Week 6, sorry for the tardiness

This week was quite a busy week for me (Brett) because it was Week of Prayer at my church, Santa Elvita. After working out in the field for 8 hours, we had to go to the church for 2 hours every night. It was a pretty tiring task for me. I had to open up the Week of Prayer on Monday. The theme was ¨Brighten In Me¨ literally translated. Not sure if it makes sense in english, but that's what is was. On monday I basically had the ¨wake up ¨ message for the week. I preached about how we shouldn't just stay in our comfort zones and that we need to try new stuff and push ourselves as Christians. To wrap up Week of Prayer, we had a party on Sunday. It opened up with games at 10 in the morning on a field. We did all the camp relay games and had some good, clean competition. My team, of course, won haha. We were called the ¨conquistadors¨ and had a great time showing everyone how talented we really were. I had 3 little peruvian kids on my team from the church, we had a great time. In the evening, there was a valentine dinner for everyone from the church. Julie helped decorate for the valentine dinner, and it looked great. There were some cheesy games played before dinner, but the funniest one was for the couples. Of course they elected and have Julie and me play. The object was for the couples to turn around and not face each other and stand about 5 meters apart. Then on the male side, we had to crow like a rooster, each of us one at a time. And then the girls had to chose which crow was her man, it was called ¨eso es mi gallo¨. It was good fun and great food, i think the week of prayer worked out really well.

On Thursday, we had a day off to be able to watch the superbowl, but this didn´t work out so well. Apparently, when the people downloaded the superbowl, they didn´t realize they had only gotten the first half. So after all the waiting and anticipation, i was only able to watch the first half. I did eventually get to watch the second half earlier this week. I was such good revenge to see the Colts lose after they beat up my Bears 3 years ago, as i watched that game in the dorm in Spain at 4 in the the morning.

Work was pretty much the same. We basically mowed the 1-2 foot high grass around 38 with machettes. This work is brutal and my hands blistered up so quickly. I couldn´t even use my right hand the next day, and ended up switching to using my left hand. Work here is amazingly difficult and painful on the body, but in the end it rewarding. I love working with the peruvians. We always have a great time talking and joking around. I'm really happy with the job I have and would never trade it for any other job here.

Julie had a pretty chill week she said. She went to pucallpa pretty much everyday to plan for her park that she's going to be putting in the area where she's living. She was trying to figure out how many jungle gym items she can afford along with all the plants. It's quite a task and takes a long time. I went down to pucallpa after work on friday with one of the peruvian workers that know a lot about building. We went everywhere to get prices on wood, screws, bars of iron and everything else we need for the park. It´s a lot of work because no one really knows anything about jungle gyms, and around here they're mostly made out of iron. But I have complete confidence in Daniel that he can make an awesome park for the kids in Mariopesa. It was a really good idea by Julie and it's awesome that her parents funded it. It's gonna be a lot of fun to build.

Julie also went around a neighborhood called, Jardines, to started another VBS for the next three weeks with the kids there. So she's gonna have a lot of fun with that again, ha ha. I hope the kids there will be nicer to her and give her an easier time. It´s hectic trying to deal with so many kids in another language, i can´t even imagine it. I can barely do it at summer camp in english. But it´s a good experience for her I think and she´ll have a lot of stories when she comes back home. It´ll be a time we´ll never forget and can always remember back to what we did in peru. Hope everyone has an amazing weekend, and week 7 will be written on Sunday. Take care!!