I am currently in Peru to see children of Compassion International and to experience a Peruvian Encounter. We visited a number of projects in Lima and in the jungles on the other side of the Andes. I plan to keep a bit of an informal log of the journey and a few of the more pertinent details of our travels.
Day 2 – Day one was travel and settling in. So no details about yesterday. Today was amazing in about a billion ways. We got a chance to head out into the hills of Lima to visit a church and a project there.
This photo is from the window of one of the project’s classrooms. I saw more trash and refuse today than I have throughout my entire life combined – and I was recently in Guadalajara for an entire week even! It was really quite something. Very very sad. In the mountains are the squatters who built there homes up in the hills where the rich refused to live. Most houses don’t have road access, and are only accessible via kilometers of stairs.
The church service today was amazing. The kids were so so very precious. And the people working at the project are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They literally would give you the shirt of their back if you asked them to. I fell I love with a couple of girls that were just darling precious and reminded me very much of my two girls. Very very sweet. Really puts the work of Compassion into perspective and the amazing importance of sponsoring through compassion.com.
After the service they took us for snacks and cakes that the children had made for us. To think that this impoverished people would sacrifice for us was very very humbling indeed. But the time we got to spend with them and learn about what they do and how we can help them do it better and faster was just a wonderful time. Tomorrow we take a 7 hour bus ride over the Andes and down into the jungle to visit several projects there. Apparently we will be double decker busing it over the top? We will see!
Day 3 – Oh. My. Gosh. Epicness abounded today. Seriously epic. 5 hour bus ride? HahHah. 9 hour bus ride more like it. Its just a three hour tour! Barf bags for everybody! Altitude sickness. Motion sickness. Everything but King Kong himself! Amazing.
I did get a chance to sneak into the closets of the hotel and play with the breakers in order to try and get the air conditioners of our eight story hotel in the jungle working again. Oh and I also got to reconfigure some of the wifi stuff in order to try and get this update to go out. Good times.
Anyway, it’s all for the kids though. Who cares about the woman puking behind me on the bus ride. And who cares about the over capacity hotel and the lack of AC? Tomorrow we spend the day playing with the children and that is all that really matters.
Day 4 –
Wordpress app problem. But this is what we woke up to start day 4 out. I’ll post bigger photos once I get back to Lima.
We spent all day out with the kids in two projects today. One that helps babies and mothers and another that helps school aged children. What an amazing day. My heart was just broken again and again for these little ones that are in such desperate need. A coworker and I even have gone so far to throw you all under the bus in order to get money to purchase water for life filters. You can learn more about them here but don’t worry, I’ll soon be hitting you all up for every penny you have because the need is so extraordinarily great and the solution is so stupidly simple. But enough about that.
This is a picture from inside the 8×10 adobe house we visited today. 5 people live here. 1 in the floor. Mom, dad and the baby in the bed. And the daughter on a small bed tucked to the side. We brought gifts and shared a meal together. It was bittersweet if you know what I mean. Hopefully we can get her a water filter as her 1 year old is plagued with parasites often.
We played futbol with hundreds of kids. I handed out matchbox cars and we played in the dirt. We painted nails. Put barrettes in the girls hair, etc. it was amazing. I’ve never been climbed on by more children in my life.
Gonna stop for now – but it was a radically enormous day.