Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!
Happy Easter to all!

We have had a terrific last couple days, with the arrival on Thursday of Matthew and Kerry! Unfortunately, I (Michael) have been sick the whole time, so I haven't done much. That's also why I can write this right now, because I am sadly staying home from church this morning. It's some sort of flu-symptom mixed with bad sore throat/cough, that I haven't been able to shake since Wednesday. But anyway, it has been a wonderful gift to have Matthew and Kerry here. They've been able to meet our friends here, attend Good Friday services, join in Saturday futbol, and spend lots of quality time with Noah. He just loves them. And we still have the better part of a week with these guys!
I think that's all I can do for now - I'm off to the doctor. We hope you have a blessed Easter.

La Parada

Noah and I (Laura) had a neat cultural experience together on Saturday. Elita and her oldest son, Jimmy, took us by bus to THE market in Lima. It's apparently where most of the restaurants, little bodegas, and street vendors buy their vegetables and other groceries. The actual market itself is enormous, not to mention all the hundreds of people selling their wares on the surrounding streets. The size of a few football fields, it is open air with a dirt/mud floor. Half of it has the vegetables (but no fruit, that's another huge market to itself) and the other half has the groceries, meat, cheese, and grains. The first aisle we went down had just garlic. I have never seen so much garlic in my life - vendor after vendor (at least 40 of them) just selling garlic. They had is separated into size and age with corresponding prices. The garlic we chose, we paid 2 soles for 1 kilo - that's about 70 cents for 2.2 pounds. Elita and I decided to share what we would buy together, so I wrote down what we paid for everything and we divided it up later. And so it was - every aisle had it's own veggie, tomatoes, onions, limes, carrots, and of course potatoes, in fact there might have been a couple aisles of those.
It was incredible to me to see the people working there; families working the business. On the street before entering, I noticed a little girl, maybe 3 years old, asleep under the table of her family's store, head on a bag of corn with large plastic bags for her blankets. The potato workers all had their muddy hands. And the porters, the guys hired to carry or haul your items on a hand truck or their backs, worked so fast and hard - you really had to be careful if you were in their way - they couldn't always stop very easily with their heavy loads. Some looked to have been 60 years old or more, but all that hard work also may have prematurely aged them. All they wanted was about $1 to carry all your groceries. But instead, we had Jimmy. (c: His load started out light with just Noah on his shoulders, but as we bought more, I started carrying Noah and Jimmy had the big bags. It was about this time that I looked up instead of watching my step for tomatoes and rotten potatoes. I noticed how many faces were staring at Noah and me. I can pretty much guarantee that we were the only white people for at least a mile radius - it's just not the top tourist spot. How strange it must have been to see us there - by far the dirtiest place I've seen in Lima. I'm glad I didn't bring my camera. I would have felt like I was making a spectacle of what everyday life is for these people. Instead I was able to just buy my groceries for the week, granted with a little more difficulty than if I had had my pushcart at the supermarket.

Pachamanca

Oh my, we are way behind on our blogging. Sorry to those who check regularly. Much has happened, we're learning every day. We'll try to get as many posts up as possible this week, before Matthew and Kerry arrive on Thursday! Woohoo!

We have had some great time with the Castro family lately - Robinson, Elita, Jimmy, Tito and Elsa. Last Tuesday we went over to their house for a very special lunch (lunch is usually what one is invited to - dinner is small and insignificant) - a fantastic dish called Pachamanca. We got there in the morning to shop with them for the ingredients - beef, chicken, pork, huacatay (native herb), potatoes, sweet potatoes, yucca, corn, habas, and a bunch of other vegetables. This is how it starts:


Originally they were going to cook it on top of this clay oven, but there were no coals to be found, so they used the stove instead.


It's actually a meal from the mountains, usually cooked for a crowd in a big hole dug out of the ground. But as ground for such a hole is in short supply in most of Lima, the pot had to do. They stuffed it to the gills, having to eventually tie it shut as it cooked.



In the meantime, Robin and I had the chance to play some guitar

...enjoy a pisco-based aperitivo...

...while Noah made sure the cat had enough to eat.

After about an hour, it was ready to go. We unwrapped everything, separated each ingredient, and feasted. Incredible! All the flavors mix together and the vegetables steam perfectly.

It's a work of art, and half the fun was getting to see how this masterpiece was put together. Perhaps someday we will attempt this famous Peruvian specialty - Pachamanca.

One Year Ago...

It's hard to believe, but we've been in Peru for a whole year already! We are so amazed at what God has done...we moved our lives to Peru - on a continent we had never stepped foot on, we became conversationally fluent in Spanish (and still have a lot to learn), we watched our "baby" boy become a little boy who will start real preschool on monday - learning to talk as Peruvians do, and we have made our new home in Salamanca, close to our church and so many of our new friends! We praise the Lord for what he has done and how he continues to bless our time here. Please pray with us that the following year and a half of our commitment here would bring glory to our Creator, that we would fall more in love with Jesus and see others do the same. Many of you reading this are helping us be here, through your prayers and financial support. We cannot thank you enough for allowing our family the opportunity to be here. Our experiences have already enriched our lives, brought us closer together, and compelled us to continue. THANK YOU!

Goliath!

Last week we had a vacation bible school (escuela biblica de vacaciones) just before all the kids here started back to school. It went very well with a large turn-out of kids from the neighborhood. The theme this year was "Soldados de Cristo," or soldiers of Christ, and it focused on the Armor of God from the passage in Ephesians 6. Michael helped lead the songs that we all learned and I helped with the littlest ones (Noah's age group). Noah likes to sing the songs we learned. I sometimes hear him try on his own one that includes the sound "toc, toc, toc" or "knock, knock, knock", so I help him sing through it.
Anyway, on the last night, we had a special closing ceremony, and the youngest kids got to wear their "armor." Noah was delighted to wear it and immediately made the connection that it looked like the armor that Goliath was wearing in his storybook Bible - his absolute favorite story. Just thought you'd enjoy seeing him standing proud in his "Goliath Armor."