Felices Fiestas Patrias

Happy Peruvian Independence Day! Today, July 28, is the official date, though celebrations have been going on for several days now and will continue for at least one more after today. Most people are off work today and all the schools suspend classes for today and tomorrow. Throughout the last few weeks in schools all around Cusco, students have been practicing traditional dances to celebrate the special occasion. PROMESA is no exception to this. The classroom teachers (those who teach in Spanish) and Carrie have all been working very diligently to teach their students dances from the three geographic regions of Peru: coast, mountains and jungle. Shannon, Marisol (the computer teacher) and I were put in charge of decorations since we didn't have classes to teach dances to. Every spare minute (and some not so spare ones) was spent learning the steps of the dances. Traditional clothing can be rented here in a number of little stores. Since this is a high-demand time of year, the price was 8 soles a person (roughly $2.50 - $3 American). Normally, it's about 7. At El Molino (think the number of stores in a typical American mall, one right next to the other, each one about 3 meters long by 4 meters tall by 3 meters deep - roughly - jam packed floor to ceiling with stuff) you can buy pirated DVDs of traditional music and dances for a little over 1 sol (roughly $.50 American). So that's what the teachers did, since having someone come teach the kids would have been very expensive and out of PROMESA's budget. Everyone did really well. There were PowerPoint slide shows about the various regions of Peru, highlighting some of the flora, fauna, typical foods, and typical dances. And then there were the dances. These kids can really dance! Oh of course, it wasn't perfect. There were wiggly kids. And there were kids who just plain didn't want to cooperate. And there were kids who forgot what they were supposed to say. But I was proud of them! They did a great job.
For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of the program. Ron (the missionary who works with the school) taught the elementary students all how to sing "We Want to See Jesus Lifted High" in English and Spanish. I filmed it on my camera, but it's too big to put on here, so here's a link to YouTube where you can see that, if you're interested.
Also, just in case you were ever curious, here is a link to learn about and hear the Peruvian national anthem
This comes with a warning, however. It usually gets stuck in my head and then I go around the house...or the school...or walking down the street...singing it. :)

The pictures are as follows (sorry, Blogger doesn't let me put captions directly with the pictures): Top: Aaron, one of my fourth graders, holding the flag while the parents sang the national anthem.
Kindergarteners dancing the marinera from the coast
Second graders dancing from the coast
Some of the third grade girls dancing from the jungle.
First graders (the little girls with the colorful caterpillar-like things) dancing from the mountain region
Four-year-olds (dressed like animals) dance about life in the jungle
Katy and Nurieth, two of my fourth graders, ready to dance. Katy danced the boys' part because fourth grade has 8 girls and 5 boys.
My third grade boys show their true colors pretending to be jungle natives. Sometimes they act like it in class too! :)
Fourth graders dancing (they're the ones with the big hats with straw on them).
And for those of you who miss seeing my face, here is a picture of me with Crhisnna, one of my fourth graders.

Blessed

I read a quote once: "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God." That quote would pretty well sum up this last week or two of teaching. We've now been in school for almost 5 months and the mid year, 2-week break is coming up after the end of next week. I think it's time. I think the kids think it's time too.
The last few weeks, I have come to the end of my rope. I have discovered that in myself, I don't have the patience I need to be a teacher. I have discovered that in myself I don't have the love for my students that I need to have. They do things. They bug me. They get under my skin. And then...well, let's just say teaching's not quite as fun then. But in this discovery, I've also discovered something else. God does have the grace and patience, love and creativity that I need in order to work with my kids. When mine is all spent, I can rely on His. And it seems the more spent mine is, the more His kicks in.
Take Tuesday for example. Monday and Tuesday were not very good days with third grade, especially. I was trying to be patient. I was trying to be loving. But it's hard when you feel like you're talking to yourself because no one else is listening. And then to top it all of, on Tuesday, right before leaving to come home, I realized that two boxes of crayons were missing from my desk. That did it. I came home furious.
"God," I complained, "I work and work. I spend so much time planning and thinking and trying to come up with creative ideas to work with these kids. And it's like they throw it back in my face. I make stuff and it gets destroyed. God, this isn't fair!" And then, ever so gently, He reminded me that, hmmmm......sometimes I do the very same thing to Him. And how does He respond versus how I tend to respond? And then, He gave me His presence and peace. The next morning, I arrived at school still quite upset and not quite sure I was ready to face a room full of 20 third graders. And again, God was faithful to take over where my rope ended. As I stood before 20 wiggly 7 and 8 year olds, God gave me this incredible calm and lack of frustration. I was able to explain to them what had happened and how we wouldn't be able to work on a specific project until the crayons were found and returned to my desk. And you know, they stopped being wiggly third graders and they paid attention! That was the turning point for the week so far in my interactions with third grade.
Wednesday came and went an there were no crayons revealed. I was wondering if they would in fact show up in the end. But lo and behold, Miriam found the last 5 crayons this afternoon in a box of papers and things.
Throughout the last couple of weeks, God has made it apparently clear in many situations that I need to rely on Him instead of my own strength. I don't have what it takes to be an amazing teacher and to reach students. But, as He keeps reminding me, He does have the strength, grace and peace that I need and that He will only give it to me if I ask.
So maybe I am at the end of my rope. But I've been so blessed by receiving from God the last few weeks. Not that I want third grade to be bad just so I can receive more from God...heaven forbid!) But I've been finding God to be incredibly faithful in the midst of all that's going on. I've realized how much I need to lean on Him and trust Him.
Paul said something similar in 2 Cor. 12.9, where God says to him, "My grace is sufficuent for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness". It's my life verse and I think it's becoming more and more so the longer I live and the more times I can feel God's presence with me when I'm clinging for all I'm worth to the very end of my rope. We truly serve an amazing God!

Manuela´s Miracle

I guess you could call it a miracle. You may remember the other week, I shared about Manuela and Valentin, two older members of my church in Huacarpay. They had gotten married, but they had to push up their wedding a week because Manuela was not doing well and no one was sure how much time she had left.
Well, Manuela is still very much alive. And what´s more, she´s getting better! Manuela has cancer. From what I understand, it started in her eye. But it´s spread throughout her whole body now. The doctors say there´s really nothing they can do for her. So she´s living with cancer. For a long time now, her face has been covered with ugly scabby wounds, supposedly from the cancer. And she has a quite large wound in her eye where she has the cancer. It is always covered with a clean gauze pad, thanks to several of the women from the church. The last few weeks, the wounds on her face have actually been getting better and the scabs have been falling off! Her skin is, in the words of Ines, the pastor´s wife, like a baby´s. And indeed, when I saw her this morning, she looked much better. Someone quoted her husband as saying, "She´s getting pretty!".
And that´s not all. After church, some of us were discussing it again and someone said that now she can actually see out of her bad eye and that apparently it´s getting better, or at least better than it had been. Someone said this morning that Manuela said the other day that now she really believes in the power of God because she´s seeing it first hand.
It´s been exciting to see Manuela´s miracle and to know that God is reaching down to her tiny house in her tiny village in the middle of Peru and is touching her body and bringing restoration to her. What an amazing Father!

Life as normal

I've often wondered what normal is. I've begun to think it's a social construct. Normal depends on where you are and what society around you says. Often I think "Oh, there's not much to write about. Life is going on as normal". And then I realize that normal here is different from normal in the States. So I thought I'd write about normal life here in Peru to give you an idea of what normal is like for me these days. Peru is a relationship-oriented culture, which means that spending time with people occupies a lot of my days. Often these times with friends happen very spontaneously, thus inciting the comment from John Kreider, a fellow missionary, that here in Peru, things are set in Jello, as opposed to cement.
Case in point, I began this blog entry this morning, then received a call from one of my friends inviting me to go play racquetball with her and some other friends. Since today was a transportation strike, I walked for an hour and a half to get there, then wandered around being lost until I found them and played racquetball for about an hour before having to head home for a missionary team meeting. Now it's evening and I'm still updating my blog. :)
If you'd look at my proposed agenda in my head at the beginning of the week, it would look very different from what actually happens by the end of the week. A typical day in my mental agenda looks like this: wake up, go to school, come home from school, spend time with Marga doing what needs to be done around the house, work on schoolwork, go to bed. However, a typical day generally actually goes somewhat more like this: wake up, go to school, at school learn that someone wants to do something together in the afternoon or needs help with English, come home from school, do something with someone, do a little schoolwork, go to bed.
But there are many blessings that come with being a part of such a culture. Sometimes these times of spending time with people doing whatever we're doing are the best times to really get to know someone and/or make memories. The other week, I came home from school and Marga asked me to help her make wedding cakes for a wedding that was to be the next day. Valeria, who was supposed to make the cakes, had to travel, so she had asked Marga to make the cakes. Valeria has a large wood-fueled oven in her house, so we could bake them all at once and do it very quickly. So we went to Valeria's house, where we met up with about 4 other people. Working together, we mixed up 10 large cakes in a very short amount of time. Then we stuck them in the oven. 5 minutes later we quickly took them out of the oven because the oven was way too hot and the tops burned black in the short amount of time that they were in there. We covered them with wet pieces of paper and finished baking them. As they came out of the oven and cooled, Frida cut the burned parts of them off with a knife. They turned out fine! But it was definitely a bonding experience for all of us. We had lots of laughs trying to figure out how to fix our problem and what we were going to tell Valeria.
And then there was the conversation I had with Marisol the other week, walking from school to where she needed to get a combi to go home. We were able to share from the heart as we walked along, eating popsicles. It was totally a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment thing, but it was so great! Another day the same week, Marisol asked me for help with English, so we went downtown and ate pizza, then spent a while working on English. She also decided she wanted to get her hair cut, so the next evening we went downtown again and spent time at our friend Norma's styling salon.
And then Juana calls sometimes wanting help with English homework. So she'll come over and we'll spend more time talking and catching up with where each other's at and what's going on than actually working on English.
When I'm in Huacarpay the same phenomenon happens. I have yet to get out to Huacarpay and right off the bat have worship team practice. I doubt it will ever happen. I usually get there and no one's at the church. So I walk down to Rene's house, where something is always going on. This past week I got there only to find her in the midst of making her son's birthday lunch for the next day (which I had no idea about but ended up going to). Once that was finished, then we had worship team practice. And then I usually go back to Pastor Celestino and Ines's house and crash there for the night, spending time with their family.
Living life relationally is very different from living life in a planned, structured way. Sometimes I wish I'd have more time to work on schoolwork. But then I think about all I'd miss out on if my mental agenda looked more like my actual agenda. And then I decide I'm really actually glad that I live in this new kind of normal, where people come first and relationships are forged in the midst of these spontaneous times of togetherness. It's a blessing and the energy I pour out is more than replaced by the energy generated by friendship and fellowship.
So when I say my life is normal, what I really mean to say is that I am forging relationships in the midst of this culture and feeling very blessed to have the opportunity to do so.

There will be great rejoicing...

She walked up to the front of the church. A tiny country church trying to bridge the changing cultures of the Andes and modern Western culture, a mixture of young people in jeans who speak mostly Spanish and older people in more Andean styles who speak more Quechua. I know her. I danced with her at the church service. Her name is Gabriela. It surprises me to see her here, now. Humbly, brokenly, she announced her desire to accept Jesus into her heart. With tears streaming down her cheeks and her voice catching in her throat, she prayed, standing up front with Pastor Celestino and his wife Ines. And Jesus came. Just like the song we sang in Quechua earlier in the morning, which Ines translated roughly for me: "As he was going to the cross, Jesus said to me, 'I'm dying so that you don't have to'". Joy filled my heart as I listened to her pray and as I felt the Holy Spirit's presence there. As Gabriela prayed, another woman came down the aisle. Gently supported by two others, she came, clutching a crutch, limping badly. Juana, sitting beside me, explained that this woman was pregnant and didn't take care of herself. About a month ago, she gave birth and hasn't been well since. A chair was brought and she sat at the front of the church, expressing the same desires as Gabriela. The church extended hands of blessing and healing over her. As I was praying for her, I was reminded of the story of the healing of the paralytic from Mark 2. It was preached about several times recently and what stuck out to me was Jesus' question: "Which is more difficult: to say 'Your sins are forgiven' or to say 'Take up your bed and walk'?" For us as humans, both are equally difficult. However, for God, both are equally possible. I would have loved to see her be healed physically. That didn't happen, but she went away from church yesterday with a far greater healing. She was healed spiritually. God must have a greater plan...
All I know is that, slowly but surely, the kingdom of God is expanding in Peru and God is bringing precious souls into His kingdom, for His glory and for the praise of His name.