Woo Hoo! The Zoo!

The LCU LST team and our team went on an outing to the zoo. We had a great time and were the most excited about our ultimate find--CHILI'S! Here are some pictures from our great day at the Zoo and our great day at Chili's.

The gangs all here. The LCU team and the Park Plaza team ready to see the sights of the zoo.

We saw some great animals at the Zoo and met a few too. Doesn't this "cat" look like Tiger from Winnie the Pooh?

We could all have cried, Mark shed tears of joy over sinking his teeth into some good ol' corn on the cob. You can't get much more American than that. Everything was the same. The knives, forks, tables-everything. Amazing how the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of home are so comforting even though we are so far away.

Llama's they have Llama's in Peru!

Joshua

I want to give you an update on a few readers so that you can know how to pray. I´ll start with my Miguel that hears the voices in his head. He did not show up for his appt´s at the end of last week. Our readers have no way to call us so don´t know if he tried but I am certain that he would not miss unless it was something very important. Please pray that he will return. His English is good enough that I can speak to him like I would to any of you so we get to have some interesting, deep discussions.

Marie´s reader, Percy, got a new job and did not have time to travel all the way to us to read. He was planning to read with the LST team at El Olivar church but is not able to do even that right now. He is very interested in more Bible study and in becoming a follower of Jesus. Please pray against the enemy´s schemes to keep him away from God´s people and the Word.

Now, let´s talk about my reader Josue´(pronounced ho-sway). In English his name is Joshua. His English is also excellent. I can speak at my normal speed, which most of you know isreallyfast. This is his fifth year to be an LST reader. Pretty interesting choice for someone who is ¨not interested in becoming a believer¨, as he first told me. Because of his language capability and his knowledge of the Bible, he is the reader I am able to get into the deepest discussions with. Throughout the course of the last month, we have finished a review of Luke and have begun studying Acts. He has expressed his frustration with those people who can believe easily. He wants to but ¨has no faith¨. His parents and a sister are Christians who he has watched for all of his 34 years. He says they have absolutely no control over their anger and have shouting, ugly arguments every single day. He says that he acts better than they do so why would he need to be a follower of Jesus if it does not affect your behavior? How convicting! I have to wonder how many times my behavior in front of others has led them farther away from Jesus instead of closer to Him? Ugh. Right through the heart with that one! He also says that his parents have told him that they pray to God for Him to change their behavior but God never comes through on that one. We talked at length about how it is easy to ask for change but an entirely different matter to let Him in to make the changes. We are so comfortable and familiar with our ugliness that it is easier to stay where we are than to allow Him to take us closer to maturity. I know there have been many times that I ask God for change in myself when what I really want Him to do is to change everyone around me so that they think my bad behavior is ¨cute¨or ¨charming¨. How ridiculous! I shared with him some times when I have truly been broken about something and allowed God to come in and ¨fix¨it. I continually pray that God will speak His words and truth through my mouth, that not one of my own ideas will come through. Josue´comes everyday at 3 pm. Would you join me in that prayer?

My sweet 18 year old Melissa attends a Christian church here in Lima. They have ¨prophets¨so I´m quite certain it is not a cofc! She made a promise to God when she was baptized 3 years ago, that she would pray 1 hour each day and she has never missed, even if it is late at night. Her mother was hit by a bus last week. I know that sounds like a joke but not here! The warnings that ¨there are no such things as pedestrian rights¨here in South America are completely true! The same bus stopped, picked her up, and took her to the hospital. She must rest for 2 months so Melissa gets up at 5:30, is on the bus to the English institute by 6:15, comes to see me at 10, then goes home to do all the cleaning, laundry, and cooking as well as help with her 4 year old nephew who lives with them. Her father is not living with them and her sister works all the time, so Melissa is it. Please pray for her mother´s healing and for strength and energy for Melissa as she serves her family. Doesn´t sound much like our American kids, huh?

Sorry for all the serious stuff today but thought you´d like to know what we talk about with our readers and a little about their lives. I promise to write about the zoo and the lion experience tomorrow. I can´t send any pictures to Will at the moment because this internet place won´t use my software. Maybe over the weekend when we use a different place.......

Are you the Juan?

Okay, you can all sleep well tonight. We have solved a major mystery around here. I´ve told you about Uberlinda, our cook, whose house we eat at for lunch and dinner each work day. We were told that her son, Juan, is a member at the Lucyana church so we started looking for him to compliment his mother´s cooking and thank him for sharing her with us. As you can imagine, we have met quite a few ¨Juan¨s, as well as ¨Carlos¨s, ¨Jose¨s, and ¨Fernando¨s. So each time we meet one, we go into this whole explanation made up of some English, some Spanish, and lots of sign language. Picture us pretending to shovel food in our mouths and rubbing our tummies while saying ¨Mmmmmm!¨ Well, each time, we have gotten this blank stare (we get alot of that, actually) or have completely embarrassed someone with the attention. Each of them was obviously ¨not the Juan¨ we were looking for. Hallejujah, we have finally found ¨the Juan¨we were looking for. He is married with a daughter and lives a couple of doorways away from Uberlinda´s on the street. We were so excited to finally get to thank the right guy.

We had a great weekend and spent some time with the LCU team again. I will write about it in another entry and get some pics sent to Mr. Spoon to include.

Happy Father´s Day to all and Happy Birthday! to my husband on Monday. If you can, call him and tell him how old you think 46 is, would ya? I hate not being there but the Nicholson´s threw him a little bar-b-que event (thank you!) and I know others of you will give him some grief about it.

We can´t believe we are beginning week 5 of our work here. We just came through the hardest time of the 6 weeks with God´s gracious blessings. Goodbye and good riddance to weeks 3 and 4! Now our time actually seems short here. 2 weeks to get all the seeds planted from Luke that we can. For those readers who come every day, we will only see them 8 more times. We are already beginning to let them go from our possessive grasp and give them back to God. We know that He will do with them as He pleases and that is always best. More about that later. Please be praying that we have an urgency in our work and that we finish this particular race well.

Love to all!

Felix Dia, Boocker! (Happy Birthday, Booker!)

Booker celebrated his 74th birthday while here and this sweet church surprised him with a party and a cake. The cake was just beautiful, the hospitality of these great people is just amazing. The joy and love of sharing by Christians is truly universal.

Yes, it was as good as it looks! Don't you just love the way they spelled Booker!

This is Percy, are friend who is reading with Marie. He is just one of the many, many great people whom we have met and shared the gospel.

This is Erin and two of the LST students we met, Erin and Brittany. You just don't know how great it was to have a "fluent" conversation with someone. For us to just speak and talk as fast as we wanted to without fearing that our quirky American words confusing, was a good break for us.

Let´s Talk About The Weather!

From your comments and questions, it seems that I have lead some of you astray. We are freezing! It is WINTER here in South America. June and July are their coldest months. When we were researching our site, we discovered that the temperatures would be in the 60´s through June. What we weren´t told was that it only reaches those temperatures for about 10 minutes in the afternoon, IF the sun is shining! It´s mostly in the 50´s-60´s but the temp starts dropping about 4 pm and it is completely dark by 6pm. There are no heaters (or air conditioners) in houses or buildings so whatever the temp is outside, it´s about 10 degrees cooler inside the concrete walls. Most buildings, including our house and the church have a part that is open to the air all the time, as well. Somebody please slap Kyle Graham for telling us we only needed jackets! We wear our heaviest jackets from breakfast to bedtime. If the sun shines in the afternoon, we step outside the church entrance for 5 minutes in between readers to soak up some warmth.

The jungle parts of Peru, along the Amazon stay warm all year long but Lima is pretty much desert. There are a lot of cactus growing in our neighborhood and the mountains are ¨naked¨, not a tree in sight!

We are doing okay, wearing layers and such but on cloudy days, we get pretty chilled! Just wanted to set the record straight for those of you who thought we were enjoying a tropical vacation!

A Breath of Fresh...Dust?

Entrance to the Incan Ruin we visited with Raul and the LST team we met in
town.

So much has been destroyed, yet there still remains some glimpses of the grandeur of this great civilization. It really was amazing to visit this great site. With a little elbow grease and some curtains it could be good as new in no time!

The gangs all here! The six of us were joined by some very happy Peruvians who wanted to be in the shot.

Erin and I outside of the Palace.

A beautiful view of the countryside. The circle in the background is a bullfighting arena, Ole'!

A little better view of the fighting arena. Just beyond the arena is a working farm. The white dots are tomato pickers.

Better view of the tomato pickers gathering their harvest.

This is what took us home from our outing. Couldn't pass up this photo!

American Pie

Starbucks, Papa John´s Pizza, Incan ruins. Where else could you experience all of these in the same day? Erin and I left the house with Raul, preacher and weekend babysitter, at 7am Friday morning. We walked about a mile, caught a small bus, and an hour later arrived at the El Olivar church to meet up with the LST team from Lubbock Christian. They are Mark, Erin, and Brittany, all 19 years old like our Erin. We all caught a big bus and rode for another hour, all of this travel is through town, by the way. Raul told us to get off and surprise! We were standing in front of a real, live Starbucks! Can´t tell you how
great it was to enjoy a decaf mocha, a choc chip orange muffin (yum) and the real furniture in that shop. We stayed and soaked up the familiar atmosphere for about an hour. Then it was 2 more buses and 1 1/2 hours more to the site of some Incan ruins that date back to 1100 a.d. We walked, climbed, hiked, broke a sweat
for several hours, had a great time. My favorite part was the palace ruin. There
were these big seats where the leaders sat to enjoy the view of the ocean and
this huge formerly covered terrace with another beautiful ocean view.

When we were tired of breathing dirt, we rode back into town and Raul found a Papa John´s for us for lunch. We
walked to another church and visited with a team of Americanos (not lst) here to
conduct Bible studies in Spanish. Then 2 1/2 hours home on the bus, dropping the
LCU team off on the way. We were bushed but had a great time speaking our native
language at a normal speed with our countrymen. This was the first time I´ve had
contact with another lst team while on site since my college days and I highly
reccommend it. Halfway through a project is the perfect time for a day like
that. We are having a bit of culture shock set in and are tiring of hearing a
foreign language all around us all the time from all the people. It will pass in
a few days and we´ll be back to enjoying it and knowing that we´ll miss it when
we get home to you.

Today, we did our laundry in the outside sink, takes
forever, and did our grocery shopping, also not a quick venture. But we had a
very cliche´moment. Here we are crowded in a taxi (Marie is sitting in her usual
spot on Booker´s lap) in South America, and the song ¨La Bamba¨comes on the
radio. Erin and I just cracked up!

Gotta go. I´m going to try to download and send some pictures
of this day to Will for posting. By the way, glad to have Will´s friend Donna as
a new friend of my own. Welcome to my life and thanks for the nice comments
about my sweet Erin. Hope

to meet you soon.