For starters today I´ll tell you about my adventure getting locked in the bedroom in the house with no one home. Because the water pressure in our shower is so bad, all of us girls have been taking a shower in Alison and Kelsey´s room. So, yesterday was my assigned shower day and I took a shower and got out and was getting dressed. Kelsey came in and I told her I was there and when she left she closed the bedroom door behind her. Then Alison tried to come in but couldn´t get the door open and I wasn´t out of the bathroom yet. So she left. Unfortunately, in her attempt to get in, she turned the key on the outside of the door so that it was bolted locked. So, when I try to leave their room, I can´t. I can only pull the lever she needed pulled to get in. So, without each other we were both stuck. I knocked loudly on the door and called out, but no one answered. I knew Jeremy L. had gone out to chop wood in the courtyard and had heard it from the window above the shower earlier. So I went back in the bathroom and opened the window. I yelled to Jeremy but didn´t get any response and didn´t hear any wood chopping. So I go over to the one window in the room and it actually looks down into our courtyard and the courtyard behind Sophia´s bodega. Sophia was in her courtyard but I didn´t want to disturb her if Jeremy was there. After just a minute she left the courtyard and went into her store. So I called for Jeremy to see if he could hear me from his room through a doorway from the courtyard. No response. Then I had to start thinking of the Spanish I would need to get Sophia to get someone to help me. Here´s the best I came up with - ¨Hola Sophia! Necessito ayudo. No puedo abrir la puerta de mi cuarto. Llama mis amigas!¨ I waited for probably 5-10 minutes for her to come back out but she never did. Finally I heard someone in the house. I called out and it was Alison. This time we were both able to open our part of the lock on the door and I was free! I was actually hoping to have to use Spanish to get Sophia to help me, but I´m glad Alison came and freed me so I could dry my cold hair!
In other random unfortunate bathroom news, the toilet in one of the bathrooms clogged this morning. I can only imagine the charades Emily and Kelsey performed in trying to describe a toilet plunger to Sophia. Unfortunately, once she understood, she told them they are only available in Juliaca, over 2 hours away... But luckily John was already coming out here and we caught him early enough for him to bring one from Huancane. Yay missionary struggles.
Now, to more holy matters...
Things have been going really well lately. We have been having really good group time and have been learning a lot and we are finally storying, which makes us feel a lot more productive. I have been a lot more excited and motivated this week.
One thing I have done while here, in the last week actually, is reread Donald Miller´s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It´s kind of the reason I came to Peru and it´s the inspiration for this blog. I have read multiple passages to the group and this one particularly hit me this time reading through:
¨I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and
whispering a better story into our consciousness.¨
It is interesting looking back at the times God has directed me in my life in the context of him guiding me toward a better story. Like when he told me to go to school as opposed to homeschooling. I could have continued as a regular homeschool kid, sleeping in until 10am and experiencing a more adult version of life and less memorization of facts. But it was a much more interesting story to go to school in 8th grade where I faced challenges with grades and relationships and met people who challenged my views of the world and of God. And it set me up for a better story later - choosing a college. Which involved lots of struggle and artistic drama in and of itself. Long story short, through guidance of some teachers and lots of prayer, I decided at midnight 2 days before graduation to go to Baylor University all the way in Waco, Texas. When I decided I woke my parents up and told them the news. We talked and then at 2am we woke the whole house up and went to Waffle House to celebrate (IHOP was closed, that´s why the story -teller settled for Waffle House). Then the first day at Baylor I met a skinny white kid from Alaska and formed a group of friends that provided all kinds of interesting stories of spiritual exploration and relational drama, including the infamous Awkward Tuesday. The rest of the exciting story includes starting to date the skinny white kid from Alaska (Cody), my family moving to Tennessee where they met lots of crazy but interesting and fun people, choosing a major (Business Fellows), becoming a Community Leader after applying at the last minute on election night which was also my birthday, taking a roadtrip with good friends from Texas to Tennessee, ¨meeting¨ Ben Folds along the way, going with Cody to Kenya on a mission trip where I met the church that inspired my thesis, driving to Chicago for the next year´s spring break and sleeping on the floor of a church, reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and deciding to spend the summer in Peru as a summer missionary. When you look at it that way, and consider how God directed each of those things, he does seem like that master storyteller whispering into your consciousness, doesn´t he? Hopefully I´m upholding my end of the bargain and developing as a character.
There is so much more to tell! I don´t have time for it all. In short, we´ve had really good worship times as a team, sharing prayer requests and praying for each other has been my favorite part of the week. The Moho team came to visit to spend last night, so that was a fun time with them.
As for ministry, Jeremy L., Alison, Emily and Jeremy went and shared the Creation story with some police officers earlier this week. They are out of town this weekend but were very interested to see what man did to mess up the perfection God created.
Last night, Emily, Kelsey, Jeremy S. and I taught English to a man who approached Emily in the plaza about teaching him. Emily spoke to him in Spanish and I taught him the English alphabet, numbers 0-10, days of the week and common phrases, including the requested ¨Welcome to this city.¨ He is very eager to learn and was already practicing ¨Thank you¨and ¨Good-bye¨when we left. Some of us are having dinner in his home tomorrow night and sharing the first story with his family. Over the summer we will tell him more stories and hopefully one in English by the end. He invited some friends who didn´t come, but hopefully the class will expand. I really enjoyed teaching it. We are getting advice from the Huancane girls this weekend since they are teaching English classes there. It´s nice to have finally found something for me specifically to do. After the class we had dinner and then Emily, Sara and Kelsey went and storied to Sophia and her husband. They said the husband was very responsive and said he wanted to believe the biblical story over the Aymaran story of creation. We are scheduled to story with them next week again.
John just arrived in town a little while ago. Tonight we are going to eat at the restaurant where we already have connections and then John is going to tell the woman and her husband who own it a story. They heard condensed versions of all the stories when a team was here a few months ago, but have not made any firm decisions. Pray for that tonight.
After storying we get to have a movie night, we´re watching Fireproof. We haven´t seen any movies or tv since we got here, so it will be a nice enjoyable evening. Then Saturday we leave for our mid-trip retreat. We will be in Huancane and will visit Juliaca to get groceries and some souvenir shopping done. Wish I could have elaborated more! Hopefully more to come this weekend from Huancane!
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