LIMAAAAA

I am officially in Lima. Well actually about two hours outside of Lima, in Lurin.

We are at the pastor's house right now-It was his daughter's birthday andwe had a pinata and cake. So we're excited. We were all sitting around watching the daughter and her friends do the pinata, trying to hold ourselves back while they all ran for the candy, but when Lindsey yelled "THERE"S GUM!" we all pushed the kids aside and went for the gum like our lives depended on it. All this to say, gum is hard to come by in these parts, but right now I am chewing some so I'm set for today.

Things have been going well here, our team is working well together,the church was really prepared to have us here and planned a lot for us to do, and the kids love having us here. It's been so cool to see what theyre doing here, with the church and they have a feeding center that gives kids food during the day in between school sessions(sponders from churches in the Us "adopt" kids to pay for their food to keep it running) and there are missionaries living here from a Calvary Chapel in Ft. Lauderdale. Actually the church we are with here is a Calvary Chapel church so I love seeing the dove behind the pulpit and when the pastor wears a Hawaiian shirt I am REALLY at home. They sing a lot of the same worship songs as churches in the states, but of course in Spanish so it's been fun to learn those.

Living situations are hard here though - we do have matresses, and we eat a LOT (they watch you to make sure you eat everything, because they really do express love and hospitality through serving food), and we scoped out where they have Coke Zero (hard to find Diet soda), so we're figuring it out. But overall its very poor, with dirt roads, brick houses, dogs running around everywhere, dead dogs in the street, cockroaches, lots of mosquitos, its really hot, and we cant drink the water so if we forget to buy enough we kind of just have to deal with being thirsty and dehydrated. So as you can tell, its been tough living here, and we all miss Pichilemu, the base, the other half of our DTS class which is in Argentina right now, but overall things are good here.
We've been doing a lot of evangelism and the people are really responsive to us especially because we stand out so much and are different. We had dramas in the plaza last night and people stayed around talking to us all over the park for almost two hours after, we gave lots of people information about the church here, played with the kids forever and prayed with some people, too. God is definitely working here, even if it seems slow sometimes. I can't imagine how these missionaries gave up so much to live here, taking cold saltwater showers with water from the ocean, walking around in the dirt all the time (someday I will post a picture of our feet, I have never been so dirty), being so poor here and still seeing so much need here. Some of the kids don't eat any meals during the day except the ones they get from the feeding center. But the church has already changed the community, one family at a time, and are building up the youth group in the church so they are seeing some fruit.

Today we went to the beach and it made me feel more at home, yet more homesick at the same time. Miss everyone! Please keep praying for us, we need it:

-for UNITY - we are nothing if we aren't unified. the enemy is using any tactic he can to tear down our team or wedge between us, but we are praying a lot for unity and living together 24/7 has been hard but God is the glue, so it's stronger!
-for open doors for evangelism - for the peoples' hearts here, for tirelessness
-to see things here through God's eyes, for perserverance
-for tough stomachs (we eat chicken and rice every day, which is fine but sometimes we have cow stomach and we have to eat it, some people have gotten pretty sick so pray God will give us tough stomachs!)
-for the church here, the missionaries living here, protection over my family back home :)

love you all, thanks for reading and being here with me in spirit in Lima