This week finds me in a new epoch of my Peruvian life. I believe that rainey season is finally upon us. It has drizzled on and off all week. One moment it is cool and drizzly and 4.5 seconds later the sun is out and its roasting hot. The weather is extremely moody. Wednesday afternoon we had a grand old strom. The rain was pounding down – it was crazy, a true tropical downpour. The bad thing was that I had to go out in the midst of it. I doned my rain jacket and chacos (because I don´t have rainboots) and splashed out in the rain. Turns out that my rainjacket is only suited for the slight drizzels of the homeland and not for torrential downpours, needless tos ay I was drenched within moments. Before entering each house I would wring out my skirt. During each visit I would dry out a little bit, just to get drenched once more. I was having a blast splashing around in the puddles and rivers. However, everyone thoguth I was crazy – absolutely crazy. Thanks to the rain a big river/lake appeared seperating me from the house of one of my studnets. But I wasn´t going to let that stop me, so I trudged a ways through wáter up to my knees. After my lesson I once again trudged back through the lake. Inspite of being drenched I was haveing great fun – I love the rain.
I just recently learned that the average raindrop falls at about 17 mph. As I was slogging through the rain, this thought crossed my mind. Then I began to think of all the many raindrops that were pelting me and how much their combined force equaled. If you think about how many riandrops fall during a terrential downpour and then multiply that by 17 mph, that´s enough to kill a person…

Ptwang! Ptwong!

We had just finished our nightly evangelistic meeting and everyone was brushing their teeth and performing other pre-bed rituals. Everyone was tired after a long day, at least almost all of us were. However, since today was the birthday of a young man baptized last weekend a small group of us decided to go sing to him. Hence the ptwanging and the ptwonging – we were tuning the guitar to heighten the excitement. After the ptwanging morphed into a more cheerful noise, out little inconspicuous group of preuvians and gringos set off into the night. It was quite dark, but a few stars were peaking between the mango leaves above. We crept along the dark, dusty street trying not to cause a commotion in the sleeping village. A few poeple stumbled on some roots growing haphazardly in the middle of the street, but we managed to reach Bryon´s house without an deaths. As we scurried around to the door at the back of the house, someone yet again tripped, thus giving away our secrecy.

¨Who is it?¨ came a voice from inside the house.

We quietly huddled in the darkness hoping to fool Bryon into thinking the noise was only a stray dog. After a few agonizing moments we continued on our quest. With his mom in the lead we burst through the door with a rather spastic ¨¡Cumplianos Feliz!¨

Bryon´s startled look quickly turned into a beaming smile. After the birthday song we continued with many other traditional peruvian birthday songs. As the songs died down we joked about how it was now time to make a wish and blow out the birthday candles, even though there were none. But then, his mom grabbed their one candle that was iluminating the house and held it infront of Bryon´s face. After a brief moment, Bryon blew out the candle, thus leaving us in total darkness. But that didn´t faze us one bit. We broke out in a rather Mexican sounding song while his mother searched for some matches to light the candle once more. After the song died down we said our goodbyes then left the family in peace. Bryon thanked us profusely for such a nice suprise.

As we were walking back I thought of how we completely made Bryon´s day with our simple act of thoughtfulness. We could have all just gone to bed after our evening meeting or just chilled in our house. Instead we made the effort to brighten another´s day. So many times we as selfish humans are so caught up in our own lives that we don´t realice is that a simple act of kindness could really brighten somebody´s day. So put self aside and go suprise someone, make their day.

This is a picture of our gang down here...look at us we are all matching...

As many of you know, February 7 was Super Bowl Sunday. However, seeing as we do not have a TV down here, this day passed just like any other. But we, being a big group of Americans decided that we were not going to let anything stop us. So on Wednesday we decided to relive Super Bowl Sunday with our own Super Bowl party. After making a massive bowl of guacamole and making some chips in our oven we started watching the game. Unfortunately the copy of the Super Bowl that we acquired was lacking all the commercials, but that’s okay. We had the game to watch. Or at least we thought we had the game to watch, turns out that our version of the Super Bowl only went to the first couple minutes of the 3rd quarter. So we had great fun watching the first part of the Super Bowl only to be left hanging as to how the game ended. Thankfully someone knew the outcome, so at least I know who won. I just think it’s funny that we were able to pull off a Super Bowl Party, yet lacked the most important part – the ending. Hehehehehe….
Just in case any of you are wondering if all I do is things like watch the Super Bowl, it’s not true. This week I was just as busy as ever with visiting all my students, informing them about nutrition. Also our evangelistic meetings have been going really well. We now have more people coming each night than we have benches for…and we have a lot of benches. It is neat to see people get happier day by day as they learn more about our Savior.

This is a small section of Los Jardines. I walk the street of this invasion and many other streets as I visit my students. It is pretty dry and dusty or soggy and muddy, but it is a pleasant little place. The women just string a net across the street in the evening and that´s where we play volleyball. If a motokar comes (you can see one about the middle of the picture) then we finish our volley and lift up the net for the motokar to pass.

Just incase any of you think that I am crazy I really am not. Yes this is a picture of me and my toothbrush, but it isn´t just any toothbrush...you see my good toothbrush died, so I bought another one. But this toothbush was terrible and made me hate brushing my teeth, so I went on a quest for a good toothbrush, turns out that Lauren Kelley had a extra toothbrush from her dad who is a dentist and she lovingly shared this amazingly normal toothbrush with me. Made me happy...so here is a picture of happy mindy and her toothbrush.

This is Martin (La Sierra University Student who is studying the bible with the folks of Los Jardines) and I after eating lunch at one of our students house. We had a delicious fried rice (not a food typical of Peru, but the wife likes asian food, do we had fried rice) wich chicken, cabbage salad and fried platanos (an incredibaly typical food of Peru - you can´t escape it...it is like a delicious black plague...)

This is a new fruit called sapote (which is a that sounds very similar to the word for frog, hmmm...) it is pretty delicious. It resembles a sweet pumpkin...

Good day and welcome to hour 778 of the 17th of September. This has been a very odd day, with drastically changing weather and every tweleve hours the sun goes down and comes back up again as if days were changing. But each time I check I am still in the 17th of September.

But life is grand here in this non-expeditious day. At first the people were a little bit shy, but now that we have lived with them for a while they have opened up. The people who were once quiet during my lessons, now just can´t wait to chat and are usually anxious for another lesson. I am glad that I have now reached this level of friendship with my new students. The little kids that used to only stare at me now come running up to me and give me hugs.

We have started our nightly evangelistic meetings once again. This means that I am even more busy than ever. I spend all day running around to the houses of my 50 some students, then rush back to help cook supper. Then its off to set up for the meetings. During our meetings we have two of our Bible instructors, Matt Hartman from Southern and Josue from the Adventist University in Lima, who play the role of our MC´s. They are both very creative and are always entertaining. It puts everyone in a good mood for the meetings. Last night was the funniest thing yet. Matt being from America speaks English and Spanish, but Josue is Peruvian and only knows Spanish, however, they decided that they would try something new. So Matt did do the welcome in English and Josue translated it into Spanish. Matt started off…and Josue followed suite with his equivalent of the translation. Only for some odd reason, the two messages were nothing alike. Even though the Peruvians couldn´t understand the English and the horribly mistranslated message, they all thought this event was quite funny due to how strange english sounds to them the reactions of people like me who know both languages.