The Georges in Peru

Two weeks ago, we weren't sure we would be able to get into Canada. Now we aren't sure we can get back into the US! Saturday, the US extended the ban on Canadians entering by land until September 21st. Of course, they can still enter the country by air, through an expensive, time-consuming and circuitous route through Toronto and Detroit. It appears some think, that to control COVID, crowding into three different jets with 150 strangers from around the world for several hours is better than driving across the border in a private vehicle with your spouse, but I digress. If only there were a way to fly Mary Beth across the border in a private plane and pick her up on the other side! Today we found someone who has been doing exactly that during COVID, so we will be able to return to help Christ Community Church celebrate their one-hundredth year anniversary. Keep posted for more details!

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We bought a new (to us) car!  Actually, we've had it for a while.  We bought it the day after Mary Beth's brother's wedding (married June 18th).   Yesterday, we finally arrived at my sister's house near Crete, NE, which will be our US address during our time in the States.  So, this morning we took our papers to the county sheriff's office and county clerk to get our car registered.  "They didn't sign the title," they pointed out.  The papers had actually gone ahead of us and were waiting for us here so we hadn't had a chance to look at them for ourselves.  "You'll have to send the title back to the car dealership in New York and have them sign it." We were planning on traveling west tomorrow, and the thought of FedEx-ing papers back and forth and then getting the plates sent somewhere seemed nightmarish.  "I'll talk to the county lawyer," said the clerk.  Mary Beth started praying out loud, "Lord!  Please let this paperwork go through!"  "Let me call the dealership and see what's up." I pleaded.  The car dealership said that the certificate from the NY Dept. of Motor Vehicles in the envelope was sufficient.  The Saline County clerk wasn't convinced.   Then the clerk called Lincoln and the person on the other end of the line said that they had just had this happen for another car from the exact same dealer in NY and said everything was fine and they could issue a new title.  Phew!  Answered prayer!

Today is election day. Yesterday, the streets were packed with panicked shoppers buying up all the rice, eggs and sugar in the city in preparation for possible rioting after the results come out (we hope they may have over-reacted). People are fiercely divided about having Fujimori’s (a former Peruvian president) daughter in office and about having a president with supposed communist ideology. Today however, the city is silent except for voters heading to the polls to fill out their obligatory votes. There is not even any church, since public gatherings are illegal on election day, and church members need to go fulfill their civic duty.

While Peru is focused on elections, we are thinking about packing! Next Friday we plan to have a large garage sale where we’ll (hopefully) sell half our worldly possessions. The rest of our stuff is going into boxes and into storage. The plan is to fly to New Jersey in two weeks for my brother Paul's wedding and then for an 8-month home-assignment. When we return to Peru we'll move 3 hours away to a Peruvian coastal town to do a church plant.

What to do on such a day as today? Running seemed like a good idea! Since November, I (Mary Beth) have been working towards my goal of running a half-marathon distance. It’ll be too hot in New Jersey when we get there and with the traffic down to just voters, today seemed like just the the right day to go for the big run. Allen and I left the house at 6:15 am to run and run and run and run for 2 hours and 43 minutes and 26 seconds. We ran 358 meters up the mountain (there’s nowhere flat to go) to the biggest bridge in Peru and then ran back down. Allen went with me and encouraged me and gave me water, expired packets of runners' GU (very strange stuff, though it does give one energy. I think they should call it 'ice cream topping' which sounds more appealing than ‘goo’) and told me stories to distract me from niggly aches. I did it!  Before surgery, I would have said it was impossible for me to run a half marathon. It feels good to be alive!

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I haven't posted much lately because we've been paralized a bit by the pandemic and the third wave of new cases that popped up after Christmas.  But today, Arequipa's 7-day average for new COVID cases dropped below the 300 new-cases-per-day line, which is the criterion we've been waiting for to see patients and go out to eat at a restaurant!  A new seafood restaurant opened last month about 2.7 km from here (Mary Beth measured the distance on her Garmin since we walked there) so we decided to try it out.  It was great to go out to eat for the first time in months!

In the afternoon, we saw a patient that has been begging to get an ultrasound because she is pregnant and felt that she is bigger than she should be and her husband thought that she must have twins.  Nope.  Just one appropriately-sized fetus, who appears to be waving at us.  It gave me a chance to try out my new ultrasound machine on a pregnant patient.

Pray that we stay safe from COVID and can minister better to those around us in person.

Yesterday was our first day of seeing patients at the Dorcas Project since the government-mandated shut down last March!  We saw about 15 mothers and their babies.  The majority still come in having been told that their babies have hip dysplasia, something that normally has an incidence of 1/200 newborns, but here they tell almost everyone that their babies have it to sell them harnesses and other 'services'.  Not surprisingly, none of the babies I saw had hip dysplasia.