Well family and friends here is our November update. Our days have been full and busy this past month while we await for our family to return to Peru. Only 9 more days and they will be back here in Banos! We have missed them dearly; the people of our church and community have also missed Pastor Ryan, Nicole, Annyka, Joaquin, Eva, and Arianna. So this is what we have been up to while our pastor has been away.....
We gave the church building a face lift!!! We painted the main room and the children's room. My mom, Jan, and I sewed curtains for the rooms and picked up a couple little fake plants to decorate the book shelf. As I have mentioned before, doing things here in Peru is sometimes difficult. We don't have things as easily accessible as we are used to. But Mom and I got creative and we made our curtains from shower curtains and tablecloths we found at our supermercado! Our friend Christian, from Lima, who stayed with us for a little over a month, painted a wonderful scene in our children's room. It was exciting after it was all finished and the people started arriving on Sunday. We heard many "ooo's" and "ahh's".
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| Table cloth curtain! |
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| Entry way! |
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| Children's room! |
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| Main room! |
Another thing we have learned living here in Peru is that we must be flexible. Things often do not go as planned, even if you did all your homework and prepared. I don't know why this seems to happen here more often than when we were back at home; but we are getting used to it also. The orphanage we visit regularly was finally granted money to fix their buildings from the government. While they have had so much construction going on, when we arrive on Fridays we never know what building we will be in or what the condition of the room will be like. But God is good, and it has worked out each time and we have been able to continue our teachings, games, crafts, and snacks. We've been able to do this even with no power, in a small room with 1 table for 20 kids, and so on. I am very excited to share with you that we have started having Peruvian people from our church start joining us at our orphanage ministry. We have always invited our congregation to join us but until recently no one had joined us. This is a huge blessing for us as well for the children of the orphanage.
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| Craft time |
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| Getting ready for story time! |
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| Our makeshift room for the day- the kitchen! |
So as we learn to roll with the punches, I have learned that it is possible to have a house full of 20+ guests over for Thanksgiving and not have 1 drop of water coming from our faucets. We have had a bit of a water crisis in our town. They had been turning the water off every day in the morning. To make matters worse we had a problem with our holding tank that we were unaware of before this water crisis. Our tank's back flow protector was broken. So during the night when the water was turned on our tank would fill up, but once the water was turned off all our water would flow back to the sewer. So when we would get up in the morning we had water for about an hour. Our dirty dishes sat on the counter for some time and toilets could not flush Thanksgiving day, but God blessed our time with all of our Peruvian friends. They were very excited to eat our Thanksgiving traditions and hear the story of the first Thanksgiving and why we celebrate every year.
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| Getting ready to eat! |
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| This is our turkey! |
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| We had our pick! |
Thanksgiving this year, possibly more than other years, caused me to really reflect on all we have to be thankful for. I don't know if I was more reflective because of where we live, or how we live here sometimes, but I do know I have so very much to be thankful for. I feel blessed beyond words by our Heavenly Father. I see Him do things here in Peru that amaze me. Maybe in the States I was just too busy to notice, or had too much distraction from worldly possessions, or too consumed with meaningless activities to notice the everyday blessings and miracles from Jesus.
I'd like to take this time to thank each of our friends and dear family who support us with prayers and financially. I pray that you had a blessed Thanksgiving and as we come into this Christmas season may you feel our Savior's love in all the tiny everyday miracles of life.
