Our First Classes and Service

I’ve got to start updating this more frequently—I feel like so much happens between postings! Where to begin?

Last weekend was full of highs and lows for me. Friday, we taught our first bible class, which I felt completely unprepared to do. Teaching your first bible class is one thing, teaching your first bible class in a language you barely speak is another. I couldn’t even remember the verb for “to pray” for half the class. Luckily, everyone here is very patient and willing to work with you—and I have to say, I don’t know that everyone would be so accommodating in the States. I’m also incredibly lucky that Katrina 1. Knows how to teach classes like this and 2. Has much better Spanish than I do. She took the lead on basically everything we did last weekend and I’m incredibly thankful for that. The class started a little slow, but picked up and I felt good about it by the end of it.

Saturday was a whole new challenge: teaching the children. The children’s classes here are split up into two groups—Katrina took the smaller kids and I took the more middle school aged kids. In all honesty, this is the event I was most stressed about the entire weekend—the thought of being alone with these kids and not even knowing how to speak to them horrified me. We focused on something easy for the first week, Jonah and the whale, and I have to admit—it took me about 10 minutes to even get them to know who I was talking about. Eventually I showed them the name in the bible and they all went, “Oooooh, Yo-NAHHHH!” Anyway, Laura, the World Service Corps intern, was a saint and helped me through the class. She probably spent at least 25 minutes of the class teaching them songs and I was incredibly thankful for that help.

Sunday we had workshops all day—which I have to admit—I understood very little of. The workshops were about how to teach classes better, and I could tell it was valuable information and all about interaction and excitement—but my Spanish just isn’t strong enough to follow a big presentation yet. We arrived at Monte Sion for these workshops around 10:00 a.m. and we were in workshops until about 6:00 p.m. Since we’d been at church all day, we just had a mini service to round out the day. Katrina, Laura and I were in charge of planning the entire thing. I took the sermon, Laura took the music, and Katrina took the rest. During World Service Corps training, I had written my first mini-sermon, but it was only 10 minutes long and in English—so this was still a very new experience for me. Throw in the fact that I only had one day to prepare for it and, needless to say, I was stressed. My Spanish just isn’t strong enough yet for me to memorize a ten minute long sermon, so I ended up just reading it. I originally wrote it in English, then spent time translating it into Spanish and had Karen look it over for me. I was nervous reading it, but I’d been pretty strategic about selecting the most simple Spanish words I could so there wasn’t too much to stumble over. Once it was over, a wave of relief washed over me (so much so that I forgot to stand for the benediction.) It certainly wasn’t the best sermon ever written or performed, but people reacted decently well to it and were understanding that I was just a beginner.



Thursday night we got to see Las Fuentes de Agua in Lima!

After a long day of church, we came back to the house for some delicious Peruvian tacos, then took Laura to the airport. Sending Laura off almost made Katrina and I feel like it was our first day again—a little of our security blanket was removed. It was good to see her on her way though—Laura was fairly sick for the last part of her time in Peru. Thank goodness Katrina and I have been in pretty perfect health!



This week our schedule is a little less full and Katrina and I are trying to establish a routine for ourselves. Yesterday we went on our first run in Callao and I was fairly convinced we would get hit by a car or chased by a dog—but we survived just fine and I am phenomenally sore today. Nonetheless, I’m excited that we will have a release like running during our stressful times.