Good Cake and Good People

We’re about to start another FULL weekend of church in Peru!

Tonight, Wilfredo will lead the bible study class in Monte Sion, which makes me excited. Wildredo’s class was my favorite part of church last weekend. While Katrina and I have difficulties understanding everyone’s Spanish, for some reason Wilfredo is the easiest person to understand. I don’t know if it’s because we’re used to talking to him or if he’s used to talking to Spanish language learners, but it’s refreshing to feel like you know what’s going on (for the most part.)

 Tomorrow, things will be hectic, but good. We’ll head to Monte Sion in the afternoon and Katrina will teach the young children’s class and I’ll teach the junior high group. It’s been a while since I’ve taught the kids, and the last time I did I had a LOT of help from Laura—so this is my first time teaching alone.  I’m a little nervous about it, but it’s something I need to get used to—working with young adults is one of our biggest role’s here. I’m planning to keep the topic simple: God made you and loves you for who you are.

After class, we’re starting something new: home visits. In groups of two, we’ll go to the homes of people in our congregation and chat with them for about a half hour. We’ll have a religious theme for the week and a handout, but the visit is more about chatting and building community as opposed to trying to recruit people or make them feel obligated to come to church.

After home visits, we’ll have the weekly service in Monte Sion, then head home for a late dinner. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but we tend to be night owls here, especially on church nights. If it’s a Saturday or Sunday, we don’t expect to get to eat dinner before 10 p.m. If it’s a weeknight, you still won’t eat dinner until 9 p.m. This is a big change up for me. My family usually eats dinner around 6:30 p.m. and when I lived on my own I probably ate dinner even earlier than that. My body adjusted for the most part—although I know it’s not particularly good for me to eat a full meal, then instantly go to bed.

Sunday will be a another big day—it’s Katrina’s first time preaching. She’s nervous, which is completely understandable. I was fairly grumpy and stressed out the days before giving my sermon and the day of, all I could do was countdown until the moment I finally just go the stress of the sermon over with. The feeling afterwards was truly amazing though—knowing it was all over and that you did it gives you a wonderful since of peace and accomplishment. I keep telling Katrina to hold out for that feeling—it makes the stress worth it! Katrina has given a few sermons in Spanish before and I’m sure she’ll be wonderful. At the end of the month, I’ll be giving my second sermon ever, so I’m hoping to pick up some pointers from Katrina this weekend. 

But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself here—I haven’t told you anything we did during the week this week! Tuesday night we went to another birthday party for a member of our congregation and it was a lively night. From what I can tell birthday parties in Peru are pretty similar to the States—good food, good cake, good people. Katrina and I LOVE the cake here and the people aren’t afraid to serve you a nice, big slice—which is much appreciated.  

Katrina and I were also able to get back on our running schedule this week and we are inching closer and closer to being able to run our full route. Our goal is to be able to comfortably run a 5K by the end of the month and right now we’re about a half mile away—so things are going well! We DID have our first run-in with a dog though—thankfully, it didn’t chase us, but it did scare us pretty good. If it really wanted to bite us, it could have, but I’m pretty sure it just wanted to scare us away from the kittens on its porch. The next time we ran past this dog we were sure to give it more space (although I’d still love to get a better peek at those kittens.)

The last notable thing from this week is that we went to a mall, just to wonder around in San Miguel. We stopped into a gelato shop and got drinks and I had this fantastic mixture of gelato and espresso. I have a tendency to be a bit of a tight wad, but its things like a delicious drink  that lifts your spirits that remind you—Hey, you’re only in Peru for one year of your life—you better make the most of your time here, even if it means spending a little money. That being said, Katrina and I have started making very tentative plans for visiting Machu Picchu, and perhaps taking a Spanish class in September. I’ll keep you posted as we continue to plan!

Okay, this post is becoming ridiculously long so I’ll go ahead and cut it off—wish us luck at church this weekend!

P.S. I have to give a shout out to Corienne Gulley for sending me my first piece of mail in Peru! I’m in the process of writing back, I promise!