We want to share our recent trip to Peru with you… but since we felt like we might have bored the living breath out of some of you with stories from our previous adventure(!!), the next few posts on our blog will be photos from this latest trip with minimal commentary.
Day 2 began with John and Glenn using Tom’s apartment to lay out all the parts for the filtration system to make sure they had everything… while Tom, Peet and Miguel “supervised”.Some of these indoor photos from the Indian Center will be a little fuzzy… but you still need to see them! The guy closest to the camera is Genarro. He’s been part of Tom’s extended “family” for decades, and even worked closely with Tom’s dad back in the day, venturing deep into the jungle when people simply didn’t do that. He has the best laugh!Part of the water project is teaching the locals about clean water. Why is it necessary? What is/isn’t it used for? How to wash our hands. How to keep the water containers clean, and why that’s important. Really basic stuff… but stuff they’ve never been taught because they’ve never had access to clean water before. Peet’s and Robyn’s roles on the team was to teach some of the locals who live at the Indian Center so those people could then teach others. This was morning class on the first day, conferring with our translator, Laura… probably trying to figure out the Spanish word for “germs”.Kids are always close by, desperate to get in on the action.Robyn led the class in an activity where they had to look at the picture they were each holding and decide the order of what carries the most/least germs. It seems elementary… but a) they’ve never been taught this before… and b) they have to be able to teach children the same lessons, and those who can’t read or write, as well as other adults.Tom introducing us to Jorge. What a fascinating guy!! Between his pigeon English and my pigeon Spanish, we had a pretty good conversation. He takes groups deep into the jungle for several days at a time to spend time with villagers. Peet wants to do that next time… obviously!!Robyn was a hit with all the children – I don’t know how she does it. They couldn’t get enough of her and her family photos and stories from faraway lands… even though they couldn’t understand a word she said!! Love works, people… even without a common language.Meanwhile, back on the roof… the new (clean) water tank had been installed (far left of the picture).How many guys does it take to install a water filtration system? More than you might think!!After he was done teaching the class downstairs, Peet climbed up top to check on the guys’ handiwork and pointed out a leak no one had noticed. How to win friends… or not…When we were there last October, we were able to gather a bunch of leaders from different churches and talk with them about Celebrate Recovery… a 12-step recovery program for those with “hurts, habits and hang-ups”. Drugs and alcohol are a big problem in Pucallpa and the churches don’t know what to do with those who indulge, so they just exclude them. It was a big deal last time to talk with different leaders about the hope they can offer these people… and the amazing thing was that some of the churches wanted to meet with us again to find out how to start implementing the program in their church. Wow!! That’s pretty radical!!We cleaned ourselves up from being at the Indian Center all day, and spent the evening back at Casa Shea, encouraging these local leaders and handing out resources for them in Spanish to get them started. And then we went to bed. Exhausted!!
