After a few months of conversations and questions, my housekeeper told me this morning that she wanted to give her life to God. She asked me what she needed to do. I talked her through the general idea:

1. I'm sorry... for what I've done. Please forgive me. I'm ready to leave behind my old life.
2. Thank you... for dying for my sins, for your free offer of forgiveness, for the freedom you offer me, and for your Spirit.
3. Please... Come into my life and fill me with your Spirit.

She was a little surprised it was that easy (which suprised me, because I feel like we've been over this a million times). She asked me if you had to go under water or something :-) We talked some about the idea behind baptism, how it's a symbol of what happens in your heart, and that it's more of a celebration and a statement you can make after you make the heart decision.

And so we prayed together, and she asked God to take her life and change it, to fill her with the Holy Spirit, and to come close. It's been a precious morning.

It seems that our posh poodle is allergic to dog food. We've been doing our research and decided the best option was to start giving her meat, mostly raw chicken wings and feet. That ends up cheaper than dog food here, so we're going to give it a try for both Taza and Ellie for the next two weeks. This morning I sent our housekeeper to the market to buy their food, and she returned with the yuckiness below. I find it mildly ironic that we don't eat meat at home but our dogs do.

I'm back in Puerto after a very long and different traveling experience. Here's a quick summary of my trip to Pucallpa:

4 buses, 2 long (2 & 4 hr) taxi rides, 1 flight (in most cases I hard very little leg room, however I did get the emergency row on the 1 hr flight back)
33 1/2 hours total of traveling in 2 1/2 days
19 hrs waiting for transportation
Only 10 hours in Pucallpa

Althought the extent of traveling was rather exhausting, I did get to experience some interesting things. I went from the coast/desert to the mountains to the jungle in about a day and a half.

I passed over one of the highest highways in the world (15,800 feet). As we were going through this area I saw some of the bluest sky and water in my life. I also discovered my boss is highly sensitive to high altitude and spent most of this part of the trip throwing up.

In a period of 10 - 15 minutes when descended through a small road between some mountains and suddenly we came into an area that was 10-20 degrees warmer and filled with trees. It may not sound that exciting but it was a pretty drastic and beautiful change.

I got to spend 2 nights in a row sleeping on a bus. I found out that Ambien is an incredible sleep medicine. My boss and the other guy who was with us both fell asleep within 1 - 2 minutes of taking it.

Finally in the airport at Pucallpa we had to wait in an area with about 30 seats and no air conditioning (it was about 95 degrees). Needless to say there were many more people than seats. Finally 20 minutes before our flight they started allowing people to pass through security into the waiting area that had about 150 seats and was air conditioned. I asked the employees why they made us wait outside of the waiting area but they didn't really have an answer.


If you're interested here's a detailed itinerary:

Monday:
11 am - 4 hr bus to Lima. Arrived too late to take a bus directly to Pucallpa.
3 pm - arrived in Lima and waited for next bus
11:30 pm - Took 7 hr overnight bus to Huancayo. Later realized that we mixed up the cities. We were supposed to go to Huánuco.

Tuesday:
6:30 am - arrived in Huancayo
7:00 am - backtracked via a 2 hr taxi ride to some unknown city
9:00 am - arrived at the unknown city and had a 4 1/2 hour taxi ride to Huánuco
1:30 pm - arrived in Huánuco and waited for the bus to take us the rest of the way to Pucallpa
7:30 pm - boarded bus to go to Pucallpa (11 hours over night)

Wednesday:
6:30 am - arrived in Pucallpa
7 - 11:30 am - César dropped the guy off at rehab, and I rested at a friends house
12 pm - went to the airport to buy plane tickets then wasted time till our flight
5 pm - boarded plane to Lima
6:30 pm - arrived in Lima
7:30 pm - took 4 hour bus to Puerto Supe
12 pm - arrived home in Puerto

I always appreciate people thinking outside of the box and thought this music video was a good example of it. (This is "Mad World" from the Donnie Darko soundtrack).

In October, November, and December I will be teaching the women's Bible study (the Cubases will be in the US). Grace and I have talked some about what that might look like and how I can best encourage these women. They are mostly people who have made a decision to follow Christ with their whole lives but don't have much of a sense yet of what that means. As I mentioned before, I'm not really sure I know how to teach in this culture, because the ways they learn in school are so different from the US. Nonetheless, I'm excited for the challenge.

In an effort to try to teach them about their identity in Christ (in a way that sticks), I've decided to spend one month teaching on what it means to be a friend of God, one on being a daughter of God, and one on being the bride of Christ. So far I've worked up a 4-lesson study on being God's friend. I wrote it first in English with the thought that I might have a chance to use it some other time during my life (and would be a lot more likely to if it were already written in English).

If you're interested in looking at it for any reason, you can access it here. Remember that this is a first draft, so I'd love (gentle) feedback from all you blog readers out there, whether I know you or not! Consider this another opportunity to be a part of what God's doing down here! Again, it is designed to be used in a group and with people who are newish followers of Jesus.

Last night around 9:30 one of my better "friends" came over. I say "friend" not so much because we have a real friendship (yet), but -because I enjoy her company. Normally at night when the doorbell rings I groan and give Tim a "look" that says "Please go tell that person I'm sick or something." Last night, all alone, I was glad for the company. We shared some cake and lemonade and talked about "real" things.

This girl is one of the three people I see myself closest to here in Puerto, but I'm fairly confused about her interest in a friendship. It seems like it's all me, that I continue pursuing time with her and she never reciprocates. Yesterday was our day to get together, which we haven't done in weeks. I decided not to go find her. I guess I was giving up in a way. I was thus all the more surprised and happy to see her at my doorstep, intentionally seeking me out.

It's a reminder to me that I really don't know what God has me here for. I can make all the plans and decisions I want, but most of the things in my world are out of my control and understanding. I'm left living moment by moment, which is the only place I can really live anyway. One step at a time.

An adventure it is. Through a series of mishaps, Tim is only halfway to Pucallpa at this point and ready to be back home. They are leaving tonight on a bus that should bring them to Pucallpa by the morning. I think the two of them are tired and feeling pretty anxious (remember that they are taking an alcoholic to rehab, by the way). Or maybe I'm the only one feeling vicariously anxious!

I will say that Tim seems thrilled by views he's seeing on his cross-country tour. Too bad he doesn't have a camera with him.

Taza, Ellie and I are doing just fine on the homefront. Besides taking the new photos for the slideshow above, I've been keeping myself busy reading, planning our upcoming vacation (Sept. 1), watching Anne of Green Gables again, baking carrot cake, and doing all my normal work. I'm off now for an Al-Anon meeting.

If you're interested in Christian worship music for any reason, we just bought a great new CD by Hillsong called This is our God. Besides the fact that they write really good music, we love Hillsong because they publish official Spanish translations to their music. We don't have a lot of great resources for new non-cheesy music to play at church, so we're super grateful.

Tim and Cesar left this morning for the jungle. They're taking someone to a substance abuse rehab center run by retired SAM missionaries in Pucallpa. The man is afraid of flying, so the three of them will be taking the 20 hour bus ride from Lima (after the 4 hour bus ride to Lima). Fortunately they'll be flying home after helping the guy check in. They're expected back Thursday.

I don't think Tim's ever left for more than a night, and I'm curious to see how this goes. I think if I were in Charlotte, I'd probably end up at Starbucks and the movie theater a fair amount. None of that here. Neither do I have friends or a job outside my home. I'm especially grateful this week for my housekeeper and my dogs. Besides keeping me company, Ellie will definitely make me feel safer.

It's funny how loneliness goes around here, because I certainly have plenty of opportunities to interact with people. Our houses are townhouse-style (sharing walls), our door is 3 feet from the street, and no one but taxi drivers have cars, so there's a lot of hanging out in the street, dropping by someone's house, etc. And yet with all these acquaintances, I still wouldn't say I have any Peruvian friends. Grace commented yesterday that it's hard to really connect in a give and take kind of relationship with people who are in a different social and economic world (less about culture, more about education and money). That probably sounds a little harsh and doesn't fit our idealistic hopes, but I have to say that I agree at this point. After four months of being in Puerto Supe, I don't see any relationships that I hope will become real friendships.

I'm so grateful for my team- and especially for my #1 awesome teammate Tim. This is not a life just anyone could live happily, but we're making it A-okay. I see more clearly today than before that God designs different people for different tasks. At the same time, I'm not sure if this is something I could live indefinitely, at least in a non-urban area of a developing nation.

Our friends and family outside of Peru are an integral part of our life here via phone and email. Just knowing that you love and remember us makes a tremendous difference. We thank God for you often and need you here, in the US, or wherever we go.

Tonight we had our weekly worship service and then announcements. Several weeks ago I made a "Reading Guide for the Gospel of John" booklet and have been trying to get people working on it (reading short passages daily and answering a couple of questions about them). We have a chart to mark progress on the wall, so tonight I asked if anyone had brought their booklets so that I could mark where they were. Several people pulled them out, which was certainly encouraging. But even better were the two questions I got.

First, one man and his wife said that they tried to read but didn't understand. I asked them what they didn't understand-- the reading or the booklet. They opened a Bible to "San Juan" and showed me how their version didn't have all the verses that I refered to. As it turned out, they had been trying to read First John! If you don't know, John wrote 4 books in the new testament, but only one is a biography of Jesus; the other three are very short letters. We laughed for a while over the confusion, and I think they're ready to try again this week.

The other question I got was "What does the Word mean?" The beginning of John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." A little later on, it explains that the Word was Jesus, but not in a super direct way. I walked the woman asking me about this through the passage and tried to very simply address why John didn't just outright say "Jesus." All this to say that it was exciting to see her asking questions about things she didn't understand. That's definitely not something they learn to do in school here, and I think it's the key to unlocking reading comprehension.

As I'm working with these women and writing Bible studies for the fall (well, our spring), I feel everything I learned from teaching coming into play. This community is particularly weak on critical thinking skills and literacy/reading comprehension, and I'm so grateful for the experience I had in Charlotte, particularly with the less-intelligent and/or less-educated students.