Change of Plans

Its funny how when you decide to take on something new, you always have plans for how it will work out, and you always expect that it is going to go the way that you want it to go…all along knowing that it will not be anything like what you expect. When I was told that I would be working with different churches here and received my schedule of when I was to be at which church, I was excited to get to meet so many different people, and yet also scared out of my mind at meeting so many different people. All nine of the churches were given a schedule of when I would be coming to their church, and being the person that I am, I guess I just thought that they would all be waiting with joy for the weekends that I would be coming to their church. I guess that is a little egotistical of me, but it is what I thought. Then, the last 3 weeks, the churches on my schedule were not expecting me, and had nothing for me to do which will tend to burst your bubble.

But it has been good too, because I have gotten to go back to a church that I really enjoyed and also got to get to know my host family’s church a lot better. It has been difficult for me to feel at home in any of the churches just knowing that I am only there for 2 weeks and then won’t be back for like 3 months, so this has been a good chance to form a closer relationship with some people which is good considering the closeness of the church I am coming from.

Two weeks ago I was able to join one of the youth groups in a special dinner that they had planned. I arrive in my t-shirt and shorts to see all of them dressed up in nice clothes. I didn’t get the memo. But of course they wanted me to sing. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like everyone here wants me to sing. So I sang, then we all sang some. Then it was time for the games. First game…mummy race, which team can wrap a person in toilet paper the fastest. I bet you can all guess who got wrapped up in my group...yes, me. There must be something about seeing an American wrapped in TP that is hilarious! I wouldn’t know because my face was covered in TP. Then came the lesson, and afterwards the dinner which came at about 10pm. We were all starving by that time, but before we could eat, they gave us each a little key chain and a name and we were to say something nice about the person and give them the gift. We got done at about 11 and it was time to head home, or so I thought. As I was leaving, one of the younger girls in the church game and took me across the street to her house. It was her mother’s birthday and they wanted to feed me some more! They gave me a to-go bag and then it was finally off to my house…about a 30 minute bus ride away.

The next day I was able to spend with my host family’s church, who I won’t be officially working with until January. I spent the day with my family and then went to the service that night. It was a normal service, but afterwards they had what was pretty much a congregational meeting. They accepted two new members, so they now have 19. After that they had elections for church jobs. The normal ones for president, secretary, and treasurer, but then they voted for something that I found a little odd. They voted and elected who would be the Sunday School teachers and Youth leaders. I guess it is a luxury for us in the States to be able to leave those jobs open to volunteers who feel called to take those positions. Or maybe the people here are so confident in the roll of the church in choosing its leaders, that anyone who is a professing believer and member of the church is able to lead a Bible study. I was glad that I got to be a part of that process, even if it did last for 2 hours and I was at church until 11pm on a Sunday!

So while things don’t always turn out the way that I planned, or that the people here planned months ago, good things still come out of it. God definitely has His hand in things and I am learning to sit back and try not to screw things up!

English 101

As I mentioned before I have been selected to teach an English class. What qualifies me to be an English teacher? Basically that I am an American and know English. I told one church member that I was teaching English and his response was..."Jamie, I've heard you speak. You don't know English!" I think that he was referring to my accent. I've had several other Americans tell me that my students won't be able to communicate with anyone outside of the Southern US. I also tried to explain this to my students, about the difference between southern and northern accents. It was kind of hard in broken Spanish. It also doesn't help that most of the English that people here know is from the little island across the pond, and as any good American knows, thats not English! But despite these factors, I press on and try to share some of my language skills with the people here, wheter they understand me or not.

Going into my first class I really didn't know what to expect or what I should teach. There are people here that have had English in school, and then those that know none. I didn't know what level of students my class would be composed of, much less how many I would have. I am invloved with 9 churches here, and the invitation was extended to all 9. As I prepared for my lesson, I decided that I should just start at the beginning, so I planned on teaching basic conversational aspects such as greetings and things like that.

The pastor of one of the churches, who I think is also the president of their presbytery, wanted me to go over to the church with him and his son, so I met them at their house, already a little late. They weren't yet ready to leave, so we waited around a little longer, making me more late. I don't know if I have explained this, but there is really no point in wearing a watch in Peru. Everything starts late, which is odd to me because it seems like everyone is always in a hurry, so you would think someone would be on time. This is still something that I am trying to get used to, but I must say that I enjoy it a little when I am debating on sleeping an extra 10 minuts or not!

So we get to the church at about 7:30, having supposed to have started at 7. I walk in the door to the site of about 40 people sitting in the pews waiting on me. I was expecting maybe half that. But there they were. I spent the next 2 hours trying to pronounce words correctly and without a Southern accent. I went over a lot of material, including the dreaded TH words. They don't use that sound here, so it was fun watching them try to say it and giving them a lot of th- words. All in all, it was a pretty good night, even though I pretty much just wrote words on the board and then had them pronounce them.

Apparently, my students didn't think that I knew English very well either, because my next class I only had 15. I don't know if I was boring, or if they thought I was going too fast or what. But the next class was actually people that knew English a little better. I also made it more fun. I taught them a song in English to start off with. Then we went over directions and we played a little hide and seek game using their new vocabulary. And I also taught them John 3:16 which I think they enjoyed.

I still have some classes to go, so we will see how that goes and if people come back or not!

My first "vacation"

Wow...its been two weeks since I've given you guys an update about whats going on down here. I am going to dedicate this entry to our first retreat as YAVs in Peru. It was my first trip outside of Lima and I really got to see some of the beauty of Peru that people are always talking about. Now I don't mean to say that I don't enjoy Lima, but you have to remember that I am a country boy from Mebane and I need some green trees and hills every now and then!

We were leaving on Sunday, so I got out of working that day even though we didn't leave until 10 pm. It was a two story bus with plenty of room and TVs so we could watch movies in Spanish. There were 4 of us leaving from Lima, 3 volunteers and the site coordinator. Its about an 8 hour trip to get to Huanuco, so we tried to sleep, but none of us volunteers had much luck. Ruth, being an experienced Peruvian bus traveler had no problem. We arrived in the small town of Ambo at about 6 the next morning with a van waiting on us to take us to our home for the week. The other 4 volunteers had arrived the night before so we waited for them to get up and have breakfast. And by waiting for them to get up I mean we talked really loud until they woke up. If we had to be up at 6...so did they.

Our first session was to basically bring everyone up to date on what we were going through, what our jobs were, how we were feeling, and of course our failures as Spanish speakers. It was good to see that I wasn't the only one struggling. In thinking back over my time here, I came to realize a few things about myself. The main thing is that I thought that just in coming here that my life was going to change. That in coming here my future was going to be clear and I was going to know exactly what my next step in life was and how I was to continue my walk with God. This has not been the case. I have had to learn, or i guess re-learn that God is in everything around me. Like in Elijah's story, God is not always in the earthquake or the hurricane or the fire, but sometimes just there in a whisper. Thats what I have to be looking for or I might miss out on the things that He is really trying to teach me and show me.

After the deep dive into ourselves, we went on a hike/tour around the place we were staying. It is an ecological farm that is run by the people at Paz y Esperanza (Peace and Hope). They have cows, guinea pigs, and lots of fruit. It is really a beautiful property. There is a house there that they have turned into a retreat center. It once belonged to a wealthy German who was forced to leave in the 80s when the terrorism was so bad there. The farm is surrounded by mountains so we took a stroll upwards and then also to a nearby town. All in all we probably walked for about 4 hours, this on about 2 hours of sleep.

The next day we headed into Huanuco where a fellow volunteer, Emily, is living for they year. Huanuco is the poorest region in Peru. We went to the Paz y Esperanza office where she works and walked around the city some. Their office does a lot of work with young girls that have been sexually abused in some way. They are working on a case now that has been on the national news here, an 8 year old girl who is 7 months pregnant. After arranging our bus rides back, we headed back to the farm for a new treat for most of us, cuy. Now for those of you who don't know spanish, cuy is guinea pig. I know that many of you have been waiting for this, probably more so than I have. I knew that it was coming. It really wasn't all that bad. It was cooked in kind of a peanut sauce and that was petty much the flavor of it. When it comes down to it, its just too much work for the little bit of meat that you get, that and it looks like half a rat on your plate! That afternoon we talked some about culture shock and all got prepared for when we will hate it here and hate everything about it, and then how to deal with that and move on. Then we had a rousing game of soccer. It was really nice to not be as horrible as I am when I play against Peruvians.

Our last day was a real treat, dispite having to get up before 6. We went on a 3 hour van ride to a national park called Tingo Maria. We spent about 45 minutes hiking almost straight up a mountain, we knew that out destination was a waterfall, but the image in my head did not even come close to how great it was and the photos don't do it justice. We were able to swim in it and just spend some time relaxing, and all of this was before lunch! After eating we had the chance to go visit a cave. There was some sort of owl-bird that lived there, but it was dark, and we couldn't see anything.

The trip was really great to reconnect with our YAV friends that had left Lima and just spend some time being able to process our experiences and talk with people in English. We get together again in November for Thanksgiving!

Here are some pictures from the trip!
http://unc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076039&id=2717014&l=734c0

I'll try and upload some more pics later this week or next!

High Hopes

I am going to start things off on a very exciting note, well, exciting to me anyway. Last night was my second Presbytery meeting. Although I didn't have much to say, or anything to say really, it was comforting to know that I understood so much more this time than I did one month ago. I guess I am progressing a little. But that wasn't the exciting thing. After, we went to Eduardo's parents house to wait on Flor, my host mom. She had gone to a birthday party for Eduardo's cousin. I was invited, but chose to go to the meeting instead. Anyway, it just happened to be Monday night and his dad just happens to have cable which includes ESPN. Now last year when I heard that Mondy Night Football was no longer going to be on ABC and that it was going to be on cable, I found myself thinking why in the world would they do that? Now that I am out in the world...I see why! It was great to see an actual football game, and not soccer. Also, browsing through the listings, I found a UNC game on in 2 weeks! This also restores my hope in catching some amazing UNC basketball this season! GO HEELS!!!

Ok, now on to things that all you great people actually come here to read about, what in the world is Jamie doing?

This weekend I worked with a new church. This one was the largest of the three I have worked with. I got there as they were beginning the Saturday night youth service. Someone forgot to infrom them before I arrived that I didn't speak very much Spanish. After my broken introduction, I go the impression that I was in charge. They wanted games and for me to expound on a Bible passage. At good ol' MPC, sure, no problem. After getting across that I didn't really have anything to say, I was directed to a guitar. Now, I only know one song in Spanish, which I mentioned last week, Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord. After playing this song so much in the past few weeks, I came to the realization this week that it had become a performance to me. I played it on Friday in about 5 different classrooms at my Compassion job. But I had let it become the very thing that I strive so hard to not let happen when I am given the opportunity to lead worship, to become just a song. Since I realized this, I have done a much better job of not singing to be singing, but to truly using the song to worship God and sing it from my heart. After the initial shock of being asked to lead the youth service, things were better and I kind of blended into the background as much as was possible. The next morning in the service, I was asked to introduce myself and sing. After the service, several of the youth went to one girls house for lunch. It was chicken and rice, with soup. It was all pretty good, but there was definetly a chichen foot in my soup. I spent the afternoon just hanging out with some of the youth and trying to answer their questoins. I also taught them them English words to Open the Eyes so we could sing together in the night service. Their youth group has about 20 or so members, and with me leading singing, it made me feel a little like I was at home in my church. One thing was definetly different though. They had a kid that plays the drums. Now I have only played with a drummer a few times and he was pretty good (thank you Chase!). This kid thought he could play the drums, and I think he thought he was pretty good but, bless his heart, he couldn't. But he was making a joyful, loud noise for the Lord. They also had me be in a little skit where I was the rich young ruler, complete with lines and everything.

Yesterday at my Compassion site, they had no teacher. Luckily I had my guitar so I spent most of the day playing and singing with the kids. I learned to words to a few new songs but boy do my fingers hurt today. I sang sanctuary and this one kid thought it was a great song, so I spent about an hour trying to teach it to him in English. I didn't realize how different the sounds are in English and Spanish were until you sit down one on one and try to teach someone something. Which reminds me. I have a HUGE prayer request. Tomorrow, October 4th I begin teaching English classes. I have 2 and a half hours to fill. I have some books, but I am not sure how much I am going to be able to get across if I can't explain it to them in Spanish. I know it will be fine because they are all people in the churches and are great people, but I guess I am a little anxious after trying to teach one person one song.

This coming Sunday night after church, I will be heading on my first trip out of Lima. All of the volunteers here are meeting in Huanuco for 3 days. I hear that it is a beautiful place and I am excited to see the other YAVs and catch up on what everyone has been doing. I am not sure when I will get a chance to update you guys again, but I will do it as soon as I can!

P.S. I love reading your comments, even if its just something short, just to see who all is reading!