Retreat!

The past 48 hours was a youth retreat. Since this is a small church without a youth budget (like so many of the churches that we’re used to at home) the youth retreat was at the church. It was like a big sleep over, girls in one room and boys in the courtyard. Pretty much the only thing that was asked of my team was that we build relationships with the youth. Most of the youth here (and youth is a loose term, ranging from 16 to however old) are pretty leary of taking a major step in their faith. They don’t want to be baptized, they don’t want to join a discipleship class, and they don’t want to be viewed differently than their peers.

We were all a bit skeptical about how much fun this youth retreat was going to be, but it was great. Yesterday Bre and I had a full conversation without using any English. Some of our Spanish was pretty broken but we got our point across. We ate together, sang together, prayed together, and played together the whole two days.

Dancing is a big part of the culture here. Last night some of the girls put on some salsa and were dancing before we started watching a movie. Jano, the pastor, lined us the girls on my team and some girls from the church and we mimicked their dancing. There was a lot of laughter and I’m not always sure if it was at us or with us. One of the girls could really move her hips so I asked her if she would teach me and she did. I apparently caught on decently well because Jano gave me a high five and then Italo did too. I was so embarrassed when I realized that everyone was watching me that I blushed and dashed into the kitchen. Italo told me that I danced like a Peruvian girl, I’ll take that as a compliment. But all through the evening I was told that I could dance well and that I had rhythm, who knew?

Today we spent the day at the beach. We had to leave Lima so we could get to a beach where it was clean enough to swim. I am proud to announce that I am, once again, the least sunburnt of all the girls! But as soon as we were laying our towel down we noticed some people our age that were also speaking English. It feels like it’s been quite a while since I’ve heard an American accent that isn’t on our team. I think they noticed us right away, too. We got to talking and they were from all over the states and studying abroad in Ecuador. It was pretty refreshing to be able to explain who I am and not have to ask “como se dice se?”