The Georges in Peru

On Tuesdays, I have a bible study downtown, so I drive our truck about a mile to the bus stop and take the bus to my bible study.  When I returned I looked in my rear-view mirror to see that someone had stuck election paraphernalia for the mayoral elections on October 7th on the back window!  If I voted, I now know whom I would vote against!

Last night, Mary Beth asked if people would be willing to commit to pray for 30 different women who are invited to attend the women's retreat that Mary Beth is directing at the end of October.  In less than 24 hours, 30 people emailed us agreeing to do so.  Most wrote that they felt it was a privilege to do so.  It is comforting to know that if we have a prayer request so many people are willing to back us up with prayer support!  Thanks!

For the first time in my recent memory I shut off my phone without being on a plane.  You might protest, "Wait!  You just went on your honeymoon.  You're telling me that you left your phone on then?"  Actually, yes, since the kids were being tour guides around Peru for 18 friends and family, we thought it best to be available for them.  Luckily, there weren't any big emergencies!  

Thursday, Mary Beth handed off the puppet show equipment to a church, the ophthalmology campaign ended that night and the kids were on their last 3 days of winter break, so we slipped off to the beach in Mejía about 2 hours away from Arequipa.  Today was the Ironruna (runa is loosely translated as 'man' in Quechua) Triathlon in Mejía.  One swims 1.9 km, bikes 90 km, and runs a half marathon (21 km).  I'm not in good enough bike shape to enter it on my own, but a friend, who is an awesome swimmer wanted to do it as a relay.   He'd swim, someone else would ride the bike and I'd run the half marathon.  But we never found a cyclist, so I went to observe.

The plan was for the swimmers to swim a somewhat complicated course around several buoys but the race director didn't realize that the water was too deep for anchors or that the current was so strong.  We watched a buoy float off toward the horizon as they readied the race.  We never saw it again.  The director scurried around on a wave-runner to reposition another.  He abandoned having the swimmers swim the original route and told them to just swim around the one lone buoy and come back.  Things just got crazier from this point on.  It was breezy.  Like always, the sea was rough in Mejía.  It's cold too.  About 11˚C (52˚F). As the 18 triathletes took off into the water for the swim leg we noticed the buoy moving quickly to the north.  "Wow!  It will be hard to swim around a moving target.  And this will be a short race; it's only 500m to the buoy!"  The first swimmer got through the breakers into the open water.  Then two more.  The rest appeared to be struggling.  After about 5 minutes, the rest of the swimmers were still just a 50m from shore, while the leader was approaching the buoy.  They were unable to get through the waves!  How can this be?  They were almost all semi-professional athletes.  Haven't they swum in rough water before?  One more got through the waves and headed for the moving buoy.  Those left behind were just standing in the water, shrugging their shoulders and looking at each other.  They looked to shore for direction and someone yelled at them to keep trying.  A race director's nightmare:  having to disqualify the majority of your participants because the swim leg was too hard.  He came up with a brilliant plan:  Send in the lifeguards!  Ten red-and-yellow-clad lifeguards headed into the water to "rescue" the triathletes and send them out on the bike leg!  But do they still qualify for prizes, or just those that completed the swim?  I'll let you know if I hear how it turned out.

I badly wanted to put on my wetsuit and try to see if I could get through the waves.  They didn't look any worse than usual to me!

"Can you bring some money to the ER for me?" my swimming buddy Chris asked.  His wife had gone to the highlands leaving him riding herd over their three kids back in Arequipa.  While playing at the same park Ben and Sarah used to play in 18 years ago, his three-year-old fell and cut open his forehead.  Now at the emergency room, he didn't have money to pay the bill and couldn't leave to go get money.  Plus, the plastic surgeon wouldn't be able to come for two more hours (interpretation:  four hours).

"Why don't you bring him down to my house and I'll sew him up here?"  I've had lots of practice sewing up faces here in our house.

Chris proceded to check out of the hospital and they asked for the equivalent of $80.  "I can only give you $60.  That's all I have on me!  All they did was wash his face anyway."  The clerk recalculated and after a bit gave the new amount:  "That will be $8."  Chris was thankful he hadn't had $80 before, as he would have just paid it without asking questions.  While he was checking out, I was devising a system for restraining a 3-y/o on a boogie board with roof rack straps.  Luckily, when he showed up, the wound didn't even need sewn, but rather approximated well with steri-strips.  Today it looked good.

photo and permission for blog use courtesy of Latin Link missionary Chris Courtman

Here in Arequipa, it seems like crime has gone down since when we arrived in 2000.  My informal poll of taxi drivers reveals a similar sentiment.  One of our missionary colleagues that has had his spare tire stolen three times would probably disagree.   I assume it is because the economy is better and there are less desperate people stealing things.  The situation in Venezuela would back my hypothesis as an article on CNN just today said that 47% of Venezuelans were robbed during 2017.  There are lots of desperate people there.  Around 2 or 3 am on Tuesday morning our recently-installed car alarm went off.  Car alarms in Peru are like robins chirping in Nebraska:  They are a bit annoying early in the morning but don't really mean much.  Mary Beth said, "That's our car!"  I shut off the alarm with my key fob and looked out the window and didn't see (0r hear) anything and went back to bed.  Yesterday, I noticed that the passenger door wouldn't lock and unlock properly and I realized that someone had destroyed the keyhole with some sort of tool.  I mentioned it on our neighborhood chat group and our neighbor said that they hadn't been so lucky and the thief had gotten into their car and stolen their radio that same morning. 

So for now, I'll go back to parking our truck in the garage.  It's a bit annoying to do that since our cats like to hide in the engine compartment and I have fears of replicating the cold winter day from my childhood when 9 cats were trying to keep warm in the pickup and...wait you don't want to hear that story!

I'll just say that I'm thankful for our car alarm.  We can't lock or unlock the passenger door with a key now, but that seems pretty minor. (we still can lock/unlock it with the fob)