Day of rest

Sunday, July 26, 2009 (Day 16):

Today was definitely a Sunday and definitely a day of rest! We slept in today and it felt absolutely wonderful!! After we all got up and ate some breakfast, we decided to explore the Miraflores district of Lima. Miraflores is where our hotel is located. We walked to a grocery store located by the Buckner office and we bought fixings for our lunch. Instead of going to a restaurant, we really wanted something lighter and thought a little picnic in the park sounded fun! After we got our lunch fixings, we stopped off at some benches and ate our lunch. Then we walked to another store, Wong, that Meredith has been anxious to go in. The Wong reminded me of a Super Wal-mart in the States. It was really crowded causing me to want to get out of there as fast as I could. As we were exploring the store, by the meat counter, there were little shopping cart parking spots. Found this interesting and funny. After our little exploration, we decided to go paragliding. It is basically para sailing without the boat and you are strapped to someone. We put the harnesses on and basically ran off a cliff. My heart didn't nervously sink like I thought it would. It was so cool though because I got to see the city. We flew around over the Pacific and the mall that we always go to for dinner. It was interesting looking on top of all the buildings along the coast. Quite a few of the buildings have swimming pools on top. I really wish I would have brought my camera to take a picture of the view. Meredith was the only one that did not go, so I left it with her to take pictures. Once we finished, we headed back to the hotel and ordered pizza for dinner.

After dinner, we had church at the hotel! We listened to a podcast on iTunes. The preacher preached a sermon on Matthew 9 and 10. He talked about compassion and sharing the Gospel with the 4.5 billion people that are not Christians. He told us that we should not be afraid to go out into the world to spread the Good News. Some of the girls were convicted on how they had treated one of the girls at the home last week. This girl has ring worm on her nose and neck and some of the girls did not want to hug her anymore, so they would shy away. They all talked about how that sermon made them think, in the whole scheme of things, if we get ring worm, we get ring worm. The important thing is that we loved on these girls and shared the love of Christ. In a couple of weeks we are going to a home with kids that have lice. I'll be honest, I'm a little leary of that, but I pray that I won't let that get in the way of me loving on these kids. I'm going to have to remind myself that God loves them no matter what. Jesus wasn't afraid to touch the lepers, so I should not be afraid to love on kids with ring worm and lice.

We are having a great time here in Peru! It's hard to believe that I only have 11 days left before I head back to the States! I'll be honest, I'm anxious to step foot back onto American soil! We drove by the US Embassy the other day and all started singing "God Bless America" at the top of our lungs. Julie just started laughing at us.

Side note: Our driver, Henry, is nice enough to turn the radio to English speaking stations for us, however, the song choice is quite interesting. It is a very eclectic group of songs that are played during our drives. Ranging from Kenny G to Taylor Swift. There is one song we hear all the time with the chorus saying, "are we human or are we dancers." None of us had ever heard the song before, but we hear it all the time down here. Now we just start laughing when we hear it.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support!

Con amor,
Dawn