Exodus and Arrival

So, it´s been one week since we´ve been in Peru and two days since we´ve been in the city of Coracora in the province of Ayicucho. Already God has given me more understanding of his plan through Christianity in all of the symblism through the days of the Tabernacle and the Exodus of his chosen people. This causes me to wonder in what chapter we exist and if this is not the final chapter, what God will show through us in Generations to come. But, let´s get to the basic storytelling part.As many of you may know, my flight to Lima, Peru was indeed my first and certainly not my last ( I may have to get home... sometime). Don´t worry, mom, I´m only kidding. Anyways, the flight went about as well as could be hoped for and after about 11 hours of flying and running around in airports trying to use the bathroom and get food before the big old jet airliner that was supposed to carry us away left without us, we arrived in Lima. And in those eleven hours, suddenly I became as effective as a 5 year-old teaching an Astrophysics class. I was there and I knew enough of the language to order a happymeal. Luckily though, Allen came to my rescue and got me through customs. Then we met up with the people that were looking for us, exchanged a few bucks into soles and bought some Big Macs. That´s right, the first thing I ate in Peru was a Big Mac. It´s ok though, because after a midnight taxi ride through the streets of Lima with our new friends Rachel and Sierra, I was not only wide awake, prayed up, and more confident in my own driving skills, but I was also hungry again. So, when more missionaries showed up at our hostal, one of the more extroverted guys, Derek, suggested we go get some early morning llama heart. So, a group of six or seven gringos set out to walk across half of lima to find a 24 hour peruvian waffle house of sorts for some good old Anticuchos. Just in case you were worried that we wouldn´t find them, we did. They were delicious. They had an unmistakenly tasty hint of wild game and were a perfect texture somewhere between steak and fried chicken liver. But, that´s beside the point because while we were sitting in an outside of this restaraunt, some creepy old drunk man in really nice clothes who really resembled a possessed Mr. Bean offered to buy us beer. We refused. Then, somehow he found out we were Baptist missionaries and wanted to know if we were black Baptists or White Baptists. We weren´t quite sure how to respond so we just said "well I don´t think any of us are black. . . " and he didn´t like that answer, got angry and stormed off with a disgusted " Now I know what you are, Cao Babies!" only to return a few minutes later with an appology. After we cleared up the fact that we didn´t care about the color of peoples skin, he proceded to inform is that the real missionaries, catholic missionaries, usually were killed where they served. He followed this bit of insightful information by inquiring where were staying to which we obviously gave an overly general answer of ,"uh... we´re just kind of spread out all over Lima." I guess he did like that answer, because he ordered a beer and payed for our food. And, in light of the obviously dulling conversation and hour of the night, we walked, well half ran, back to our hostal by way of China. It was strictly for exercise, obviously. Then, around 4, we got back to our hostal and got a good 3 hours sleep before we met at the REAPsouth office just down the street.

Thus began one of the most tiring days of my life as our group of four college students (Allen Kittenger, Albee Zhang, Jodi Webb, and myself) were assigned a translator and given an envelope to begin a scavenger hunt across the entire city of Lima. Then, after exchanging money, eating raw fish bathed in lemon juice and topped with rediculously tasty red onions, eating a pepper that tasted like smoky goodness at first then made me cry both tears of joy and sheer pain, drinking some frog juice (litterally, I watched the man take a live frog, beat it over the head with a butter knife and then proceed to clean it and gut it in one fluid motion), and finally exploring some catacombs, I took a hour and a half bus ride. However, this was no goin to primary school bus ride. This was a how many people can we fit in a 15 passenger van converted to look like a trolly for midgets where personal space became a figment in the imaginations of fairy tale creatures and the driver´s only goal was to hit sixty miles an hour then slam on the brakes and cram even more people into the space he had just created by making everyone that was standing fall over, or to have lst ten pounds vomiting. But we made it to a little park finally where we were instructed to get some dinner, then to buy some bottles of water and some toillette paper. . . which we have to take everywhere by the way, then catch another taxi to get to the Fica Bautista where we would begin our last minute preperations as missionaries in Peru. So, we finallly got to the Baptist compound at what seemed like at least 11 because the sun had been down for a good two hours. Then after we all realized that it was only 8 o´clock and that it is currently winter in the southern hemisphere, we decided to do the thing that all comletely exasperated college students that had just walked more than they ever had in the whole of their lives. . . we played elbo tag for two hours, then followed that up with games that would make us look rediculous to even preschoolers, then crashed onto sheets of plywood covered with some material. Oh, and I would like to take this time to mention that it was one of the best times in my life.

The next two days were filled with making new friends that are the kind of friends that I´m already sorry that I won´t get to see for another month and learning about the culture, the "whole picture of God", and how to keep from spending all of your time either sitting on or kneeling before the porcelein thrown. Back to the friends though, these were all men and women with a heart for God and that genuinely cared for one another as if we had all grown up together, or at least all did a really good job at portraying that feeling. Anyways, after two days of morning to night worship and learning, we headed back to Lima to prepare to send off to all parts of southern Peru to spread the good news of God´s love for all his creation.

After exploring Lima for another day, my team, as mentioned earlier, hopped on a bus for a 16 hour bus ride, and after 19 hours arrived in the frigid coracora. We caught a few hours of sleep then went about with our guide from the states, Barry and a translator named Javiar and went on a tour de CoraCora visiting the orphanage ( where we were both rockstars and jungle gyms), the college (which was smaller than almost every primary school in the states), and finally a Bible study where we got to see a local accept Christ into his life and met a man who is hungry to start a Christian church here in Coracora. . . in the first day. Of course that´s not mentioning all of the random places we stopped along the way. All of this is to say one thing, though. I am so thankful that God has not only let me have the chance to make this journey and to meet all of my new friends, but to also see his work amongst these loving people. Thus ends the short story so far.