Gatorade and Snickers make it all better - by Heather

Today has been a long day! This is our retreat weekend in Huancane, but before the retreat part could start, we had to make it to Huancane. Sara, Alison, and Kelsey went back to Huancane with John yesterday, so Emily, Jeremy and I had to ride a bus this morning. We were not able to buy tickets for the bus from Conima to Huancane yesterday or this morning, so we sat in the plaza from 8am until 9:30am when the bus finally arrived. When we got on there were no open seats so Emily and I stood in the aisle and Jeremy sat in the front with the driver. When we got to Moho lots of people got off of the bus, so we thought we were then able to sit down in whatever empty seats there were. Wrong. Emily and I sat in these two empty seats at the front but this woman climbed back on the bus and told us we had to get up because that was her seat. In the meantime all these people started climbing back on the bus and climbing past us so that is was hard for us to go anywhere ele. Then we ended up getting shuffled all the way to the back where Emily hit he head really hard on the side ceiling, which made it more stressful. And finally these nice ladies saw our distress and asked to see our ticket/receipt from paying. Turns out your ticket has seat numbers on it. So, we then found out we were supposed to be in the very back row, which was about where we were. But, there was a man and his wife with a baby in our seats. The women told them to move but they refused. We finally just put our stuff (2 backpacks and a sleeping bag) in the one empty seat that wasn't ours and decided to stand. But finally the man got up and moved our stuff into the aisle and sat on the far side and he and his wife sat on top of stuff, which game Emily and I one seat to share. So, she sat on top of a bunch of stuff and I sat lower than all of them in a very small seat squished between the nursing mother and Emily. It was a long hour and forty-five minutes. But finally we arrived in Huancane.

When we got here we met up with the rest of the group and went and had lunch. Not long after we finished we had to leave to go to Juliaca to do souvenir and grocery shopping. Which meant getting on more public transportation. At least this time it was a combi, which is a van. In these there are only 15 or so seats and once the seats are full, the van leaves, instead of just piling as many people in as possible.

In Juliaca we were able to do some shopping at one place that had different vendors set up selling gloves, scarves, bags and sweaters. Then we went to the grocery store where we picked up all our groceries for the next 3 weeks, including the week when the youth team is here. John met us and took all our groceries back to Huancane so we didn't have to try to fit them all on the combi on the way back. After that we went to the hotel restaurant and ordered pizzas. They weren't as good as American pizzas but they were good. Then we had to head back to Huancane as soon as we could to avoid riding in a combi in the dark. To get to the combi stop you have to ride little motorcycle driven tricycles. In the confusion of trying to get all 5 of us in the 3-person cycle, Emily and I were separated from Alison, Kelsey and Jeremy. Luckily both groups had a cell phone, so when we ended up at different combi stops, we were able to tell the other we were heading back in different buses. Then we arrived safely in Huancane! Now we are heading over to the Huancane girls' house to watch a movie and I am going to thoroughly enjoy my Snickers bar and Fruit Punch Gatorade I bought!

Is that you God? ... by Alison

Oh hello world. Today we went to the market in Juliaca, that was fun! We bought a ton of food, I mean a TON. We pretty much stocked up on oreos for life. I brought some sweet headphones at the radio shack here for like ten bucks. Yippeeeeskipppeeee!
So I'm trying to discern if God is speaking to me or if its just my silly ambitions so please pray. I was wondering today how silly I must look to these people here. I am always doing hand motions and speaking english, its a littler embarassing. Its also embarassing that I always mix up my spanish words. I'm kind of a mess here, actually I am.
But seriously, how do you know who God is really speaking to you? I've been praying and reading in scripture so now I'm just waiting for a response. Sometimes I wish that God would just come down from heaven and smack me in the face and tell me what's up.
I wonder if people ask for silly signs like I do. Sometimes I'll be looking out the window at night and I will ask God to send a shooting star to tell me yes. I bet God is up in heaven laughing at me. That's probably what thunder is, God laughing at the silly things we do or just the silly things that I do. Oh God!
I'm ready to hear his voice.
-Love in Christ!

Another Story and Pre-Incan Ruins - by Emily

I´m back again! It is only Heather, Jeremy S, and me in Conima now. The others left in John´s truck to go back to Huancane. We stayed because we had scheduled a storying session tonight with Armando, the man we are teaching English to. We will catch the 9:00am bus back to Huancane in the morning.

Last night, John came in to stay with us. We hung out for a while, did some planning for the team coming in in just over a week, and then went for an excellent dinner at the restaurant of trout, rice, tomatoes, soup, and cinnamon tea. After that, three of us stayed to hear John tell the family that owns the restaurant the story of Cain and Able. It went really well--the couple was very interested in discussing the story and hearing the next one. Unfortunately, the husband Luis will be out of town looking for work off and on over the next few weeks, so it will be a challenge to find time to story more with them. Keep this situation in your prayers.

After that, we went back to the house to join the others to watch Fireproof. John brought his portable DVD player to hook up to our TV. It was quite a treat--we really miss movies! Hopefully, during our retreat this weekend we will get to watch a couple more. Anyway, last night turned into our latest night yet! We didn´t get to bed until almost midnight! It´s funny how that seems so late now, but at home it seems just right or even early!

Today John drove us out to see some Pre-Incan ruins at the top of a mountain. It was very cool, but the drive up was scary. The dirt roads are very thin and right on the edge of the mountain, but thankfully, John has a good four-wheel drive truck! The ruins were awesome, and the view was incredible! We saw some old shelters and graves with skeletons and pottery in them. When we hiked back down to the car, there were two Aymaran women mad at us because they said that because we went up there, there will be no rain and they are going to die. I don´t really understand it, but it had something to do with making their ancestors mad. I´m sure glad that we don´t worship a god or some ancestors like that!

I hope all is well at home. Send me a Facebook message or email if you are up to it! It is great to hear from home.

Locked in and Looking Up ... by Heather

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!

MOOOO .... by Alison

The Mo team left this morning, I really enjoyed getting to hang out with them! Today´s been pretty uneventful...we played with some kids and Jeremy S. and I made lunch. The most eventful thing that happened today is the toilet getting clogged. Yep. John (the missionary) will be arriving in a few hours and we are eating at a local restuarant and John is going to tell them a bible story. We have actually building a lot of relationships and we are going to be telling a bunch of people bible stories next week! I´m getting really excited!! And our team has been thinking of ideas for the church team when they come. It finally feels like we are really starting to spread the Gospel here! Goodness, I just feel like dancing!! I´m off to do some reading.
-Love in Christ!

And the Storying Begins! by Emily

Hola! Sorry it has been so long! The internet bodega has been closed for the past three days because of a fiesta or something. Anyway, there is a lot that has happened in the past three days!

First of all, Jeremy S had quite the adventure trying to get rid of our trash that had been piled up in our garage since we got here. We really wanted to get rid of it, but he especially wanted to since it was piled up closest to his room! And, if you didn´t know, we can´t flush toilet paper here, so the trash that we have here is disgusting.... Anyway, we were told that the trash truck comes by at 6:00am on Monday, so Jeremy was prepared to take it out (since he gets up around 4:00am every morning anyway). He thought that we heard a truck out at 2:00am, so he gets out of bed to take the trash and waits for the truck that is driving around and honking. He said that a lot of people were out standing outside of their stores and homes, so that made him think it was for sure the trash truck at that crazy hour of the morning! Anyway, it wasn´t, and Jeremy was not able to go back to sleep. The next day, a man came by with a wheel barrel, filled it with our trash, and Jeremy walked with him outside of the city limits to burn it. Apparently, they don´t even have a trash truck. John Grady warned us that the people here will sometimes lie to you about things when they don´t know an answer so that they don´t have to tell you that they don´t know, and we definitely experienced that!!

Anyways, a lot of great things have happened! On Tuesday, Jeremy L, Alison, Jeremy S, and I went to the police station because we were scheduled to share the creation story with policemen. When we got there, there were two ready to listen named Roldofo and Climente. Jeremy L shared the story, and the rest of us participated and watched. At first, they seemed bored, but they got more interested and interactive as time passed, and then they really loved the hook that Jeremy used to get them excited about the next story (the Fall of Man)! We scheduled to go back to tell the second story at 4:00 on Monday, so pray that we find quick transportation from Huancane back to Conima since we are leaving for Huancane on Saturday and coming back to Conima on Monday.

I was supposed to story with Sofia and her husband that evening, but Sofia asked to reschedule for Wednesday night because she did not feel well. I also ran into a man named Armando who asked if we could teach him and four or five of his friends English. I agreed and we scheduled a lesson for the next day.

This brings me to yesterday. Yesterday was our busiest day yet. I spent the day preparing for and praying about the English lesson and the storying session that I would be doing. I was very nervous all day, and I´m not sure why. Everything worked out wonderfully. Before we left for the English lesson, the Moho came to visit us.

Armando came at 6:00 for the English lesson and said that he could not get his friend to come. We had reserved a room at the government building across the Plaza from our house to teach the lessons in, so Heather, Kelsey, Jeremy S, and I went with Armando to the room. He is so eager to learn English! Heather ended up leading most of the lesson, and she did a fantastic job. We plan to meet every Monday and Wednesday at 6:00 for a lesson, and we would like to share a story at the end of each lesson. I was prepared to share a story at the end of last night´s lesson, but then he invited us over for dinner on Friday, so I decided to save it for when I could tell his whole family after dinner on Friday. He said that he does not have much room in his house, so only three of us will be going.

After the lesson, we had a quick (but great!) spaghetti dinner with the Moho team, and then Kelsey, Sara, and I went to Sofia´s store for me to tell her and her husband the creation story. If I have not already told you, this story is LONG! But somehow, by God´s grace, I was able to get through most of it really well, and they seemd to really understand me and be interested. We had a good discussion comparing the Bible creation story with the Aymaran creation story as well. They are excited to hear the next story that we scheduled for next Wednesday.

When we got back, we shared about the storying session with the rest of our team and the Moho team, had time a worship around the fire, and stayed up late talking about movies, music, and other things from home.

This morning we had worship at 8:30 as usual and said goodbye to the Moho team and Jeremy L. Tonight John Grady is coming to share a story with the couple at the restaurant since they are ready to hear stories that our team has not learned yet. The couple invited us for trout at 7:00 and the story at 8:00. I´m very excited about it.

Yesterday, I was able to finish the Let the Nations Be Glad book. That book is really powerful and thought-provoking. I think that every Christian should read it. One of the best things I learned from the book is what it truly means to worship and give glory to God. Here are a few quotes that meant a lot to me:

• Definitition of worship: ¨being satisfied with God¨
• ¨...the reason worship pervades all of life is that all Christian behavior is properly motivated by a thirst for more and more satisfaction in God.¨
• ¨The impulse for singing a hymn and the impulse for visiting a prisoner are the same: a freeing contentment in God and a thirst for more of God-a desire to experience as much satisfaction in God as we can.¨
• ¨A world Christian is someone who is so gripped by the glory of God and the glory of His global purpose that He chooses to align Himself with God´s mission to fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory as the waters cover the sea.¨

Anyway, that´s all I have for today. Keep on praying!

Lots of ground to cover ... by Alison

I haven´t been able to get on the internet for a few days because the lady that owns the internet cavena has been out of town and that´s the only internet access we have here! So I have a few days to cover, I am just going to write whats in my journal.

Monday, June 28th
People were saved in the Old Testament who did not know the name of christ but in the New Testament the mystery of Christ became known, this was a turning point; it ended the time of ignorance and made Christ known. The New Testament teaches that the coming of Christ was a decisive turn in redemptive history, which makes Christ the focus of ALL saving faith. There are unsaved persons among unsaved people groups who are seeking after God in an extraordinary ways. God accepts this search as genuine, and God works wonders to bring that person to the Gospel of Jesus Christ the way he brought Peter to Cornelius´s house in Acts. Wow, I was just questioning and thinking about so many things yesterday and God revealed thses truths to me. Check out the book: "Let the Nations be Glad!" by John Piper. Sara storied with two teenage girls yesterday, she told them the story of the fall of man. Sara is leaving Saturday because she has shingles and has been really sick, so everyone be praying for her!

Tuesday, June 29th
Last night Heather and I made pasta, fried cheese, and potatoe wedges. Yum!! How am I feeling today? Well I haven´t been home sick or anything, its actually been really good to get away in a sense. God´s been teaching me so much! He´s taught me that suffering is a big part of my christian walk and in my suffering, I am sharing Christ suffering. I can´t help what its going to be like when I get home and am caught up in my busy life. Everything seems so meaningless compared to Christ and sharing his word! Yesterday the Jeremy´s, Kelsey, and I went and got fire wood. We ended up hiking to the place that we went to when we went rock climbing, which is about four miles total. So I cared about fifteen pounds of firewood for two miles and up a huge hill, I thought I was going to pass out!!! Last night Jeremy Lou told two police officers the story of Creation, which was so awesome...even though he told it in Spanish so I couldn´t understand anything. ha! Last night I hide in the meeting room and jumped out and scared Kelsey and made her spill hot water everywhere. It was hilarious!

Today
The Mo team is here with us right now! There names are Tim, Jessica, and Mindy...I like them a lot. Tonight Sara and I are cooking dinner for ten people. Oh my! And Heather and Emily are teaching English classes at six to six people. Then Emily is telling the Creation story to Sophia and her husband (the people who own the store next to our house.) Its so exciting that we are actually starting to tell people bible stories! I have to go start making dinner for everyone. Keep praying everyone!!
-Love in Christ!