The Georges in Peru

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:

I could post a picture of yesterday's baptismal service in a river that would almost make you think it was the Jordan.  But you've seen lots of those photos.  You've not seen a Fast Foog stand.  Unfortunately, it was closed, so I can't tell you what fast foog tastes like.  Probably tastes like chicken.

We have a cute kitten named 'Red'.  When I have pediatric patients I let her come out and entertain the patients to help them not be so scared.  Tonight, Red decided that my Quechua woman's braids were the funnest thing ever, so I finally had to throw her out to finish seeing the patient!