We Made It!

After a 26 hour travel day we have finally made it to our new home for the next three and a half months. We had an extra hour and a half delay in Houston and I think I accidentally left my cell phone in Seattle but other than that, it was an uneventful trip.

We all made it through customs and immigration without being asked a single question. No one asked us why we were here, how long we were staying or what we were planning on doing. That was a huge answer to prayer because some of the girls were a little nervous with the idea of going through customs.

We regrouped after getting a bit separated going through the customs lines and then we saw Otto. Another answer to prayer! We realized in Dallas that we hadn’t sent him our travel itinerary and when we tried to call to tell him we were delayed, the phone wasn’t working. But he was there, he greeted each of us girls in the Peruvian way (right cheek to right cheek and kiss the air) and shook Dave’s hand. We saw Otto’s son and an entire entourage of people. We met and spoke with what little language skills we shared between us. But the first thing some of the people said was, “You know Jesse?” I smiled and said yes and explained that we go to university together.

We fell into bed at about 3am with five girls and five beds in one room. We don’t have much floor space and we’re trying to figure out what to do with our suitcases and clothes but we decided that we’ll deal with it later. Our room is right off the courtyard between the church and the house and directly outside of our window are two large parrots that whistle and say “hola” and “Otto”. In fact we woke up to those parrots this morning. They’re sort of like a “guard dog” in the sense that they go crazy with some screeching noises whenever someone rings the doorbell.

This morning we all got to sleep in, all the way until about 10am… and that was only 7am according to the time our bodies are used to. We took our time getting ready and spent some time up on the roof. The weather here is amazingly beautiful. The sun is shining and there are flowers blooming everywhere. Some of the flowers are just like at home and some are very tropical, it’s wonderful. But we spent some time talking, singing, and praying as a team before we had lunch. Lydia made us a fantastic meal. In Peru, the biggest meal of the day is in the afternoon and not in the evening, I think I’ll like that.

After lunch Otto took us to the market so we could exchange some of our money and we could generally get acquainted with things. We walked for a while and it got a little warm, but what a fantastic feeling to finally be warm again! There is a lot of fruit grown around here so there were things I had never seen before like starfruit and even the things I have seen before were a little different, here the mangos and avocados are almost the size of your head!

This evening we had a meeting with the pastoral staff. We went over everything and hopefully I even picked up a bit of Spanish vocabulary. We were given all the information we should know about living here but we’re still praying for an easy transition. We’ll be cooking three times a week with the pastor’s wife. When we’re cooking with her she will also help us to learn Spanish and common recipes. She is wonderfully sweet and told us that we could call her “mommy” if we wanted to. Everyone here just wants us to feel comfortable so that we can feel at home here.

This week they’re going easy on us. They’re going to show us around the city and next week we’ll start teaching English and learning Spanish and doing everything else that is on the schedule. There’s a chance that we might go to the catacombs tomorrow so that should be really interesting… Sarah told us all about them and all the bones that are in them.

In a little while we might go down to the park and just spend some time there with the guitar and sing. Otto was saying that it is a dream of the church that we may be able to be more of a presence in the neighborhood.

My letter was just pleasantly interrupted by the pastor’s youngest daughter coming to play with me. We ran around and I said “commo se dise?” and she would tell me what things were. We ran around the house with me pointing at thing and her telling me answers. I think that Annie and I will become good friends, she’s been helping me a lot with learning vocabulary. Well it’s getting late and I’m going to investigate what’s going on down in the court yard before I head off to sleep.