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Today has been a rather exhausting day: the unexpected and unplanned were the norm. In fact, sometimes things seemed pretty much out of control, but through it all we could see God’s hand leading and using us. Even though we sometimes felt pretty overwhelmed, God made his strength perfect in out weakness!

We got up bright and early to leave for Ventanilla. Unfortunately, our bus driver didn’t! After we had sat around in the lobby of our hotel for a couple hours, he finally arrived and we finally departed. On the way we stopped by a supermarket and bought out their supply of bread, meat, and cheese for the Ventanilla kids’ lunch. As we arrived at the outskirts of Ventanilla we threw candy out our window to the street kids and waved.

When we got the community center, our jaws dropped. We’d had a lot of kids Monday, but today, there weren’t just a lot of kids, there were TONS! So after multiple flare prayers we charged into the fray. After we finally divided the crowd into groups we took them to the different locations and began our activities. To try to get everyone’s attention one of the local Spanish helpers would bang on a wooden table with a bamboo cane. Her success was very limited. Luckily, Pastor Salazaar was my translator, and together we were finally able to settle things down. Gloriel and I were the story telling crew. We told them the story of Jonah and used it to illustrate how like Jonah we should all ask forgiveness of God and others when we do them wrong. The children were very enthusiastic and responsive to our message.

The meal team (in charge of feeding lunch to all the children) had a fish and loaves experience. They actually gave the very last loaf to the very last kid! It was amazing how God stretched the food out even though we had many more kids than we expected.

Since today was our last day in Ventanilla, everyone wanted to get our email address and have their picture taken with us. Sometimes we were swarmed (by now not a new experience) as they each struggled to get to us. All the kids wanted their pictures taken with us. Back at the bus we reassessed the state of the team and checked for casualties. Christie had heat exhaustion, Katherine was recovering from an asthma attack, I had been feeling pretty rotten all morning and had a full-fledged fever, and everyone had sunburns with varying degrees of severity.

As we left we passed out the very last of the hygiene packs to the kids. Back at the hotel the wounded were dropped off and the rest went to the Callao to teach the kids about the principle of suffering.

(By the way Mom, there have been a whole bunch of girls kissing me!)(Also Mom, I’m pretty much over whatever I had.)

Ben, for the Team

(Note of explanation from the moderator: cheek kisses are the standard form of greeting in Peru.)

Lima traffic - the reason why it takes so long to go anywhere.

A boy from Ventanilla

Celina washing a boys’ hair. She and Amy washed a lot of heads today! The kids loved it!

Clean and happy!

All the kids wanted us to sign their book, paper, shirts, or whatever else was handy. This is Gloriel with a couple of the kids.

Kailyn working with the kids on her team at the children’s program in Callao that we are doing in the evenings.

A crazy game from Nate and Charlie’s game team.

Nate talking with one of the guys in his group.

Elizabeth with kids at the Callao program.

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 am and is filed under Blog, Peru Trip 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.