And now congratulations are in order again.  Because my 4 year old has been brainwashed by all the recycling commercials he sees on TV.  When he sees me throwing away anything paper or plastic or metal or glass or anything that looks like it should be recycled Jake asks, “Mom, can we recycle that?” or “No, Mom, don’t throw it away, we can recycle it!”  Well, his persistence is working.  My kid is turning me into a tree hugger.  After we move into our new house I will figure out how we can start recycling here in Lima.

But not only that, lately he doesn’t want to throw away anything at all.  Nothing.  I’m not exaggerating.  Now, I’m sure this probably has something to do with the slight instability in our house right now.  The movers are coming tomorrow to load up our stuff, and I’ve been busy for the last week getting things in boxes.  So our life schedule has been a bit out of whack.  Derek keeps looking for his toys saying, “Wear, wear, wear, r my toyeez?!”  Translation–Where are my toys?!

This morning Jake came running in the room crying hysterically.  I couldn’t tell if he was scared or hurt, but I thought for sure it had to be one or the other.  No.  He was crying because the trash men came and picked up some of our boxes that we left outside with the trash.

It continued throughout the rest of the day.  He didn’t want me to throw away anything.  He said we could recycle it.  He said he could use it to build something.  He said we could use it later.  He said he needed it.  I thought the day of not wanting to throw anything away was finally over when I started getting them ready for bed and got them in the bath.  Nope.  His band-aid got wet in the tub.  I told him to take it off and I’d give him a new one when he got out.  Fearing the truth, he started crying and asked me if I was going to throw away that used, wet band-aid.

Yes, Jakob, I am.

But I want it!  We can save it for later!  Use it again!

We are throwing it away, Jakob.

After the bath, I get him dried off and dig the band-aids out of the box that I already packed them in.  He puts the band-aid on by himself and when he pulls the little white plastic parts off the band-aid–you know, the part that sticks to the sticky side?–I kid you not, the boy asks me if he can keep those little white pieces and not throw them away!

No, Jakob, you need to throw them away.

This time there are no tears.  Apparently he was formulating a plan.  While I’m standing there next to him, washing my face, I see him from the corner of my eye looking for a place to hide them on the floor back behind the toilet!

No, Jakob, throw them away.

He steps outside the bathroom and just a few feet away finds a box that’s been taped up.  Very sneakily, he slips the two, little, white fragments of his band-aid into the crack of space under the flap of the box.

This is the part where I gave up, turned my head as if I didn’t see it, smiled real big and tried not to laugh out loud.

The new Seat Belt Nazi, indeed.  Makes me kind of proud.

We had a really great turn out this time around… which was encouraging. I don’t know how many people came but the room we rented out for the occasion was pretty packed and we completely ran out of the snacks that we brought. During these times of “celebration” we generally have some times of prayer, worship in song, read scripture and maybe have someone share a short thought… the idea is to have a time in which we celebrate our shared faith in Jesus and enjoy the chance to realize that we are in fact a part of something that is bigger than us and to enjoy the community of worshipping together as a group.

Today we did all of that… but it was also a special day because two of our Peruvian friends decided that they wanted to be baptized. Do you remember Edgar? I wrote about Edgar a long time ago… a story about how I was just trying to go play soccer and he completely got in my way by asking me about my faith. Well, Edgar has just kept “getting in my way” in a good way, dropping by and wanting to study the Bible or just talk about life and faith whenever he gets the chance. We’ve become good friends over the last few months and even though I didn’t know Edgar before, I’ve seen that God has made big changes in his life. He works in a small bus, called a combi, as a “cobrador”, the guy who collects the fare from the passengers. While riding all across town he is constantly telling people about his newfound faith and what God has been doing in his life… a natural evangelist. Along with Edgar, his wife Graciela and her mom, Victoria have been learning about God’s love and we are excited to see how God is working in them as well. Anyways, today we got to celebrate with Edgar as he clothed himself with Christ through baptism, as the scripture says in Galations 3.

Of course, Edgar is one of many of our new friends here. Also, we have a friend, Luis, who has been studying mostly with Justin, who was baptized tonight. Luis is a young single man who works as a guard on the Thompsons street and has become a good friend to us all.

Ok, well, I just wanted to share a little bit about our Celebration Sunday today and some of the stuff that God is doing in the lives of our new friends. Please keep us in your prayers, and especially Edgar and Luis as they continue along the path that God has for them.

Even though we just passed our one year mark in Peru (woohoo!) and it is winter here, I still am thinking of the months of June, July and August as summer.  For the past several years I have always looked forward to a good book to read over the summer.  This year I read three.  (I’m not a HUGE reader, so three is a lot for me.)  Third Culture Kids, Love and Respect, and Searching for God Knows What.  I highly recommend all three.

Third Culture Kids by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken  is a book about growing up in more than one culture.

Since the time we decided to be missionaries and move to another country, we have heard about this book, because Jake and Derek are now “third culture kids” or “TCKs.”  They are not fully American, they are not fully Peruvian.  They make up a culture of their own–a childhood cross-cultural experience.  This book explains and describes so well the challenges and rewards families face because of their different cultural experiences.  At first I thought that this was something I needed to read about later on, but then a friend recommended I read it now and mailed it to me (All the way from Singapore!  Thanks, Jenn).  The wisdom and knowledge and personal stories in this book are invaluable.  It covers the board–it’s not just for parents.  It speaks to adult TCKs, family members, sponsoring organizations, and anyone else who wants to understand how being born or raised in a different culture can shape someone and impact them differently.  I find this stuff pretty fascinating (which probably explains why I chose a degree in Psychology).  I realized after reading this book that you don’t have to leave the country to have a cross-cultural experience.  I think the newest edition of the book explains in more detail what that means and looks like.

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerich is a marriage book.

This is actually the second time I’ve gone through this book.  It’s divided into three sections–the first is written to both husband and wife, and then it’s split into the “how to love your wife” and “how to respect your husband” parts.  I think the strongest message of this book is how little we know (us wives) about the importance of respecting our husbands.  It’s pretty revolutionary, actually.  I’ll probably be re-visiting this one throughout our different stages of marriage and life as a fresh reminder.

Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller is a book that has set me free in a lot of ways.

I mentioned this one on Facebook a while back.  It is the kind of book that, as a Christian, you can be proud of and actually want to share it with everyone you know.  And it’s the kind of book for people who believe in God or want to believe in God, and who can respect Jesus but want nothing to do with Christianity or the church.  It set me free, like I said, because I am understanding the message of Jesus in a way I never have before.

We focused our efforts in a community in a part of Lima called Villa Maria del Triunfo and more specifically in an area known as “Paraiso” or “Paradise.”  In this, our first medical campaign, we were really just shooting in the dark on a lot of things.  Sometimes inexperience can be a blessing as well as a curse.  We decided that we wanted to have a traditional medical campaign like most people imagine when they think about such a thing.  We talked with a local government run preschool and were able to use their facilities, which turned out to be ideal.  We had several rooms with doctors, dentists and nurses seeing patients.  Plus another room for vision checks and passing out eyeglasses.  All of this enclosed in a fence with a playground for the kids and space for the adults.  It was perfect and we invited the community to come receive free exams and, if we had what they needed, free medicine.  We saw hundreds of people over the three days we were there.

Also, though, we wanted to do something a little different.  Our ministry here has been one that is not a massive, shotgun approach.  We haven’t plastered signs on billboards and played ads on the tv or radio.  While those certainly have their place, our ministry has all along been intentionally very relational.  We have gotten to know our neighbors and the people that work in our communities.  We talk on the street corners and in our kids schools and play soccer on the local “canchas.”  We do a lot of talking over lunch and generally sharing life with our new friends in a one to one kind of way.  So, we decided we would try something similar with our medical campaign as well.

We formed two small teams with a medical doctor and a few helpers that traveled on foot through the surrounding neighborhoods.  We primarily worked by word of mouth and through many of our relationships in the community, going to visit people in their homes that we knew to be sick and need help.   One of the great things about this approach is that we were able to visit many that were unable to get out of their house and come to the clinic we had set up.  Equally as great though, was that we simply had the opportunity to sit down in these peoples very humble homes and talk with about their troubles, pray with them about their concerns and their health, sometimes drink some tea… we were able to go to them and meet them where they were.

I just put up a post on our team ministry website as well… www.twentyeight19.org.  Go check it out.

Also, John Mark made a fantastic video of our weekend.  Take a few minutes and get some better insight into the kind of neighborhood I’ve been talking about and see some of the faces… of our Peruvian neighbors and our American volunteers.

Medical Campaign 2010 – Paraiso from Twentyeight19 Ministries on Vimeo.

Maybe the most noteworthy news item of late is that we had our first of hopefully many medical campaigns this July.

This deserves and will get it’s own post in the next day or two. But the short version of the story is that we had a group of thirty some odd visitors from all over Texas and Tennessee… Among them we had five doctors and five nurses. Those health care professionals plus all the other amazing visitors we had really made our first stab at a medical campaign go about as smoothly as it could have possibly gone… way smoother than I ever expected.

The other big news of late is that we’ve had family visit! First, Stacy’s brother, aka Uncle Ben, is a doctor and came as part of the aforementioned medical campaign.

And then, this week we’ve had Stacy’s parents visiting. The boys have just been beside themselves with Gran and Grandad here in the flesh and not just a picture on the computer via Skype. Unfortunately, grandad had to leave already, but we’ve still got gran here until Wednesday night. Our days have been full of going to the parks around town, visiting the zoo, etc., etc.

Of course our car broke down the day before they got here. So, we rented a car for a couple of days while it was in the shop… we got the tiniest little Fiat you’ll ever see. It didn’t even have power steering; but it was the cheapest thing they had and it got the job done. I also promise more details from the Gran and Granddad visit coming soon.

Oh yeah, one more thing… We’re moving… Again. Of course. If you know us well enough to be reading this, then you probably didn’t just fall out of your chair in shock. But, this isn’t what we expected to be doing when we moved in to our current house almost a year ago. Anyways, this certainly deserves its own post too. So, more to come later in the week.

Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t believe me about all the updates I’ve been promising… But really it’s going to happen. Really.

One of the lessons I listened to was on parenting.  Here are a few of the things I gleaned that boosted my day:

1. I am a better Mom when I spend time everyday with God.

2. My kids need to see me put that time with God at the top of my priority list.

3. Our top goal in parenting is to raise kids who love the Lord and hate sin.

The enemy is hard at work over here to destroy our spirit and keep us down!  Please pray for God’s Light to shine bright in our dark areas of weakness, struggle, and hardship so that as His word says, “everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light” (Eph. 5: 13).

Only God can turn what was once dark into a light that reflects His glory.

UNTIL…he got to eat some cupcakes and open his presents!  Then he decided this whole party thing was worth it and perked up like normal.  Thanks to all of our friends here that made his jungle birthday special!  He loves every single one of his new toys (and so does Jake).

***Sorry for the lesser quality photos in this post.  Wes’ camera wasn’t working right and then mine wasn’t either until the last minute.  Thanks again, JM for taking pictures for us.  You did a great job with our little point and shoot camera that finally started to work.

The lion CupCake and monkey cupcakes, too.  (I did eventually find that food coloring since Jake’s party.)

Jake helped me with the monkeys.  He insisted that one of them have arms.

Wes made a monkey to play pin the tail on the monkey, but then we ran out of time and forgot to play.

Family from Texas at the party via skype.

After cupcakes and presents we all paraded over to the park to kick off our 4th of July celebration with our first annual Home Run Derby!  Pretty sure that was the first home run derby that park has seen.

We all had a blast and can’t wait to play again next year.  Although Wes wants to play everyday and I’m sure would take anybody up on it who’s willing.  After the derby Wes grilled burgers for us.  And thanks to our teammate Stephanie, we had 2 half gallon tubs of Blue Bell ice cream for us all (that she scored from the Embassy)!

How could it be a complete 4th of July celebration without fireworks??  We didn’t think it would be too hard to find them.  They were homemade and a little sketchy (as in when Wes went to buy them the guy said wait here, and came back with bundles in his and hand and starting wrapping them up in masking tape–NO JOKE).  So, Wes took them to the roof to set them off instead of our backyard where they might have taken out a kid or two.  All was well and they were LOUD.  Our neighbors thought so too, since they called the police and Wes had to have a little visit with them.  REALLY??!  This is Peru, remember??!  All in all it was totally worth it.  Even though one of the last ones went off in our neighbors yard.  It’s probably a good thing we are moving in a couple of months.  :)

Click here for more pics from the party.  And for pictures of the fireworks check out the Fletcher’s blog, because Stephanie got some good ones.

I’m glad that Peru has a lot of the same nationally recognized holidays as you do in the States.  Mother’s Day and Father’s Day being the most recent ones.  We had a great Father’s Day weekend and even started celebrating how great of a Daddy we have around here a little early.  Like last Thursday.  I asked Jake what he wanted to make Daddy for Father’s Day.  He said, “A paper tree.”  Okaaay.  I’m thinking, How am I going to either get around this one or figure out how to make this doable?  Well, we found an idea in a craft book (borrowed from Alison just in time) and we made it happen.  We made a paper palm tree!  Daddy loves palm trees.  I think they are his favorite kind of tree.  For the trunk we used a Pringles can, and for the palm leaves we traced Jake and Derek’s hands on green paper and cut them out.  Inside the trunk/can we put candy, because Daddy loves candy.  Jakob helped write a note for him and he signed his name!  He’s so big, it’s hard to believe he can already write his name!  And Derek left his mark, too.  :)

Jake LOVES to make things and had so much fun with this project that he couldn’t hold it in.  So Daddy got his present on Thursday before the big day.  We love you, Daddy!

Yesterday we went out to eat for our Father’s Day lunch.  Mark went with us and we had a good time and ate some amazingly yummy food at Benihana.  Yes, there is one here and we are very thankful!

For some background, Gloria has lived here for about eight years, she just got electricity for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  Like her neighbors, she has no running water and no sewer system.

We’ve been working on her “house” a little at a time a coule of days a week for last couple of weeks.  Somehow or another, Gloria’s little house ended up about two feet onto her neighbor’s property and was causing a great deal of drama and stress.  Think along the lines of piles of rocks being dumped on your doorstep.  Anyways, we volunteered to chop off one end and add on to the other… improving and making it a little bigger in the process.

Our trusty wizard of videography, John Mark, made us a video of the beginning of this project…

Today we went out and started painting.  We’re almost done.

Gloria and her little boy now live in the little house on the hill… just a little to the left of where it used to be… it’s easy to spot… it’s the bright yellow one.

More photos here.

Calling ALL friends and family back in the USA! We are desperately in need of your help for a blanket drive! Peru is creeping into winter and it is getting chilly. Our friends in Villa Maria who live on the side of a mountain in homes that are not adequate to keep warm, are in great need of some blankets fast. Team Lima is launching it’s first annual Frazalatera (blanket drive) in order to help the families and especially those kids keep warm during the next few months.

The deadline to raise $1000 is June 15th! We know this is fast but these people are cold, enough said. You can send your tax-deductible checks made out to The Crossing Church (with “Frazaletera” or “Blanket Drive” in the memo line) at the following address:

The Crossing Church
Attn:  Missions / Frazalatera
10815 Bentsen Palm
San Antonio, TX 78254-5365

Also, check out the Frazalatera Facebook page.

It’s hard to express in writing or for that matter, on a blog how crucial this is but hopefully we will be able t0 show you in pictures after we deliver the blankets and you are able to see their faces. We will have a short video of Villa Maria going up in the next few days to help you picture the conditions in which these people live in but we wanted to go ahead and start our drive today to get your minds, hearts and hopefully your wallets spinning