Week 3

In some ways it is hard to believe that we have already been here for 3 weeks, but in other ways it feels like we have been here forever! This week was my first week with the kids and it started off pretty chaotically. Mike and I weren´t sure what to expect. We spent last week going around advertising and had a lot of people say that they were interested in coming, but we weren´t sure if they would actually show up.

Brett and the manual labor people came Monday morning to put up the tent for us to have the vacation bible school in. The genuis who made the tent made it so that there was only one way for the pieces to fit together but none of the parts were marked and they all looked exactly the same. Needless to say, the tent was not finished by the time the kids started showing up at 1:00 so Mike and I were stuck with about 60 kids and no place to put them all. We started out by teaching them some songs and then told them the story of Creation. None of these kids have ever heard Bible stories before and it was a bit shocking to me when we were met with silence after asking them how many days it took God to create the world. Definitely not what we were expecting! But was kind of cool to be the first ones to tell them the stories. This week we did Creation, Noah and the Ark, Joseph, David and Goliath, and Jonah. After the story, we did an activity with them and then handed out crayons and coloring books. That kept them busy for at least 30 minutes. Peruvian kids are extremely demanding and parents here definitely don´t emphasize manners. I don´t think I´ve heard one kid say please or thank you yet. All I hear is "Dame! Dame! Dame!" (Give me!)

The games that we had planned for the first day did not go very well to day the least. More and more kids kept showing up and since we were in a field it was impossible to get them to listen to instructions. After the first day things went a lot smoother though. Having the tent helped a lot. We taught them the colors red, yellow, and green in English and then played Red light/Green light with them, taught them the body parts and played Simon says, taught them animal names and played Sharks and Minnows and Duck, Duck, Goose. The kids are constantly following me around and climbing on me to touch my hair and hold my hands. I have about 5 favorites but I like them all for the most part. I definitely do not want to go into teaching though! That is for sure. I think that 6 weeks of this will be plenty for me.

In the evenings I have been teaching a group of teenagers English and tutoring math to some younger kids. They are on summer vacation right now but Peruvian kids are kind of strange and want to learn instead of play games. One afternoon when Mike and I gave them the option of playing a game or learning English we had 2 kids vote for the game and about 68 vote for English lessons. It´s pretty strange... Teaching English has made me feel a lot better about my Spanish though. I constantly feel like I´m slaughtering the spanish words, but then I hear them try to say the english words and it makes me realize that I´m not that bad! No matter how hard I try I cannot get them to say the sounds "ssss" or "tuh". To them "sky" is "esky" and "tree" is "chree." It´s pretty funny.

While I was running around after kids all day, Brett worked on putting up a fence around the base. Every three meters he has to dig a hole a meter deep, put a pole in it, and put barbed wire up. Better him than me! Their next big project is an enormous fish pond. They rented a huge tractor and are in the process of digging a pond that is 100 meters x 300 meters x 2 meters. In the middle there are two islands that they are going to put monkies and hammocks on and build a bridge out to them. The guy that is in charge of the project thinks that it will be a good way of generating income. They are going to fill the pond with fish and sell the fish or something like that...I´m not really sure. They seem to think that it will be pretty easy but I have a hard time believing that it is just a matter of digging an enormous hole, filling it with water, and throwing some fish in there. I could be wrong though. I guess we´ll see!

I went back to the base on Friday afternoon and stayed the weekend. Brett gave the sermon at his church so I got to hear him. He did a really good job. His sermon was about being willing to die for Christ and he told a story and related it to Shadrack, Miseac, and Abendnigo (spelling??). The kids actually paid attention the whole time and liked his story a lot. The church he is in charge of is in the back of this lady´s house and there are about 30 or 40 memebers, mostly kids. There are animals running around everywhere. Definitely not your normal church, but it´s a lot of fun to go to. He´s in charge of Friday night vespers there too and runs the Sabbath school class with another guy for the teenagers. It´s a lot of work for him but I think he´ll do a good job there. He´s scheduled to preach again on March 20th.

Well, that´s about it for this week. Bye!