The Georges in Peru

Saturday morning, Mia asked about coming home since her university was closed. MB and I both prayed during our devotional times and when we finished we both felt strongly that God was telling us to get her home ASAP. So after we talked to her we bought her flights for that same night. She had to frantically pack her things and a friend’s parents took her to LAX that night. We were worried that they might cancel her flights since Peru was talking about closing its borders, and worried that she might get stuck in Mexico City or Lima along the way. Thankfully, the rains in Arequipa stopped yesterday afternoon and her flight, though delayed, arrived at 10:45 last night! Tickets were only $366 despite buying the tickets last minute! She said the Mexico City to Lima flight was still pretty empty. There were tickets as cheap as $78 on Spirit for Wednesday. >I really doubt that they can pay for the extra fuel for carrying Mia for that price. But that flight isn’t going now. I just checked Travelocity and they are still offering flights through several airlines for Wednesday, but those flights aren’t going to be landing in Lima either.

Both Mia and Ben are supposed to be finishing their semesters online.

Things are shut down here. We are only allowed to leave the house to buy groceries, or go to the bank or the hospital/pharmacy. I'm not even allowed to go running.  

For lunch today we went to Papa John's Pizza to celebrate summer camps being over for the season.  The last camp, an equestrian camp, finished yesterday and we came home in the pouring rain.  Thankfully, all the parents were able to pick up the kids in spite of a few roads being closed because rain destroys desert city roads unprepared for large amounts of water.  

In the past, parents have asked me (Mary Beth writing) what 'equestrian' means and I tell them it is horse-riding camp.  This year, two boys showed up expecting 50 other kids and a week filled with large-group-games and Bible teaching.  "Where's the big bus?  Where are all the people?" the mom asked me as the 10-seater van drove up and the small group excitedly gathered around to say good-bye to the seven campers.  Uh oh, I thought... I hope these boys like horses.

I had a counselor cancel last minute for this camp, so with much prayer, going off a tip from someone, I sent a message to fellow SIM missionary, Siegfried Reuter, to ask if he'd be willing to step in. He and his wife helped start the camps in 1993.  Since he was on vacation and planning to return to Arequipa 1 day before the camp, and because he's a stereotypical German in that he likes to be well prepared, I was dubious he'd come.  But to my great surprise, he was overjoyed at the opportunity.  He told me later that the Lord had been speaking to his heart for months that he should be willing if the opportunity came up.  He was so excited about the horses and great at making the two young men feel loved and motivated even though they were extremely out of their comfort zone and riding horses was not what they expected.

Today marks 20 years since we arrived in Peru!  This is a picture of our first place before we had any furniture.  Someone loaned us a table and a high chair and for chairs we sat on our Action Packers.  It looks like a pretty bleak lunch of 7-Up and ketchup.  I know we had something else to eat.  Probably potatoes.  

At times it seems like yesterday and at the same time it feels like a lifetime ago.  We've seen people come to Christ (including last week through the medical assistance project), innumerable village medical trips, churches started, a hospital built, kids grow up and go to Germany and college, Amy go on to heaven, fellow missionaries come and go and Zach and Mary Beth join the family.  What will the next 20 years have for us? 

Join us as we thank God for both the good and the difficult.

Monday was the first day of summer camp.  Forty-three kids loaded the bus going to camp for a week of fun.  The first day was completely normal, with swimming, archery, horsebackriding, Bible studies and other camp activities.  SIM's camp is located in a valley in the desert about an hour from Arequipa.  It is so dry that without irrigation even cacti wouldn't grow.  There are places on the drive out to camp where one can't see any plants at all.  It looks like moonscape.  This makes it a great environment for planning events.  One doesn't have to have a contingency plan for rain.  When Mary Beth and I got married, we didn't even consider what we might do if it rained.  I was told that in the early 2000's the camp went almost 10 years without it raining!  So we were all a bit surprised when Monday night we could hear sprinkles on the roof of our cabins!  And the rain kept going off and on the rest of the week.  Mary Beth and her team did a great job changing plans to keep the kids occupied.  We almost canceled our mud games because everyone thought they'd be too cold to do while raining, but the rain stopped and it warmed up enough to play in the mud.  When we planned the camp we thought it would be a lot of effort to prepare the mud.  It clearly wasn't!

Today was the CONREDE track meet.  It pits the doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, accountants, etc. against each other on the track and field.  I went into the 1500m planning on winning the event since I can usually run it 10 or 15 seconds faster than last year's winning time.  Unfortunately, I got an asthma attack about half way into the event and didn't even finish.  How embarrassing!  For the last two months I've been forced to quit really hard runs because I can't breathe.  I've seen a lung doctor and even did a treadmill test with a cardiologist and it appears to be exercise-induced asthma.  I guess I'll have to stick with the longer, slower runs or the really short ones (100m to 400m) that don't give the asthma time to close my bronchii.  Our team coach had been encouraging me to throw the shotput at the event, so I was signed up for it. I've only thrown the shotput once before in my life at a school 'Parents Olympics', so I don't really know what I'm doing.  All the other competitors signing up for the event were bigger than me (not a very common occurance in Peru).  I was chatting with a team mate before the event who looked like an olympic shotputter.  "I'm not very good, he said.  It's all technique."  I was dubious.  He looked like he could throw me 10 meters and a shotput probably much further.  God has a sense of humor.  I won the event.  I'm not convinced it was due to my great technique, as you can see below: