6 month late Luggage

On our flight to Peru July 23, 2007 our kids carseats were lost. Last week SIX MONTHS LATER we received them! Good thing we dont have a car in Peru.

Eliana Turns Three!

The Third Birthday. Tinkerbell Party.
In Ellie's preschool every time there is a birthday there is a two hour party with cake, dancing, food, party favors, balloons and most importantly... a professional party entertainer! Like a clown, but since we're in Latin America, it's a dancer! So we gave Eliana what she knew to be a birthday. The "chica" (that's really what they call them) had been the entertainer for the school's annual party in December and Eliana had not stopped talking about the "pink lady" since then. When Stephanie from the show Lazy Town came into the party room, she was ecstatic!

We danced, played games, broke open a pinata and cut the Tinkerbell ("Campanita") cake.






Eliana was wiped out and even had a hard time making it through the morning. Josiah on the other hand was pretty much only interested in the grapes.



After naps, Eliana had "Mommy-Daddy-Daughter Time" while Josiah stayed with a sitter. We ate real American hamburgers and brownies with pink icecream. It was a great day.

Prior to today anything in the future was referred to as, "When I get three..." So now she has to find a new mode of communication. Today she said, "When I get two again..." I love three year olds. She's got to be the cutest!

Provision

The story of finding a temporary place to stay in Lima is a story of God's providence.

January 1 we started scouring the internet looking for a place to stay from Feb 20 until we could find a permanent home. It is high season in Lima, and searching by internet our options were limited to people marketing to foreign tourists. Most options were daily rentals and were very pricy. We continued looking every day. There were 3 options that seemed good but one by one they fell through.

We came up to 4 weeks before departure without an option in sight when we came across a simple advertisement without any details nor a price. The ad said to call, not email. We called, but it was a wrong number. We emailed but no response. A week later we got an email and obtained the correct phone number, and when we called we were the first response the woman had received. She had been nervous because she was to leave for the States in two weeks, and immediately accepted us.

We later discovered that she was a believer and had been praying for a foreigner to rent her apartment. For us it could not be better. Half the price of the other options; in the neighborhood where we plan to look for a home; and the woman speaks English, which helped ensure our communication was clear, going back and forth in two languages.

We immediately had the sense that God had ordained the details to allow us to be the first callers. He secured the best situation for our security and comfort moving to a new city. God is good and He is taking care of us.

On the Move: Here's our Itinerary

On the move again! We have lived in Arequipa Peru for almost 7 months, studying Spanish at a language institute. We believe that our ability to communicate in Spanish has improved. :) (Some of us have developed better then others, see the blog about Eliana.)

Here's the breakdown:
February 11th- Eliana's 3rd birthday- Party at school, day with mom and dad.
February 14th- 6th Valentines Day being married and 4th time to be in the middle of a move in February.
February 15th- Goodbye at the language school
February 15th- Goodbye day to our special friends Carol and her daughter Luana
February 16th- Goodbye Dinner with friends
February 19th- Goodbye at the Jardin (kids preschool)
February 20th- flight to Lima
Oh- and pack the house and ship it to Lima!

Pray for Eliana and Josiah as they leave "Home" again.

February 20th-March 22nd
We will be living in a temporary furnished apartment while we:
Find a permanent apartment in Lima
Find a language tutor and language helpers
Find a Preschool for Eliana
Set up the new place and get settled.

March 22nd- Trip to the US.
That is right we will be in the US for a few weeks. We want to see you, if you want to see us! :)
Email us! We would love to set up a time to see you! And check back for more info about our time in California.

April- Return to Lima to finish some language study and settle into life.

Please pray for all of these changes and uprootedness for the kids and pray that we remain centered in the Lord and motivated by our vision to see children transformed by the Christ!

La Playa

We were invited by the owner of our house to her beach house for the weekend. We went having no idea what to expect, nor much about her because here in Arequipa she works 10 hours a day and we have never really gotten to know each other. We soon found out that she and her husband own the biggest rice company in the South of Peru. Here people live very simply and the only companies with big enough profit margins to afford things like commercials and billboards are those who sell milk or rice. Needless to say, we experienced a life in Peru very different from what we have come to know so far.

We stayed in her beachfront house. 67 houses were lined on the sand on a private beach, replete with security, lifeguards and beach-front bar. We spent three days lounging under the 10x10 bamboo canopy, coming inside for meals that her 2 full-time maids prepared for us. In the afternoons we sat with she and her friends on the second-floor patio while they drank and talked, being waited on hand and foot. Their 16 year old daughter loaned us her cuad to drive up and down the miles of sand under the sunset. What an experience!

Eliana-Spanish Speaker!

Today Eliana spent a few hours with our friend Carol and her 7 year old daughter Luana. When I got home I heard the following report:

The amount of Spanish that I hear Eliana speak is not a fraction of what she will speak when alone with Spanish speakers. She passed the day without saying one word in English nor lacking in things to talk about. She even said one word that shocked Carol because it was quite a sophisticated word. The highlight was when Luana went up the stairs and Ellie, wanting her to continue playing, said in Spanish (with correct grammar), "Don't go upstairs, Luana...Don't go upstairs...HEY! I told you not to go upstairs!!!" To which she was responded with a reproachful look; and she corrected herself saying, "Okay, it's okay that you go up."

That may not sound like much, but to our language-learning ears we recognize that she used imperative, indicative and subjunctive forms CORRECTLY! Go Eliana!

Face Your Fears!

I've never been the most outgoing of personalities. Although I see myself as a strong person on the inside, there are so many insecurities that dominate the exterior. I'm discovering that living in a different culture will cause me to confront them. Here's one example:

I'm an observer. I love learning cultures, evaluating, discerning. One of the most uncomfortable things for me is to walk into a room and immediately call attention to myself without having time to take everything in and figure out my place in the environment. I realize now that my primary goal when entering a new situation was to become invisible as quickly as possible and scope it out so that I could join into what was happening without disrupting it. Here, that instinctual urge is impossible. In the US we focus on greeting people, welcoming newcomers and integrating them into the whole. Here it is the responsibility of the person who arrived to immediately greet with a kiss each and every person in the room, whether you know them or not.

I know that this is one of millions of changes to my life, but it is a perfect example of the way God uses change (cultural or what-not) to cause me to know myself, face myself and hopefully in doing so change little by little into His likeness.

-heather