Home yesterday to teach our Friday night course and now we're off again (late already) to return to Lima. This time we'll be flying to Pucallpa (in the jungle) for our week-long SAM Peru Field Conference. I don't think we will be able to use the internet there, so we'll see you in a week. 

The graduation ceremony today seemed so short and assuming (relative to what I was expecting at least): three speeches, some prayers, two slideshows, awarding of diplomas to the five graduates who had completed the 4-year summer program.

A successful night in all regards I'd say.

When we arrived, J and M told Tim that now they were the strangers/tourists and Tim and I were in our element. M (the older one) seemed as though he would have been perfectly happy sitting and watching the scene for hours. The lights, the sunset over the water, the fancy stores, the escalator (had some problems with that one).... It was all new to him. He was particularly interested in seeing Dolce&Gabbana for some reason.

J seemed a little less starstruck until we sat down for dinner at a place with $7 sandwiches. At that point, he remarked that he'd never been to a pituco (uppity) restaurant before.

I think they are relieved to be done with classes, homework, etc. but also happy and satisfied with the experience of a month of seminary. I'm so glad we came, and I'll be interested to see what difference (if any?) this makes in their lives and in our church over the next few months.

To honor our last night at the seminary and in Lima, we're taking our two Puerto Supe guys out. We asked them to come up with something fun to do, and their suggestion was to go to Larcomar. 

Three months with the Cubases on furlough soon followed by one month of seminary on the weekdays, 8 hrs of bus rides every weekend, and lots of Puerto Supe work Friday night through Sunday night (arriving back in Lima at 1 am, getting 5 hrs of sleep, then waking up to do morning chores and rush to class). 

Just finished our third (of 3) final exam. We still have two more days of class, and I have two more oral presentations. It has been an interesting month for sure. I've enjoyed learning, especially in my Systematic Theology and Gospels classes. I'll definitely miss all the studying at Starbucks, too.

I'm thinking of applying to start a Masters in Biblical Studies at Gordon Conwell in Charlotte (beginning with online courses I can do here). Any thoughts?

Last night our friends fixed the most delicious dinner for us, highlighting my recent longing, a tasty grilled steak. They didn't even know about the tear. Just goes to show again what grace God is giving me through friendship these days :-)

This morning a lady from our church came by at 8 am telling me she wanted to reconcile with God. As it turned out, what she wanted was for her husband to stop getting mad. 

Sometimes I feel really discouraged by our failure to make friends in Puerto Supe. It seems frustrating that the differences in education, culture, and economics would overcome my desire to connect here. I can explain why it's happening, but it still doesn't feel like an excuse.

We just had a moment (well, a half hour) that makes every sacrifice here seem 110% worth it. Forgive the length of the post; I don't know how to edit a day like this.We 4 Puerto Supe folks ate lunch together today, and ended up in some completely precious (both in value and in warms-my-heart) dialogue.

After an interesting discussion about points of controversy that have emerged in class recently, M mentioned (gently) that some of the people here are kind of full of themselves and how he got the cold shoulder yesterday when he wanted to work with a particular group. We talked about how "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up" (1 Corinthians 8:1), and in his quiet, sincere voice, M told us that he doesn't care what grade he gets in his classes as long as he's drawing closer to Jesus and being transformed into His image. He's here for life change, not information.

He said that last weekend, he talked to Cesar for a while about why our church isn't growing and that he (M) thinks the four of us plus the Cubases ought to start meeting to work on making that change. It seems too good to believe that people within the church would start expressing leadership on their own and leading us to evaluate ourselves and change so that we can more accurately reflect the heart and purposes of God.

The other guy, J, talked a little too about what this month has meant for him. One of his stumbling blocks (I'd say) is a rigidity about things that maybe aren't so rigid-- secular music, for example-- and a resulting tendency to turn people away by accident. J said he has loved being together with all different kinds of believers and realizing that the Church is a universal family and not our one congregation. We have so many differences, but held together in Christ, those differences can be a blessing and not a curse.

I'll leave you with an illustration M used as he described to us what he sees happening here. "Maybe we're not capturing everything and what we gain here is only the smallest seed," he said, "but a small seed grows and some day becomes a very large tree."

He was referring to a parable about the Kingdom of God that we read recently in our Gospels class from Matthew 13:31-32, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."

The Lord has planted a seed and the trees are just beginning to grow, but we believe by faith that the day will come when the influence of these men will be vast and people from near and far will be blessed by their lives and their faith.

Some of the oral presentations have been more preached than taught. Today was a prime example. We got some serious exhortation (and correction) regarding the role of parents in a child's education.

In the midst of it all, the girl started ranting about how children should be whipped to keep them in line. Her biblical support? Jesus used a whip when he cleared the Temple.

Sure, it's possible to support physical discipline from Proverbs. But this was a whole new approach.

Today we went to the Star Peru office to try to buy plane tickets for our upcoming SAM Peru conference in Pucallpa. As a general rule, you can't buy anything online in this country. The in-person attempt also failed, but don't despair-- Tim's not out of ideas.

After the Star Peru fiasco, we stuck around Miraflores, the ritziest part of Lima. I've been there a million times but I guess more as a tourist than resident. I never noticed what a bizarre world it really is-- bizarre in the sense that it's a little piece of SouthPark in the middle of a country that mostly lives on $2 a day. Miraflores and Puerto Supe have nothing in common except language, and as I learned today, sometimes even that is a point of difference.

Valet parking at Starbucks. Wow. It makes more sense when you realize that our two drinks today cost the equivalent to a day's labor.

The grocery store had live piano entertainment (think Nordstrom).

Why is it that skin color is so closely related to financial status? At least half of the people I passed were light-skinned enough to leave me wondering what nationality they were. This is never the case in Puerto Supe. The only "white" person other than us and Grace is an albino kid.

As it turned out, there were two kinds of light-skinned (and light-haired) people passing me by, totally indistinguishable to me except when they started talking. Some were foreigners (German, American, Irish). The others were Peruvians who have clearly been maintaining their European bloodlines.

Can you believe it? Tim just wrote an 8-page research paper in Spanish. Pretty remarkable when you consider that 15 months ago (when we arrived in Peru), he couldn't really carry on a basic conversation. I'm so amazed by how far he's come since then.

Speaking of 8-page research papers, we're baffled and curious about how these are going to turn out. From what I've seen so far, even the (seemingly) smarter people in class are copying word-for-word from their sources, not citing anything, and then giving a few of their own thoughts in the conclusion.

Besides the fact that we see them doing it in the computer lab, it's also made clear in that all the oral presentations are exactly the same (since they used the same texts). Needless to say, this is making for a rather tedious week of listening to the presentations.

Is this an acceptable way to write a paper in post-graduate work? The syllabi all give strong admonitions against plagiarism. Do they really mean it? Are all these people going to get zeros? Is the definition of plagiarism different here? Are the teachers (incorrectly assuming the students understand?

I'm not sure if I'll ever find out, since I don't intend to take a poll of everyone's grades. Then again we might get a class speech.

Another possibility is that my paper (done according to the standards I learned) is going to be unacceptable by their standards. Hmmmm. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Nothing to do with killing cows, I promise. 

Sitting on the couch writing our research papers (mine on "means of grace" and Tim's on the function of the church), listening to Madeline Peyroux and Ellie's snoring. Maybe not a very romantic Valentine's Day, but still a peaceful, practical one. I'm grateful for home and for Saturday. 

We hopped off the bus (from Lima to Puerto Supe) at about 7 and made our way down to teach our discipleship course at 8. I was definitely not looking forward to it. I think I'm starting to have a scarcity mentality about rest-- When will I rest? How can I protect my time to rest? When will this event be over so I can rest? It's been a nutty two weeks and we've got two more ahead.

1. This morning in chapel we had a special presentation by a fellow student. He put the kareoke track on for a slow, sentimentalish worship song and sung his heart out. My heart was rolling its eyes, and even more so when I heard the guy next to me say "Amen, brother!" and saw the girl in front of me bobbing back and forth (only missing her lighter).

You can attribute this recent barrage of posts to the fact that we've found the one corner of our apartment where the wireless internet works.

For one of our classes we've been assigned to groups to write an essay (mine is about teaching in the synagogue, Hannah's is about how Paul taught).  This has by far been one of the most confusing issues we've dealt with in seminary.  Apparently most (if not all) of the students have very little experience in this field.

1. There's no Spanish translation for the word "accountability." This may tell you something about accountability as a value in Latin culture.

2. It's February 10, but Starbucks is still using Christmas cups. I find it especially amusing since we're in the middle of summer and the cups have snowflakes on them. (On the other hand, let's give Peru a hand for not wasting paper; there's a concept the rest of the world could learn from!)

On our way back to the seminary Sunday night, our bus rear-ended another bus. No one seemed to be hurt (beyond sore muscles), although it was a first accident for many on board and they were duly shaken up. We managed to roll into the seminary by 1 am.

I had my camera and desperately wanted to take a photo of the accident, but the Peruvians would not let me. As soon as the other passengers saw my camera, they insisted (passionately and persistently) that I put it away before I got robbed. Tim finally lost it, responding in an exasperated voice, "She hears you, but she can still do what she wants!"

The last few weeks have been a whole new level of cultural adjustment, shock, and frustration, as we've been learning to go to school in Peru. My biggest challenge (and it's a tremendous one) is fighting my own enduring arrogance. In one sense, that same arrogance brings me down a few notches as I recognize my own inability to conquer it. God help me.

Sitting at my desk in the morning writing a blog post.... I've missed this moment over the past week, a regular time to sit down and reflect on the world around me and sometimes inside me. 

It's a good thing we stumbled out of our room at 7 in search of breakfast. Breakfast was over but it turned out we had morning chores to do starting today. Mine involved cleaning the floors in the kitchen. When the bell rang at 7:55, I wasn't done, but the cook sent me running back to my room to shower before class started at 8 (more like 8:05 as it turned out).

Our classes went pretty well today, and my heart warmed as I watched our two guys raising their hands to offer their opinions, read out loud, or open class in prayer. I really believe that this month will be transformational for both of them, and I'm grateful to get to watch the process.

After classes and lunch, we went straight to the library. It's open in the morning (while we're in class) plus from 2:30-5 pm. The system is proving a bit problematic. Everyone has the same homework and thus needs the same books. We can't check them out or even remove them from their specific areas. Yesterday we weren't able to finish the homework by 5 and got kicked out of the library. Today I made copies of some of the pages we would need so that we could continue working after the library closed.

If we were bored in Puerto Supe, we're sure making up for it now. I'd say I'm at least as busy as I was at Davidson (College), although significantly less concerned about my grades. I've got a mountain more of work I could get started on, but for the sake of my sanity, I'm not going to worry about it right now. 7 am-6 pm is quite enough for one day.

Tim, the two guys from our church, and I started our 4-week seminary program this morning. For Tim and I at least, it was flooded with "you've-got-to-be-kidding-me" moments. We're entering a whole new cultural field here-- school. How do students interact? When do people talk? How do you take notes, pass out papers, ask questions, go to the bathroom? It's complicated.

I found myself filled with judgments both about the teachers and the other students. "It's not right or wrong; it's just different" seems so hard to believe today. Everything seemed so inefficient to me, so chaotic. Surely there are 14 better ways to form groups. Why does that guy insist on giving his 2 cents times 20? Is anyone else here as baffled as I am?

The most amusing part is that no, probably no one else is baffled at all. I'm assuming that to them, these systems and procedures make sense and work. I just don't have the right glasses on to see what they're seeing.

I'll be interested to see how this month goes. The other guys from our church are a little overwhelmed I think, but we're going to all get together after our siesta to work on our homework. Then Tim, Dad and I are going to check out a new area of Lima (Barranco) for dinner.