La venganza de la lechuga

In other words,"Revenge of the Lettuce."

Thank you for your patience as we took a short break to allow me to recover from some wicked food poisoning. A few days after arriving in Arequipa, I decided to make myself a nice, leafy salad. Turns out that was a bad idea, as the lettuce grown in Arequipa is especially prone to a particular kind of parasite. Nearly every Arequipan that I have talked to - who knew that I was sick - has been like, "Oh yeah, we don´t eat the lettuce here..." Lesson learned.

Down with health-consciousness! More empanadas, please.

In the meantime, we have settled nicely into our work here. Here´s what our days look like:

7 AM - Wake-up, try not to feel hatred towards insane rooster or barking dogs
8 AM - Danny leaves house for Spanish lessons
8 AM - 12 PM Danny studies Spanish; Anne cleans the house, cooks and reads about missions
1 PM Eat really big lunch (as in Spain, lunch is the primary meal of the day here)
Afternoon Work on church projects
7 - 9 PM Attend ministries of the church (young adults group, a discipleship class, etc.)

On Sunday afternoons, we will be spending our time in Ciudad de Dios, where the church is working on a church plant. We went to Ciudad de Dios for the first time last week and really loved it. Here is a little bit of background on the place itself: Ciudad de Dios is an underdeveloped "suburb" of Arequipa. Many of the city´s manual laborers and domestic workers live there, and although large in size, Ciudad de Dios is comprised mostly of small, one-room houses made out of sillar (a type of volcanic rock). There is no running water in most (if not all) of the houses, and electricity is also seemingly a luxury. There are a few little stores throughout the development - including small restaurants and convenience stores - but not much else.

The church has been working in Ciudad de Dios for years, and has had particular success with its children´s club, which brings about 40 children each week to a small gathering place that the church has built (which is actually attached to the home of the woman who first encouraged the church to come to Ciudad de Dios). It has also expanded to include an adult class and a group for teenagers. Each week, a team of five from the church goes to Ciudad de Dios to run these programs. Our job last week was to help with this children´s club.

As soon as our car drove up to the children´s club site, about 7 children came running out of the room to bang on the windows of the car and greet us. Three stray dogs soon followed (more on that later). I was encouraged by how excited the children were to see the team arrive. We played with them for a little while and then started the day´s activity, which included singing some worship songs with them, helping them memorize a verse from the Bible (1 Samuel 16:7) and telling them the story of David´s election as the king of Israel. We ended the day with a coloring activity. By the way, there is nothing like watching a group of 4-year-olds memorize a Bible verse (in 5 minutes) to convict you that you need to do better at memorizing Scripture.

Cute anecdote about the children - i.e. "kids say the darnest things no matter what country you´re in" : As we were getting ready to start the lesson, a little girl in a red Polartec hat (it´s winter here) ran into the classroom. She was about three years old, possibly a bit younger. So I said hi to her and asked her how she was and she looks up at me with her gigantic eyes and her cute little hat and says, grinning, "I´m fine. My mom just gave me a shot!"

Not-so-cute anecdote about dogs: Although our offical job was to help with the children, my unofficial role at Ciudad de Dios became that of the Dog Whisperer. There are a lot of stray dogs in Peru and especially in Ciudad de Dios. They are surprisingly obedient (even the real street dogs who have no owners), but on Sunday, one dog took it upon himself to interrupt our meeting and incite the other neighborhood dogs (who were perched on surrounding rooftops) to go absolutely crazy. We finally got him out of the children´s club, but he kept trying to open the door and sneak back in. So I summonned all of my dog whispering knowledge and was able to put an end to his mischief with a series of calm, assertive looks and "Shhhts."

This weekend, we´ll be at a marriage retreat, but after that, we´ll be going to Ciudad de Dios on a weekly basis to support the church´s teams there. We are especially looking forward to our work in that community.

Thank you to everyone who has sent us e-mails and even video messages while we´ve been here in Peru! We are so grateful for your friendship and your prayers. Please join with us in praising the Lord for giving us such an amazing opportunity to serve the church in Peru - we have been so blessed here by our new experiences and continue each day in thankfulness for how God is growing us in our faith and especially in our love for missionaries and other evangelists.