This brings me to today (Wed). I woke up feeling sick this morning. My stomach hadn't felt very good since last night and was still bothering me and I had a headache. So I took some meds and drank some Coco de Mata tea. Anyway, we were excited about today because we were going to get to talk to teens instead of small kids. So we drive back to Usibamba and arrive at an empty school. Turns out that the teachers decided to go on strike. (For one day might I add) So we just went back over to the little kids again before tackling our service project which was to clean the Plaza in a small pueblo nearby. It was really really bad. We were all down on our hands and knees for what felt like forever and afterwards you could hardly tell we'd been there. Finally all of us were feeling a little woozy from the heat so we had to go. So we went back to the hotel and rested for a while. the ride back was horrible. My head was killing me. So when we got back to the hotel, I went up to my room and I threw up. I felt sooooooo much better afterwards. However, this was obviously the day that everyone decided to get sick. Karis came back and slept until the next day. Angela had a bug of some sort. She was really sick! Puking and fever. She was under like 6 blankets when I came back. Poor thing.
Later that night I went up on the roof to have a little quiet time. The roof of our hotel is one of the highest points in the city and the stars were amazing! (considering I was 12,500ft closer to them than at home.) It was breath-taking. Moments like those just make you wonder how anyone could deny the existence of a God.
Oh something else we learned today in Usibamba. When you're 13,000 ft higher than at home, it also means you're 13,000 ft closer to the sun. We learned the hard way. We all were cooked after about 30 minutes. Mine was just on my arms though. Thank God!
The next day, (Thurs) was really busy. I'm really glad Karis was feeling better and could come. that morning, we went to talk to the teens we were supposed to talk to the day before. We did our dramas and whatnot and talked about hygeine and stuff (school wanted us to). And then we got to talk to them about Jesus. At this point we began to lose the attention of most of our audience. Except for one 16 year old girl named Mirret. She asked questions like crazy! Finally we told her to stay after and talk to us so we could let the others go. We ended up talking to her for more than an hour and a half. Most of the people there grew up catholic so she had questions about like the saints and stuff and we had to be very careful how we answered them so as to not offend anyone. She also said she'd visited evangelical churches before and always wanted to make a commitment but didn't like that the churches were so legalistic. For instance, you can't wear makeup? This girl was very very smart. She asked some great questions. It was a great opportunity to share the gospel and how its not about rules. It's about your personal relationship with Christ. (At the beginning of the trip, we were all given a spanish Bible with intentions on giving it to someone who needed it in Peru). I knew I wanted to give her my Bible. I highlighted John 3:16 and left her a note on that page in spanish that basically said that all the answers she wanted were in here. Then we all exchanged emails with her.
After that we went to a small village to show a (really cheesy) Jesus film. Peruvians love this one though. We invited a ton of people and actually had a pretty nice turnout. Afterwards, the adults asked quite a few questions. The hardest thing here is not the language. It's trying to bridge the gap between us and catholicism. They have no concept of grace and a personal relationship with God.
After that, we got back to Huancayo around 10 and were starving so John took us to a nice restaurant where I ate some kind of rice stir fry dish. And yes...I tried cuy (guinea pig). We ordered one just so we could all say we'd tried it. It was not good. I did not like it at all. I was picturing like a tiny steak looking thing...nope. It was still like in tact. You could see the stinkin head! Some didn't mind it but I was to freaked out I think to keep eating it. No bueno.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Probably 2 more posts and that will be all!
No comments:
Post a Comment