And I'm Back!!

Back in Peru!! Hooray!
Sorry it's been this long for an update. We've been crazy busy since we've been here!

So our first week we spent in Lima. Techinically we were actually in a city outside of Lima called Cieneguilla staying with host families. The guys and girls each lived in a separate house and both our families were amazing. The girls family especially... They were so good to us. And kind of rich. They bought us chocolate cake and took us to the beach on our day off... Yeah, we kind of wished we could've stayed there for the whole outreach.

Not only were the families really awesome, but ministry that first week was incredible as well. We did tons of kids ministry. I mean, tons. We were set up with a contact from the YWAM Lima base whose name is Jordi and he runs a couple different kids ministries in a slum area. Actually it's kind of hard to explain the area, but I spose you can see in pictures what I'm talking about. Jordi, his wife, and a few other people run Brazos Abiertos (Arms Open) with a couple programs, one for older kids and one for pre-school age kids. Basically our time there working with him was following his programs for the day with the kids -singing songs, playing inside their building and outside (I did so many puzzles those days..), painting with the kids, we did a super funny and super improvised Christmas skit.. pretty much whatever he asked us to do, we did. They were also digging some holes outside the building to eventually become bathrooms (much needed instead of a squatty potty) so everyone did a bit of that and we also wrapped a lot of presents that they handed out to the kids for Christmas.

Like I kinda said, we spent a LOT of time playing with the kids and having fun at Brazos Abiertos. We also did some work with a local church that week called Jesus La Roca (Jesus the Rock). We preached there a couple times, helped with their 60 kids for Sunday School, and helped out with another kids night program they had.

My favorite day though for sure we spent the morning in a nearby orphanage and then the afternoon at a women's rehab center. Me and Deanne cleaned walls at the orphanage all morning while Debbie played with the kids and Brian, Nate, and Scott painted rooms. Even though we were all doing different things, it was a good morning. The afternoon was the awesome part.

Like I said, we went to a women's rehab center. It's a temporary home for women who have drug or alcohol addictions, eating disorders, or have tried committing suicide. Not a lot of them are there by choice, they're mostly pretty young (youngest I met was 12, oldest maybe in her 30's), so a lot of them are sent by their families to 'get better'. We ate lunch with them and found out that over half of them spoke English pretty well, and not only that, but they were hilarious. Then we did a drama for them and Deanne shared her testimony. We broke into groups after that and the girls asked us tons of questions. Some groups talked about our team's personal stories, some asked questions about God, it was a really great time for us to share with them. I soooo enjoyed getting to know the girls in my group and telling them how I relate to them. When some of them heard parts of my story, they were blown away by the fact that I'm a missionary and they wanted information about YWAM so they can do a DTS in the future. It was so so so encouraging to inspire those women that not only can they find a lot of healing, but they can go and help others do the same thing. It also felt like a huge glimpse into my future because if I'm working with girls coming out of sex slavery they will probably struggle with a lot of the same things, and God spoke to me so much about my future ministry that day. I was getting so excited. The rest of the team really loved our time there too. I would love to go back someday.

I know this post is super long and I've still got almost 2 more weeks to catch up on! So I'm gonna end for now since this is a good synopsis of everything we did our first week. Hopefully I'll be able to post about coming to Iquitos soon!

This was one of the girl's I bonded with at Brazos Abiertos. Her name is Milagros (Miracles). After I spun her around and carried her for a couple hours, she really didn't want me to put her down. I didn't mind that much :)