The Georges in Peru

For the first time in my recent memory I shut off my phone without being on a plane.  You might protest, "Wait!  You just went on your honeymoon.  You're telling me that you left your phone on then?"  Actually, yes, since the kids were being tour guides around Peru for 18 friends and family, we thought it best to be available for them.  Luckily, there weren't any big emergencies!  

Thursday, Mary Beth handed off the puppet show equipment to a church, the ophthalmology campaign ended that night and the kids were on their last 3 days of winter break, so we slipped off to the beach in Mejía about 2 hours away from Arequipa.  Today was the Ironruna (runa is loosely translated as 'man' in Quechua) Triathlon in Mejía.  One swims 1.9 km, bikes 90 km, and runs a half marathon (21 km).  I'm not in good enough bike shape to enter it on my own, but a friend, who is an awesome swimmer wanted to do it as a relay.   He'd swim, someone else would ride the bike and I'd run the half marathon.  But we never found a cyclist, so I went to observe.

The plan was for the swimmers to swim a somewhat complicated course around several buoys but the race director didn't realize that the water was too deep for anchors or that the current was so strong.  We watched a buoy float off toward the horizon as they readied the race.  We never saw it again.  The director scurried around on a wave-runner to reposition another.  He abandoned having the swimmers swim the original route and told them to just swim around the one lone buoy and come back.  Things just got crazier from this point on.  It was breezy.  Like always, the sea was rough in Mejía.  It's cold too.  About 11˚C (52˚F). As the 18 triathletes took off into the water for the swim leg we noticed the buoy moving quickly to the north.  "Wow!  It will be hard to swim around a moving target.  And this will be a short race; it's only 500m to the buoy!"  The first swimmer got through the breakers into the open water.  Then two more.  The rest appeared to be struggling.  After about 5 minutes, the rest of the swimmers were still just a 50m from shore, while the leader was approaching the buoy.  They were unable to get through the waves!  How can this be?  They were almost all semi-professional athletes.  Haven't they swum in rough water before?  One more got through the waves and headed for the moving buoy.  Those left behind were just standing in the water, shrugging their shoulders and looking at each other.  They looked to shore for direction and someone yelled at them to keep trying.  A race director's nightmare:  having to disqualify the majority of your participants because the swim leg was too hard.  He came up with a brilliant plan:  Send in the lifeguards!  Ten red-and-yellow-clad lifeguards headed into the water to "rescue" the triathletes and send them out on the bike leg!  But do they still qualify for prizes, or just those that completed the swim?  I'll let you know if I hear how it turned out.

I badly wanted to put on my wetsuit and try to see if I could get through the waves.  They didn't look any worse than usual to me!

"Can you bring some money to the ER for me?" my swimming buddy Chris asked.  His wife had gone to the highlands leaving him riding herd over their three kids back in Arequipa.  While playing at the same park Ben and Sarah used to play in 18 years ago, his three-year-old fell and cut open his forehead.  Now at the emergency room, he didn't have money to pay the bill and couldn't leave to go get money.  Plus, the plastic surgeon wouldn't be able to come for two more hours (interpretation:  four hours).

"Why don't you bring him down to my house and I'll sew him up here?"  I've had lots of practice sewing up faces here in our house.

Chris proceded to check out of the hospital and they asked for the equivalent of $80.  "I can only give you $60.  That's all I have on me!  All they did was wash his face anyway."  The clerk recalculated and after a bit gave the new amount:  "That will be $8."  Chris was thankful he hadn't had $80 before, as he would have just paid it without asking questions.  While he was checking out, I was devising a system for restraining a 3-y/o on a boogie board with roof rack straps.  Luckily, when he showed up, the wound didn't even need sewn, but rather approximated well with steri-strips.  Today it looked good.

photo and permission for blog use courtesy of Latin Link missionary Chris Courtman

Here in Arequipa, it seems like crime has gone down since when we arrived in 2000.  My informal poll of taxi drivers reveals a similar sentiment.  One of our missionary colleagues that has had his spare tire stolen three times would probably disagree.   I assume it is because the economy is better and there are less desperate people stealing things.  The situation in Venezuela would back my hypothesis as an article on CNN just today said that 47% of Venezuelans were robbed during 2017.  There are lots of desperate people there.  Around 2 or 3 am on Tuesday morning our recently-installed car alarm went off.  Car alarms in Peru are like robins chirping in Nebraska:  They are a bit annoying early in the morning but don't really mean much.  Mary Beth said, "That's our car!"  I shut off the alarm with my key fob and looked out the window and didn't see (0r hear) anything and went back to bed.  Yesterday, I noticed that the passenger door wouldn't lock and unlock properly and I realized that someone had destroyed the keyhole with some sort of tool.  I mentioned it on our neighborhood chat group and our neighbor said that they hadn't been so lucky and the thief had gotten into their car and stolen their radio that same morning. 

So for now, I'll go back to parking our truck in the garage.  It's a bit annoying to do that since our cats like to hide in the engine compartment and I have fears of replicating the cold winter day from my childhood when 9 cats were trying to keep warm in the pickup and...wait you don't want to hear that story!

I'll just say that I'm thankful for our car alarm.  We can't lock or unlock the passenger door with a key now, but that seems pretty minor. (we still can lock/unlock it with the fob)

What do you see in this picture?

This is a picture taken of our families playing volleyball at SIM's camp a couple of days before our wedding.  Missionaries started this camp about 20 years ago with some Peruvians who also dreamed of a Christian camp in southern Peru.  They worked hard to build it into what it is today.  Over the years, several missionary couples have directed the activities at the camp, including constructing the cabins, pools and pavillions.  An even more difficult task of building up Christian men and women in the community has occurred over the years as well. 

Almost all good mission projects have as a goal  to see the local believers take over the ministry.  The current camp directors, Scott and Tami Wade (who also happen to be from Christ Community Church), believe we are nearly there.  So on Monday, the four of us (Scott, Tami, Allen and Mary Beth) met with key camp workers to tell them that we think that they are ready to run the camp without foreign input.  The Wades plan on continuing to live part-time at the camp for the next 6 months to help the workers adjust to managing things on their own.  A lot of different emotions were seen in our Peruvian friends, from fear to excitement to sadness.  One said that the Wades couldn't possibly be leaving, but if they were, someone must come to replace them.  Another had already drawn up an organogram of who would be in charge of what parts of the camp!  We feel optimistic that this is God's plan for the camp to move forward so it can be a truly Peruvian ministry.  Pray for a good transition.

'Faena' in Spanish means 'church work day'.  Well, actually it means any work day where a group of people get together to do some large task for the general good.  We've participated in faenas in the past to dig water canals in villages and to do repairs at our children's schools.  On Sunday's faena, we expanded our roof to cover our newly-enlarged sanctuary.  We recently increased the number of walls in our church 50%!  (from two to three) and by doing so, widened our sanctuary, so we extended the tin roof to cover the new gap.  

If you don't have a step ladder, you can just pile up chairs to the height you want!