An Honest Heart

God, thank you for giving me such a nice house that I forget I am in Peru. I month ago I thought it was this awful place (but now I know it is not) and thank you for my family. Amen
-Emma

Domingo Estupendo (Super Sunday) and other lesser days

Well …we hosted the first Superbowl party of our lives. It was a lot of fun if not a little sad that we had to move to Peru to do so. Since we have five kids, we have the largest house in the missionary/language student community. Therefore, we hosted the night at our place and our friend Scott provided a projector to simulate a 60” TV. Initially it was a little spotty but in the end it was way better than any TV I’ve watched the game on in the past. (Aside from the Spanish commentators.) We had a diverse group. It was us and various new friends from Delaware, Oregon, Montana, Nottingham England and Switzerland. At one point I was explaining the rules of football to Christian, a Swiss-German, who in turn was explaining them to his 11 year-old son Jan who only speaks German. Between my utter lack of knowledge of the rules and Christian’s limited English it would be interesting to know what Jan (Yan) thought of the game. We had a great time and to top it off it was a great game.

Today we were back at school. Spanish learning is going well. My mood varies from moments of encouragement to moments of dread over the huge task before me. I think that by the end of this week I will have surpassed everything I retained from my two years of C- high school Spanish.

Amy spent the whole afternoon after language school out by herself finishing the kid’s uniform shopping. I am so proud of her. She had to tell the woman from Friday that we decided to buy some of the stuff from another store. I think in all Amy saved us a couple hundred dollars by asking questions and being willing to suffer through a few extra hours of using Spanish she hasn’t learned yet. Rest assured that we will post a picture of the kids in their costumes (I mean uniforms) once we get them all.

Thanks for taking the time to read these posts and for being interested in what God is allowing us to do for him. Feel free to leave a comment. We love to read them.

For all of the Listros,

Christian

Another Day, More Rain

O.K. – it rained again today. the second time since we’ve been here. I convinced its because I washed the rest of our bed sheets . . there was plenty of sunshine but as soon as I hung the last one the clouds rolled in.

We had quite the experience today. We had to go see about the kids uniforms for school. We went to two places for prices. The first one right down the street wrote out a price list for us. The prices for everything vary based on the size. Seriously, a size 8 shirt will cost $.60 less than a size 10. This makes getting prices time consuming because we have to give every one’s sizes for each piece. The first place was pretty fast but we realized later that we didn’t get a complete list. We spent well over an hour at the second place, which is on the other side of town, having the kids try on everything. Poor Christian has never taken the kids to buy clothes before – he was tired, hungry, and overwhelmed by the amount of clothing getting passed back and forth. The nice lady in the shop kept a good list and managed to get every one’s sizes.
The kids need a uniform and a gym suit. The lady at the second shop offered us the minimum amount of everything and she’ll through in the school hats for free. Even still, the total was 2,000 soles (3.16 soles = $1). We need to talk to someone tomorrow about what is REALLY required and what is extra. We don’t want to buy more than they need. Then we have to buy books and we have lists with two million bullet points of things the kids have to have for school. Gavin has to bring a toothbrush and toothpaste among other things.
That reminds me, today in the public bathroom at Sagafalabella, THE fancy store in Arequipa, the girls and I had to wait in line to wash our hands because at 4:00p.m. there were 10 ladies brushing their teeth. Not quite sure what was going on there but is was certainly odd.
The kids and I cleaned the house yesterday. There is a constant layer of dust/ash on everything. We swept and washed all the floors. It reminded me a lot of our house on Wopowog Rd. in CT. Our house here is spacious, has a strange layout, and tons of windows. Very much like our old house. We are enjoying Arequipa very much. Our outing today fried our brains – all that Spanish and we need to understand and be understood. Afterward we went to find a place to get Christian hair cut. We found a place, Christian brought pictures and tried his best to explain what he wanted but it didn’t quite come out like he wanted. But lucky for us when it was over and we asked how much we were told, “5 soles.” His hair cut only cost $1.58. I guess that was a good price for a not so good hair cut.
I took a lot of pictures while we were out to day I will try to post them later.