State Side

Welp, as of about a week ago. I finished my journey to the states. Thus concluding my adventures in Peru. There is no longer a Schreven roaming the jungles of Peru. Instead Now I am back, and just as busy as ever. Even though I left Peru, my service has not ended. I look forward to many more years of serving my God.
CHAU!

I have become more Peruvian tan I realized. During this past week everyone has been bustling about during the mornings and evenings all bundled up in long sleeves and pants. No longer is the sun beating down on us, scorching us before we even have a chance to get out of bed. Infact, the temperature has dropped enough that we are actually sleeping with blankets, instead of sweating all night. Normally there comes a slightly cold season during June; but unlike everything else in Peru, this cold weather was actually a little early. The first day this crazy weather hit we all grabbed our sweatshirts and huddled in a room with only one small window (glass on windows does not really exist here, if you are lucky you will have screens to keep the bugs out, therefore cold air can enter the house freely). There we were all bundled up, avoiding any moving air, thinking how odd it must be for Peru to have nearly freezing temperatures. Then we stumbled upon a thermometer…only to find out that the temperature was really 72 F.

So turns out that we all had to go out and clear jungle land, so that we could plant some Palm trees for Palm oil. This is what I looked like at the end of the day. We had burned the area previously so we were working with ash. Working with a machete is great fun...even if it does give you blisters. As the say here in Peru - a machete is your best friend. :)

Brittany and I taking a coco brake while we were working on the contruction site in Inahuaya.

Now that we have officially entered dry season, leaving the rainy season in the dust, we have begun to have rain. Crazy. Normally with April showers come May flowers; but here with April showers come gripes (colds). So we found ourselves once again heading up another medical clinic. This time we were lucky to have a large group from Michigan and Texas help us. This was by far one of the busiest clinics we have had with attending 1500 patients in four and a half days. Thankfully we had 5 doctors. My main job this clinic was to work as a translator for some of the doctors. Kept me busy…and by the end of the week I had talked so much that my voice was completely alienated. My voice is still somewhere off in space, lost in translation.

No matter where you go, you’ll find it. In whichever restaurant you dine, it will be there too, perched atop every table. You see, here in Peru every table not only has the standard red, white and yellow bottles half filled with ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise, but accompanying this triplet is the glorious green bottle. This magical green bottle is filled with an uber tasty aji sauce (a slightly spicy sauce usually made from yellow peppers). Any meal can always be dressed up with aji sauce. Sure the food is good without it, but drizzle a little aji on your food and the world is a better place.
Just the other day while happily chewing on the standard white rice, converted to the tasty side by aji, I was struck with an epiphany. Life can be a lot like food and God like the aji. We can live our life day to day and do alright. Our lives have a little bit of flavor, but then one day God comes along. All of the sudden our lives are bursting with flavor and spice. Looking back we can see that we were just living, but now, with aji, we are alive. Never again will we want to go back to plain old rice, we will be continuously seeking the aji. Once you’ve tasted life with God, you’ll be seeking him for the rest of your life. So drizzle on the aji and let your life come alive.

Lauren, Josh and I chillin on a Pekipeki...cruzing around on the mighty Ucayali river.
We spent a month in Inahuaya, a little village on the Ucayali river, doing some clinics, health lessons, rebuilding a collapsing church, evagelistic meetings and socializing with the local villagers. It was a great month and a cool new eye opener to more of the peruvian culture of the jungle.

We just may have gotten rained on during our travels in the Pekipekis...you are looking at the calm before the storm...

Thisis how we travel from village to village...in Pekipeki boats!!!
Standing beside the boat is Enya, our boat driver, and inside the boat is our mobile dental-medical team. (I´m on the back left)

More triage in Santa Rosa... the lady in the yellow shirt leaning against the wall is sporting the typical Shipebo attire. Their clothes are always super bright and colorful.

Another clinic inside a school at Santa Rosa...me in Triage again...This was a really cool village, it was a Shipebo village, the local tribes of the area. I got very confused many times, becase they kept talking to me in Shipebo.

Mobile Clinic in Barrasgueras...under the mango trees.

This was the nurse squad plus our a local Peruvian doctor for our moblie clinics near Inahuaya. Each day we would split from the big boat and travel to a remote village and do a clinic. All of our supplies are strapped to Lauren and I´s backs. A clinic in two back packs...how exciting is that!

These are the newly baptized members of the 17th of September Church.

Helping decipher doctor´s handwriting on a precription......my career as a nurse has begun

Calling out people for traige...my chance to slaughter some names (especally since everyone here has two last names...as if one isn´t bad enough)

Mira!! They suprised me for my birthday. They made me a sign and taped it to the door. I didn´t even have a chance to make it out to the bathroom without a happy birthday wish. What great buddies I live with.

TRIAGE!!! Over the last week I spent a good 46 or more hours in triage. We had a amazing clinic and attended over 1000 people.

This is me in our pharmacy.

I just happen to be sitting on some of our boxes that we lugged to our clinic site in Km 8.

Sometimes we get a little bored...but I am sure you would never have guessed that from a picture like this. :)

Helping out sith song service during JA (our Sabbath afternoon youth program)

Estamos cantando Tengo Paz como un Rio

A family I spent of lot of my free time with.

A few of my buddies and I infront of the church

This is about what your feet look like all the time...very dirty
(My foot is the on the far right side with the black chacos)
I also have a pretty crazy chaco tan from wearing my chacos every single day

Me with our neighbors who sell us water every day

The entire month of February down here is a big fiesta called Carnaval. The whole point of this month long holiday is to soak people with waterballons. So here is me completely drenched (even if you can´t tell), I was just getting ready to go to our Sabbath afternoon youth program when I was attacked by all the neighbor kids. In the picture you can see that Roy is about to dump a dish of water on the kids head. Month long water fight...oh the fun of eternal summer.

A crazy cool sunset from the other night

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.

Me and Dora´s grandkids.

This is my friend Matt...
Matt is doing surgery on Mindy...
Mindy has a worm in her foot...
Matt is extracting the worm...
Mindy´s foot is now free of all the worm guts...
all that is left is a small divet...
where Mindy´s worm used to live...

This week was far from normal for me. One could say that its events were earth shaking. However, inspite of all these crazy happenings I am still stuck in the 17th of September.
For starters I will ramble about the craziest happening thes week. Late in the afternoon of January 25, as I was preparing supper with a few of the other girls, I felt an odd sensation under my feet. It was as if the earth was quivering. A quick burst of excitment exploded into the air. ¨Was that an earthquake?¨We were all questioning this but then we felt the earth still moving around a bit. ¨Yup, it sure was...but its still going!¨Agter about a second more of gentle quivers the earth gave a bigger jolt then returned to its dormant lifeless state. But we had an earthquake...and I was lucky enough to feel it. Some of the others were walking around and missed the rattling experience. We had a pretty good little shake that lasted for several seconds. Nobody was hurt - nothing seems to have collapsed - it was great!! Later on we learned that it had been a 5.8 earthquake about with the epicenter about 12 miles away. Hooray for cool experiences.
Compared to the rest of the week, everything else just isn´t as exciting. I spent my week running around from house to house teacvhing my students about nutrition. I have about 50 students in all to visit one-on-one during the week - keeps me busy. After repeating each lesson about 50 times I have them quite memorized - these are some words in spanish that I know quite well. However, after my teaching there is usually a little time for some volleyball. - Quick little Culture Tidbit - South America may be famous for its soccer, but it is mainly the men who play. The women arte always to busy playing volleyball to even care about soccer. So every afternoon volleyball nets are set up across the streets, which are transformed into various volley courts.

I have just come to realize that I have been here for a long time...more than 6 months now actually. But I did not come to this blatant realization by looking at a calender, reminiscing of times at home or anything else normal like that. Instead it was brown sugar that brought the dawning of this thought. You see, I am so accustomed to life down here that I really am starting to forget about the things of my home land (not my friends and family though – I still have vivid mind pictures of you all). It now seems normal to me to sweep my dirt floor and to often wash my clothes by hand (however it is quite a treat to go back to Km 38 and use a real washing machine...so quick, so effortless). Anyways enough of this rambling, back to the inspiration of my realization. One of my SM buddies received some food ingredients from home so that he could make a good old family tradition recipe. I happened to see some of these ingredients on the counter and was puzzled by one ingredient in a clear little baggy. “Self,” I questioned “What on earth is this light colored smooth brown mush?” Not having a good reply for myself I asked those around me. Dane starred at me for a brief moment, them replied slowly, “Well...its brown sugar.” All of the sudden all those many hours baking cookies came rushing back to me and I realized just how long I have been in Peru. You see we have brown sugar down here but it comes in large granules and is blondy in color - completely different. But all is well down here, because homesickness still hasn't set in.
Daily life has fallen back into its normal groove. I go house to house teaching my health classes and the like. One episode that was quite hilarious this week was the meeting of Dora. I just so happened to be at the house of a student, when this other lady off in the distance started waving frantically at me and pointing off to her right. “Ven a mi casa!” Ven a mi casa proxima, di? I heard her faintly calling. I waved to her, nodded and smiled, implying that yes I would come to her house next. So she smiled, turned around and continued on her way. With that matter settled, I continued teaching....but not for long. The lady repeated this crazy process, not once, but twice more before disappearing from my view. So I finished up my lesson real quick went to this lady's house next door. I approached the house a bit hesitantly, not sure of what awaited me. But soon I found myself in the presence of Dora, an incredibly happy, bubbly lady, with absolutely no fears at all. I was a bit taken aback by her openness, because most of my students are still quite shy and reserved...but not all. Dora probably would have dragged me to her house for a friendly little chat if I had not come on my own free will. Yeah for people who are excited about life.
I believe we may be starting rainy season (even though we still have had a lot of hot days). The reason I say this is because we had a torrential down pour on Friday, and I had the pleasure of being stuck in the middle of it. Horray! You see, since the Bible workers have not yet reached the Sabbath lesson in their Bible studies, we have not held a church service out at the new site. Instead we have been splitting up and going to little churches in the surrounding area, to help out with the worship services. This past weekend I decided to help at Hierbas Buenas, which is close to our mission base at Km 38. So I got to go back to base for the weekend. Lauren was going out to base too, so we left 17 de Septiembre on Friday afternoon. All started out well, the weather was dry and nice as we climbed in the Motokar to go to the Pista (main highway). But then it started to sprinkle...then pour. Lauren and I happily bounced along in our motokar, clean and dry – but not for long. Soon we got to the Pista, paid our moto driver and proceeded to stand on the side of the road and attempt to hail a taxi...in the pouring rain (and it was South American rain too, not just or piddly US rain). We were drenched in moments, but didn't care. We were laughing and joking the whole time...and everyone was laughing at us too. What were two white girls doing drenched on the side of the highway. Normally it doesn't take very long to get a taxi, but for some odd reason, that day it did. Nobody wanted to take us 34 kilometers away – that was just way too far. So we chilled in the rain for at least 20 minutes. Several motokars and taxis offered a ride but then looked at us like we were crazy upon learning our desired destination. Or they would try to charge us outlandish prices. Finally some nice chap gave us a lift, and when we got back to Km 38 we had some nice warm tea and all was well. Which is what is great about life, it always keeps going on, no matter what happens and no matter what attitude a person chooses. So why not have fun with it all, even if you are slightly cold and soaked, find something to laugh about, even if it is just laughing with those who are laughing at you.

So has closed another week. No more clinic, but still lots of people asking for medical attention. January is flying by and still the weather is the same. It seems that rainy season is not going to come. But now, since I am publishing this on the web, we will probably get solid downpours until April.(At least me hopes to trick the rain into coming). Surprisingly life is going quite well being stuck in the 17 of September (the settlement where I am living right now) each day is quite different…unlike Groundhog Day. Each day I am fortunate enough to escape into a settlement by the name of Los Jardines de Manantay or in English the gardens. The ironic thing is that there are hardly any plants or trees…quite ungarden like. This past week I spent cruising around in the dusty streets meeting people and acquiring them for my health classes. I have quite a handful of families, some 40 or so. It is nice now that my level of Spanish has improved enough that I can chat with the people without lots of pretending to understand. Not very many exciting things happened this week, life was pretty chill. Melanie and I lit a blazing inferno in front of the church (don’t worry Mom I practiced good fire techniques, nothing burned but the intended doomed branches). We were all the branches trimmed from a tree that were in the way of the newly built church. With the jungle heat and humidity added to the heat of the fire, the temperature was roasting. If we had had marshmallows they would have melted in the bag, before we even opened it. In fact the bag probably would have melted too…into one big gooey sticky yummy mess. Too bad marshmallows don’t exist down here. Any ways, that is the sum of me week, but here is an extra tidbit. My week was brightened by another new fruit – Sapote. A bright orange pumpkin-melon like fruit. I am still amazed at the crazy variety of odd fruits down here. Some are good…others are better left lost in the jungle…for the monkeys.

The final day of clinic...with all our stuff from clinic piled on the truck, plus building tools from the church we are constructing, plus our medical team...plus some patients...plus some random kids.

Delivery of meds through our little window

Need Meds?

Our pharmacy at this last clinic...I am in the blue scrubs.

Triage!!

Here I am overlooking a quaint valley from one of the rock walls at Machu Picchu...the storm is just blowing in that completely soaked us.
:)

A random bus stop...oh look I found my dad...

Me and the crazy labies

(Our professional lab techs Matt and Kevin)

The famous Machu Picchu

Behind it the monstrous WaynaPicchu that we hiked up...one stone stair after the other.

Me and the VW in Machu Picchu

Clinic: Episode 3

After returning to Pucallpa, we had one crazy day to pack up the whole pharmacy and travel out to Km 4 for our next medical clinic. The clinic was a pretty normal one, no extreme cases, but lots of people who needed help. In 5 days the medical team saw 811 people. Our clinic site was a small little building (quite a bit smaller than the size of an average living room)with a dirt floor. We were quite crammed – with 2 doctor rooms, two triage rooms, a registration area, pharmacy and a laboratory making it fun to perform clinic duties. Thankfully the dental team had a little house all to their own. It was fun to complete another clinic week. I love the chance to learn more medically and have the opportunity to come in contact with so many individuals and to help them. The new area is really dusty, so lots of people had respiratory problems and we ran into many who had crazy high blood pressures, one lady had shingles, one man had a huge bulge of blood vessels on his hand, some just wanted vitamins and worm meds; however, the most interesting case was a lady who had had a piece of wood stuck in her foot for over a year. Due to the dusty conditions, Doctor took her to his clinic to do the surgery, so I didn’t get to watch, but it was still a pretty crazy case. There are always interesting things that happen during clinic (including getting woken up each morning around 2 or 3 by the line forming outside waiting for medical attention) and lots of interesting people with crazy stories. But now another clinic has passed and Tuesday the travel team will be moving out to the new location. Funny thing is that our new home is named the 17 of September…so technically I can say that I will be living in the 17 of September for the next two months, it is going to be a very long eventful day…hehehehehe.

Christmas …minus the Christmas Atmosphere

Times have been flying by….the seasons should have changed, but they have not. Christmas time came and left, yet the blistering jungle heat and humidity is still the same. It was hard to get in the Christmas spirit without the cold and the snow. But the great thing about the coming of Christmas was some free time. Lucky me got the chance to travel down south with none other than my brother, dad, mom and Andrew Vizcarra. We had a crazy fun time. The first episode of our trip was eating fresh granadilla (slimy fish egg looking fruit, that is uber delicious) from my very own back yard jungle here in Pucallpa. Then we boarded a bus and headed for the colder regions of Peru. We had some crazy bus experiences, including a few pointless bus rides and ended up flying down south, rather than taking 4 days to travel there by bus. But the experiences were all dandy. My family got to see Cusco, Machu Picchu, Arequipa, and lots of random country in between. Cusco was a classic historic city with a delicious restaurant named Jack’s. Machu Picchu was better than it is hyped up to be. When we first arrived it was completely fogged over. Needless to say we were a bit bummed. But then the fog lifted and the architecture of ages past was revealed - green grassy fields, stone remains of stone houses, llamas…and tourists. We stayed in Machu Picchu all day, walking among the ruins, chasing llamas, climbing up WaynaPicchu (the big tall mountain behind Machu Picchu) for an amazing view of Peru’s most famous tourist trap. It was absolutely amazing to be seeing, touching and smelling one of the 7 wonders of the world. Andrew, Jonathan and I had a crazy adventure trying to get to Bolivia so that I could renew my visa (My parents camped out in Cusco for an extra day) To make a long story short, we crossed the border illegally at least 5 times in the process of just trying to exit Peru and enter Bolivia. Then to add to the excitement, after successfully exciting Peru and entering Bolivia, we walked back into Peru and stayed the night there, returning to Bolivia the next day to leave the country officially. Then since it was Christmas day we decided to seek out a decent Christmas meal. So we found a local street vendor. I had some sort of warm tea (it was quite cold down south), not sure what kind, but quite delicious. Some sort of tasty tea, was my Christmas dinner, which I drank while staying illegally in Peru. What a Christmas! All too soon Christmas break was over and it was time to go back to Pucallpa. Traveling around was an epic experience. I made friends with people from Spain and Argentina and other random places in the world. It was amazing to be able to talk to people in Spanish.
One of the crazy things we did during break was go to the local market and buy bread, cheese, basil and avocado and sit and eat it in the main plaza in Arequipa. Take note that this is not something that anybody does…especially not tourists. We had some people that stared at us the entire time we were eating; others who would walk by and look, only to turn around and look again and again then proceed to laugh at us. We were definitely the most entertaining thing in the square. Nobody could figure out what on earth Americans were doing sitting on the ground, eating avocado and bread. Try it sometime…it is more fun than you think…and quite delicious. (Uncle John…next time you visit a foreign country I want to see a picture of you testing this out…)