Nazca Bound

Today we leave for Nazca for mid-summer at 1:00! We were told it would be about a 6 hour bus ride, which would put us there at 7 or a little later tonight. When talking with one of our friends here in Coracora, he told us we wouldn´t be getting there until about 1:00 tomorrow morning, so we are expecting to be there sometime between about 10 or 11 tonight, hopefully! We are all very excited about going to Nazca but also very sad to be leaving Coracora this weekend. This weekend is a festival of food in Coracora, and as much as I love food I would almost be willing to start a strike for the buses so we could stay but I really do want to see all my friends again!

Things have been going great this week. We have had a busy week. We went to a school about 8:30 on Monday morning and hung out with the kids, sung a few songs and taught some English. Before leaving, we scheduled another meeting with them on Thursday with guitar and Bible story in hand. On Tuesday we headed to another school at 8:30 in the morning and hung out with the kids, taught them English, and sung a few songs. That seems to be the story for every school trip. We then scheduled another trip to visit them on Friday. This is also the school of the teacher who speaks English. We talked to her that day and Allen was telling her about his bilingual Bible, I told her we had one more and asked if she wanted. She then told us that she doesn´t read the Bible. At that point, things became a mission for me. I really want to work with her and reach out to her with Christ! We could really use her as a translator for a woman´s Bible study and maybe even asking her to do that would be a good way to get her started in the Bible.

On Wednesday we went to the MMM Pentecostal church with our friend Yulber and that is all we really did that day. We didn´t have anything scheduled in the morning so we all kinda slept in a bit. Oh, also this week we have been teaching a woman English in one of the plazas and then playing basketball or suppose to be playing basketball at about 3 or 4 in the afternoons in the municipal building. The two days we tried to play basketball in the municipal building, they ended up having volleyball or soccer or a men´s Coracora vs. Nazca game going on. We just stay and watch and then leave for dinner time. It has been fun to watch games, reminds me of home a bit.

Thursday was a good day at the school, Ben shared a lesson in the Bible and we sang 4 songs with the guitar and were scared we were losing there attention but when we started putting up the music, they asked for one more song. It was a good time with the kids and we are planning to visit them again when the Creative Ministry Team comes to Coracora on July 5-9. We also had Bible study on Thursday night at the Pastor´s house that we have House Church on Sunday mornings at. We actually ran into Flor (the amazing English speaking teacher) in the internet cafe Thursday afternoon and invited her to Bible study, and she came! God definitely blessed that because I really wanted to invite her but wasn´t sure where we would see her again and God just worked there.

That Bible study really opened our eyes to some things that could possibly be happening and something that has really kinda bothered me and question why he would bring something like that up. Towards the end of the Bible study, the pastor started talking about a tall American girl playing guitar in a plaza one day and singing songs of praise but it wasn´t really praise because of the guitar. I don´t think he realized that who he was talking about was me but I really want to know where he bases his belief off of. We are also scared that some other doctrines of his may not be right but that we have been translating what he has said to agree with what we know is right. Needless to say, after that Flor had a lot of questions to ask and she told us how deep she thought the songs were and just talked to us about that time and asked about why he didn´t believe that if someone were to use an instrument it wouldn´t be praise anymore. Like we do with everyone who is new to the Bible study, we invite them to dinner and pay for their meal and she joined as at Junior´s Pollo a la Brasa and we talked to her there.

Friday, we went back to Flor´s school with guitar in hand. They enjoyed that time and instead of doing a Bible story, we sang Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) and explained that song to them. They definitely did not have the attention span that the other school did. After that, Flor cooked us a potato sauce kinda thing that was absolutely amazing and we ate lunch with the students, then we went to a field kinda thing below the amazing swing bridge here in Coracora and tried to play American football with the kids. It was a lot of tackling and just beating up on each other, never really did the football come in play at all. Some older girls from a different school came down to hang out and Albee and I ended up hanging out and talking with them while the guys played with the boys. Albee sang songs in Chinese and I sang songs in English and then the girls sang us a song in Spanish called Amiga, it is a really popular song here. We hear it everywhere and all the girls love to sing it.

Last night we went to a musical festival in one of the four plazas located here in Coracora, it was very fun at first until all the drunk Peruvians seemed to be attracted to us. At that point, we decided it was time to leave and go to bed. I got a video of a very cool Incan group doing a dance on the stage and it was awesome. They had fireworks without the lights and a huge bonfire. The fireworks only shoot up and pop, they don´t glow big lights. We are thinking about getting some of those for the 4th of July, we gotta celebrate somehow!

All has been going great, we have really had an amazing time here and are very excited about the two teams joining us in July. Both teams will arrive in Coracora on the 5th and one of the teams will stay for a full week and the CMT will only stay for a few days. After both teams leave, we will only have two weeks left in Coracora and then it it back to Lima for Albee´s flight to China. It is all coming so fast, I can´t believe I have been here for a full month already!