The Georges in Peru

We have been living in a rental house in Arequipa, Peru for the past 11 years.  Now that the kids are in the US for college and careers, we plan on moving to a coastal town 3 hours away to do church-planting ministry.  We are partnering with a local Baptist church in Arequipa that is providing the pastor for the new plant as well as assistance and support in any way that they can.  

On June 14th, we vacated our home and moved to the SIM guesthouse for a few days before heading for the States for Mary Beth’s brother’s wedding and home assignment.  Our goal for the next 8 months is to visit all of our supporters to catch up, introduce our spouses to those they’ve not met and to inform supporters about our plans.  

We are hoping to travel o Canada in July, but the border quarantine rules are in flux, so we haven’t made any definite plans yet.

Paul arrived in Peru at the beginning of June to say good-bye to friends, finish up some paperwork with the government and help with the move.  The church threw him a surprise birthday party in the park outside our house on his first night back.

We had a garage sale for all the things we didn’t wish to haul to the coast.  It felt like the big bang of garage sales as 3/4 of our things were dispersed around the city within 2 hours of opening time.

We had lots of help to get our remaining possessions moved to a storage room at a mission-owned house. 

We arrived in New Jersey just in time for Mary Beth’s brother’s wedding.

No, not for COVID!  Keep you safety glasses on if you are using a grinder or other tools that might send particles flying towards your eyes!

Stan, a fellow missionary, was using a grinder and removed his glasses when he stopped to talk to someone.  When he went back to work, he forgot to put his glasses back on and almost immediately got a bit of rock in his eye.  He came to see me the next day, but I couldn't get the speck to budge (maybe I need to get the plank out of my own eye? Sorry. Missionary humor.)  Today we went to Medical Ministries International's clinic to borrow their slit lamp and when I looked at him through the scope the speck was gone!  He said that in the morning he had had some discomfort and then it suddenly felt better.  It must have finally worked its way free at that time.  Praise God!  Much better than for me to try and flick it out with a needle!

No, that isn't some theological quote!  That is a quote from a marathoner, who bragged he could eat anything he wanted because he ran so much it would keep any atherosclerotic lesions from building up on his coronaries.  It always seemed a bit misguided, since Jim Fixx, a runner credited with making distance running mainstream after writing his book, The Complete Book of Running died of a heart attack at age 52 (Yikes!  That's a year younger than I!).  But nonetheless, we runners tend to think we are bullet-proof as we go back for another bowl of ice cream after a platter of fries.  

My family is lucky to have low cholesterol.  Since my parents were the only surviving children from their respective families, our family history doesn't have enough numbers to give good statistics, though none of us six kids have had any coronary problems.   So I didn't worry about heart issues.  If anything, I bragged that I was extremely low risk.  So when I started getting sudden attacks of chest tightness while running just over a year ago, I was surprised and concerned.  Pulmonary and cardiac workups didn't reveal anything.  My cardiologist here inflated my ego by telling me he doesn't get many people my age that can do his complete treadmill protocol.  My symptoms became concerning enough (hard runs interrupted by light-headedness and having to stop) that Dr. Porter (thanks again!) recommended that I try to see if I could get a CT coronary angiogram here in Peru.  As it happens, two years ago, a local radiology clinic started offering that study.  So last week, I had it performed.  

You maybe can see here that my coronaries look good, with good flow.  

The arrow points to the problem.  Coronary arteries are supposed to run on the surface of the heart, but one of my coronaries burrows under the heart muscle for about 9 mm.  When my heart squeezes, it blocks the artery.  When it relaxes, the blood flows again.  Actually, when anyone's heart squeezes, it temporarily stops the blood flow into it, but when the heart relaxes the flow resumes.  If the coronary goes under the muscle and the heart is beating really fast, then it can't relax quickly enough to resume blood flow and then it starts telling its owner to 'slow down!'

So now what?  I'm not at any immediate risk as long as I don't race, so I won't do anything drastic at this time.  When we go to North American in July, we will probably have Dr. Porter do a few more tests.  Meanwhile, I'm going to cut back on the ice cream and butter.

It has been an exciting week.  Yesterday, we talked to a Baptist pastor who is enthusiastic about the possibility of sending a competent young couple out from his congregation to pastor a new church with us along the coast.  Today, a dear sister in Christ, who is knowledgeable about the towns and their congregations, donated her time to accompany us on our first scouting trip to the coast to see where the gaps are in church planting.  On the way, we saw much need and several believers begged us to come work in their towns, but one area struck us especially.  Nestled in a valley a few kilometers off the coast, we found four medium-sized towns where no doctrinally-sound congregations meet (as far as we know).  There is much work to be done yet, but it is fun to see and dream about the possibilities starting to arise.  What a good way to spend our 3rd anniversary of marriage!

We made it!  We are back in Arequipa, quarantining again, until December 12th.  Things were looking a bit uncertain the day before our flight because we hadn't gotten our COVID test results back yet.  Peru requires that those entering the country get a COVID test done within 3 days of their flight, but COVID tests take around 3 days for results.  With Thanksgiving in the midst, we worried they might take even longer.  Thankfully, at 9:46 pm we got our negative results so we were good to fly out the next morning!

Our friend Luz, who was housesitting, bought us groceries and left a clean house for us to move back into.  It has been a bit surreal.  We have a kind of a 'what just happened?' feeling as our brains wrap around the events of the last 4 months.  

Yesterday, I had 3 virtual patients.  They didn't waste much time finding out we were home!

Photo 1:  COVID-19 testing station in Chicago

Photo 2:  A truck accident that reminded us to drive carefully