Well after an 18 hour bus ride through the desert, over treacherous moutain passes and past beautiful beach cliffs (which we thought would be the end of us all), we made it to Arequipa alive. But let me back up a little bit.
This last week in Pachecutec was my favorite week so far, probably because it was kind of a ¨rest week¨ and we were in my favorite place so far. We thought we were going to be in Arequipa a week ago, but this is YWAM and nothing is certain until it happens, so we stayed an extra week in Pachacutec. It was so nice to have some down time, invest in the church by cleaning, painting, building, and helping prepare for the church´s first wedding!
One of the pastor´s 12 kids was getting married, and basically we were the guests of honor! One person from our team read a poem for the couple, one girl from our team sang a song at the reception, and we all danced and played games all night. It was really fun to experience a wedding in another culture, especially feeling like we were part of the family. I will miss our cute little pastor who called us all ¨hermana¨ or ¨hermano¨ (sister/brother) cause he couldnt remember our names after two weeks! The night before we left we had a ¨culture night¨ and all made food from our countries to thank them and give them a taste of our cultures. Lindsey and I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and now everyone reaaaally wants to come to America. These people don´t know what real desserts are, they only eat packaged cookies or rice pudding! I feel kind of bad cause maybe we should have let them live in blissful ignorance, but it´s too late now. Plus WE wanted to make the cookies for ourselves too :) Then we all sang songs in all our different languages and taught them kids songs and games from our countries. We even taught them the Chicken Dance and they loved it, then did Brazilian dances and sang in Swiss-German. It was a very ¨It´s a Small World¨ kind of a night.
After a long, tearful goodbye to everyone and writing out our emails like 1000 times to every little kid in town, we piled into three cars and literally raced across Lima, weaving in and out of traffic and barely missing mopeds, to make it to the bus station on time. But we weren´t on time, we were ten minutes late and the bus was pulling out of the station and one of the cars with our team members wasn´t there yet. So half of us were on the bus, all our luggage was on the bus, Felipe and I were saying bye to the guys from Pachacutec that drove us there, and the bus literally started pulling out of the driveway and into the street. So Felipe and I are running after it yelling in the driver´s window ¨please, please, give us five more minutes!¨, and I figured this was a good time to play the blonde American card and I start saying ¨we´re missionaries here from seven different countries, we´ve traveled so far to bless your country, I´m all the way from California, and we need our whole team, they are girls and shouldnt travel alone, please please please!¨ and they actually stopped and waited! So the other car finally arrived, ran onto the bus as it started moving again, and we were off. Lindsey and I took sleeping pills which made us both really loopy and made our hands feel weirdly heavy and useless and weak, like we couldnt open our bags or flex our hands. In the middle of the night I spent some time in the semi-darkness of the bus staring at my hands trying to flex them, thinking ¨what the heck is wrong with my hands?? they arent moving! These aren´t even Peruvian sleeping pills, theyre from Target!¨ but in the end I slept ok and I am happy to report that I now have full control of my fingers.
Overall our team is doing well, we of course are tired and running out of steam, but last week was a little bit re-energizing and restful. Only three and a half weeks left, and out of all the things God has showed us so far, I can only imagine there is much more in store. My prayer is to stay focused and motivated to keep loving and serving the people here, which is hard if the end is in sight and we all are excited to go back to the base in Pichilemu. But I know God has more to show us, and more to work in us and more to do in the churches and people here in Arequipa. One thing He really showed me through the church in Pachcutec was service and dedication. The pastor´s family is all so loving, so dedicated to serving the people and the church there, so strong in hard times, and God is their Rock above all else. Even though they live humbly, and we were there to serve them, they gave us so much and loved us so much, and it was a blessing just to know them.
Also keep praying for our health, somebody is always sick, which usually includes me since my stomach does not like Peru very much, but overall we´re good.
I have some really good pictures I promise I will post soon!! XOXO love you all
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