and giving people hugs. Unfortunately, the first day there when I called out a persons´ name to pick up their meds, I actually believed her when she came forward as the recipient. I doublé checked the name with her, and I she seemed to totally understand all of the directions. A half an hour later though, another lady came up asking where her medicines were. My friend Melanie looked up her card and found that I had given out the medicines. That is when it hit me what I had done. ¨I gave her meds to the crazy lady,¨ as soon as I said it I really how incredibly stupid I sounded. Luckily found out that we had not given her anything more than a vitamin and worm medicine. So gave the correct lady her meds and decided to let the crazy lady keep the meds too.

Besides that , only other true excitement was a guy who I had to give an IV too. He ended up needing to stay the night so all of us girls rotated through watching him. Anyways, came back to Puerto Correo for Sabbath to support the new church. Packed light, which meant not bringing my mosquito net…bad choice. Today am covered with hundreds of bug bites, no exaggertation. Well not sure if I will be in contact as much over the next six weeks, but am hoping to still get into town every other week if not every week. Love and miss everyone!







(Above are pictures of our lab, Lauren and the IV guy, our new house, us SMs playing games one night, and of my friend Martin and me carrying water from the well for showers)

No Stress

11-28-09

So it was our last Friday at Kilometer 38 and we had decided that the best way to use up all of our excess food would be to plan out meals. Us girls sat down together and scheduled our remaining weekend meals. We had already made sure that we had used most of our fresh foods, so by the end of our writing, most of the meals consisted of things like rice, beans, lentils, split peas, etc. It seemed like we would be able to scrimp by the rest of the weekend without buying anymore food.
That evening I was on cooking duty and I had just about finished the spaghetti and beans (I know, great mix) when I noticed that the burner had gone out. No big deal, I thought, the wind at times blows out the fire on our stove. But as I tried repeatedly the relight the stove with no success, I realized that nope, it wasn’t the wind, we had most definitely run out of gas. As if perfect timing, the sun had just set, beginning our Sabbath here.

Our group got together to discuss our dilemma, we really didn’t have enough food to get us through the rest of the Sabbath unless we wanted to eat raw potatoes and uncooked lentils. Yum…okay, in my head that sounded like a really awful option…Option two, we could have someone run into town to buy more gas or go to a local grocery store to pick up some more instant stuff like bread. I will be honest and say that I was definitely leaning toward the second plan. After talking for a little while though, we decided that we didn’t want to buy anything on the Sabbath and that God would provide enough food or we would try fasting. Whether buying things on the Sabbath or not is right, it is not really a big point in my story, and I think that is everyone’s personal preference, so I am going to continue on.

So we went into Friday night, preparing ourselves to eat little the next day. After our nightly program though we had several families give us huge bags of mangos. Next, someone gave us two watermelons, then another a pineapple! Sabbath morning was actually more like a feast for us. We made raw oatmeal and loaded it up with sugar and stuffed ourselves with fruit. I figured that at least we would had a big meal to hold us over for the day.

Lunch rolled around after church though, and another watermelon had appeared with more mangos! We found out that one of the girls in our group had actually bought a big bag of bread rolls as well the day before for her but she decided to share it with the rest of us. I still wasn’t sure how full I would feel since I am not a huge mango fan but figured things would work out. As we were preparing our lunch, a girl came up to me and asked me to come and talk with her for a second. She then invited me to come to the little picnic lunch her and her family was having. I was given a plate loaded up with Peruvian spaghetti and potato salad of sorts. Wow, talk about being blessed once again!

At supper we were given more fruit and we ate the remainder of our bread! I couldn’t believe I had gone through the whole day being stuffed! Even though I got a little sick off of the food that I had for lunch, God most definitely provided for us that day. In a time where I really doubted Him, He went out of His way to overly provide for us. Although I may not be living with the frillies of life down here, I now feel super assured that God most definitely will provide all of my basic needs.