Friday, November 20, 2015

The Power of Imagination

In the past couple of years, I've come to see that the biggest challenge of the Christian life is to truly believe what the Bible teaches us about God and about our identity in Christ.  Every act of sin stems from some disbelief and consequential effort to look out for ourselves our own way.  The fight to truly believe in the beautiful truthes regarding all that God has supplied us with in Christ is so difficult.  One huge asset that God has given us for this fight, however, is our imagination.  I've been reading Sight-Shift, by Chris McAlister, and chapter 14, on imagination and scripture, has helped me to understand this.

I've noticed that I can spend hours in God's word in the morning, but the thing that most reliably results in my experiencing victory in my Christian walk during the day, is if I take even a very short amount of time to pray through each activity and interaction that I expect (or don't expect) to have that day.  And obviously this is due to the powerful way God works through prayer, but I think it is also a testiment to the way God works through the imagination He designed us to possess.  In imagining the way God could enable me to live victoriously during each part of my day, I train my brain to think correctly regarding the abundance of God's grace for me. And as McAlister points out, you can never out-imagine God's goodness to you regarding your identity in Christ.

Case in Point:
As a super shy/introverted person, it is hard for me to get motivated about stepping outside of myself and my fears to initiate conversation with Spanish speakers I meet on the street or in a store.  Why  this is such a fearful thing for me, I don't know, but through prayer and imagination, I've been able to experience some small victories.  Rather than just praying in general terms that God would help me to be a light for Him, I have prayed specifically that God would help me to be outgoing and fearless like the extroverted missionaries I admire so much.  I prayed specifically that as I enter the Bodega (a little convenient store) down the street, that I would have courage to shamelessly strike up a conversation in my limited Spanish vocabulary.  And guess what??  I did!  God did give me courage, and it was so encouraging to experience His grace that way.  Now I have a new friend down the street who I can't communicate with all that much yet, but she always has a sweet smile for menow, and in a city of so much unfamiliarity, that always lifts my spirits so much.  

I think that often we Christians limit our own spiritual growth by refusing to imagine the possibilities of how God would enpower us.  We ask for help in general terms but allow fear to keep us from asking Him to enable us to be what we really would like to be for Him.  We think, "I could never do that."  If you find yourself in that place, I encourage you to try utilizing your imagination a bit.  Remember, God's grace for you is greater than you could ever imagine, so why not dream a bit?                                                                      

- Laura

Monday, November 16, 2015

Our Apartment

 For those who are interested, this is our apartment for the next month:

The Kitchen


The Dining/Living Room:


 Our Room:

 Bathroom (there's a shower/tub to the left)

 Finn's room:


- Laura

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Finn's Hair

Everyone loves Finn's hair here.

Today in the grocery store someone asked me if it was natural, haha.

Someone else walked up and after oo-ing and aw-ing for a moment, asked if I needed a nanny for him.  Fortunately we lined someone up for that job yesterday, so we won't need to hire a grocery store admirer!

- Laura

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Learning to cook in Peru



Yesterday we decided to try and make baked BBQ chicken and salad for dinner.  We’re still figuring out grocery shopping and cooking and whatnot here, I thought that would be an easy low key meal to put together.  We had found chicken, BBQ sauce, lettuce, and salad dressing at the grocery store, and our kitchen was stocked with pots and pans, so it seemed like it should have been clear sailing.  Here’s what happened.

First I washed all of the lettuce in a bowl of water with disinfectant drops (we’ll be doing this to most of our fresh fruits and vegetables here to avoid “Montezuma’s revenge”).  Then I laid out the lettuce leaves to dry while I began on the chicken.

That’s when we ran into a snag.  We’d learned to use our stove top, but lighting the burners with a match each time, but we hadn’t tried out the oven yet, and apparently the pilot needed to be lit.  We spent quite a while trying to figure out how to do this and failed miserably.  So… we adjusted our plans and decided to cook it on the stove top.

The next snag occurred when it came time to open the bottle of BBQ sauce.  I have never encountered a plastic bottle of any kind as difficult to open as that one.  Derek worked for some time on unscrewing the top, and in the end we took a pair of scissors to it and pried it off.

Opening the bottle of salad dressing was only slightly easier.  Apparently there’s something we don’t know about how people open plastic bottles here.

After all of this time, you’d think the chicken would be done cooking, but no.  It took much longer than I expected.  Maybe it’s an altitude thing?

The whole meal took WAY longer to make than we anticipated, and in the end it really didn’t taste very good either.  We opened a can of fruit and bag of chips to go with it and those turned out to be the best part of the meal.

And Montezuma had his revenge in the end too.

Oh well.  A few lessons learned I guess…

- Laura

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

We Made it to Peru!

(scroll down for pictures)

We made it to Arequipa, Peru!  We arrived yesterday afternoon after a long afternoon/evening of travel.  All of our flights went smoothly, though we were close to missing our flight out of Atlanta.  The flight from Birmingham was delayed 30 minutes, and our layover was only an hour to begin with.  So we were the last ones to board, but there turned out to be plenty of space on the flight, so we got a 3-seat row to ourselves, which was a huge blessing.  Finn did very well on the flight all things considered.  It was still incredibly exhausting trying to keep him entertained for the 6 hour flight.  He finally nodded off to sleep for the final hour before landing in Lima.

We were all exhausted when we got to the Lima airport, but I think the adrenaline must have been flowing, because as I lifted one of our 50 lb storage tubs at baggage claim, I thought to myself, oh, I must have gotten a light one!  No sooner had I said it than I realized that there wasn’t a light one.  Derek also said that everything felt way lighter than he remembered that evening.  We knew our travel from baggage claim to the hotel across the street from the airport would very possibly be the most trying part of the trip.  We had 8 checked bags/tubs in addition to a carry-on bag, a guitar, two rather heave personal item bags, and Finn in a stroller. 

So we grabbed 3 of those luggage carts, loaded (read overloaded) them up, and made our way very, very slowly to immigration.  Derek pushed two carts side by side, and I pushed one while pulling the stroller behind me.  I’m sure it was quite a sight.  The immigration officer was very curious about what all we had in the tubs.  She asked specifically if we were bringing medical equipment (which made us think about the time we did enter Lima with a bunch of medicine on a church mission trip several years ago.  At the time we were very fortunate that no one asked that question!).  We assured her that it was mostly clothes and baby things, and she was just fine with that. 

Next we slowly wheeled our way toward the nearest elevator so that we could take the upstairs crosswalk out of the airport to the adjacent hotel where we had a reservation for what was left of the evening (it was after midnight already).  We discovered that no more than one person and one luggage cart could fit in the elevator at a time, so Derek went up first with the cart, sent the elevator back down to me, and then I pushed the next cart in and sent it up to him by itself.  Several people gathered about that time, so I let them take the next few trips up, before sending the next cart up, and then finally Finn and myself rode up.  The whole elevator thing probably took about 45 minutes.

After wheeling down the hall to the hotel, a very nice bell hop came to help us, and things  got much easier.  They put most of our bags in storage for us, and we checked in and went to our room.  Finn wasn’t too happy about being stuck in his bed in a strange place, but he was so tired that he didn’t have the energy to cry for long before falling asleep, and we all slept well.

Our flight the next day wasn’t until 12:45, so we got to take our time getting up and going in the morning, and the concierge man from the hotel was kind enough to help us get our luggage back over to the airport to re-check them.  This last flight to Arequipa was just over an hour long, and then we were greeted by a familiar and welcoming face.  How nice that was!  Nate Bonham, an MTW missionary here in Arequipa, came to meet us at the airport and help us get to our apartment.  Our contact from the language school and his son were also there to greet us and lead us to our new apartment. 

Our apartment.  It’s a simple, 3rd floor 3 bedroom/2.5 bath flat that we are slowly making our own.  There are lots of big windows with a beautiful view of the Arequipa snow tipped volcanos.  I’ll have to take some pictures soon.  When we first arrived yesterday the first thing we did was to set up Finn’s pack n play and get him in bed.  Then we went to bed ourselves.  Finn didn’t sleep long, though, so neither did we.  We exited the bedrooms to a livingroom full of luggage, and slowly started to open them and search for Finn’s toys and books (top priority!).  The Bonhams and Gutierez’s (the other sweet MTW family here) had gotten us a bunch of groceries to make it through the first few days, so we were thankful not to need to go out grocery shopping immediately.

We took our time about things the first day, focusing primarily on Finn’s needs, trying to make him feel secure.  I found his stuffed animals and books and did what I could to make his room feel like home.  We gave him lots of milk (Finn’s #1 comfort food), fed him some banana and noodles (also favorites), and then bathed him and put him to bed.  Finn slept like a champ the first night.  Even when the sun came up at 5am.

Today the Bonhams picked us up for church.  Everyone was so friendly and kind to us, though we couldn’t communicate a whole lot yet.  A few people tried out a little English with us.  The Bonhams have apparently started an English class as a ministry of the church, and when they told the class that we would be coming they were excited about the opportunity to try out what they had learned.  After church Nate and Nathaniel had to lead a new membership class at the church, but Nikki and Alicia took us and the kids (they each have 3) to a local mall where we got lunch and then did some shopping.  It was so nice to have that time with Americans who have done this transition themselves in recent years.  They answered so many questions and helped us find the things we needed at the store.  Nikki was also kind enough to let me borrow her cell phone to make a facebook post to let everyone know we had arrived safely!  (We still don’t have sim cards for our phones or any internet access).

Our first impressions of Arequipa?  It’s very very dry.  My eyes and skin have been tingling from the dryness and I’ve been applying lotion and chapstick constantly.  It’s warmer than I expected, and the sun is pretty brutal in the middle of the day.  It is the dessert, but with the backdrop of the huge volcanoes, Arequipa is truly beautiful.  The city seems much like other Latin American cities I’ve visited with bumpy streets, lots of taxis and many boxy buildings all squished together.  The people we’ve interacted with so far have been very friendly, though, and the grocery store seemed to carry a lot of familiar things.  Most importantly they had lactose free milk, which we loaded up on for Finn (a huge answer to prayer!)

We haven’t used public transportation ourselves yet, but we’ll try that out soon.  We are just starting to get our bearings, and want to make sure we can tell a taxi driver how to get us home!  I’m so thankful that we have a week to figure everything out and establish a routine here before starting classes.  I am looking forward to class though.  I’ve already picked up on a few new Spanish words that I’m excited about now knowing. 

We still feel exhausted all the time.  Part of that may be the altitude (I think it’s around 8000ft. here?), some of it is recovering from our long day of travel, and some of it is just taking in everything new.  It’s comforting to have our own space, though, and to see Finn’s excitement already when we return to it after being out.  He’s been such a joy to have along for this journey.  He’s been overtired most of the last couple of days, but still he regularly says please and thank you, and gives lots of smiles.  We are so thankful for how well he’s handled everything so far. 

We are biding our time until sickness inevitable sets in.  We’re being careful about drinking only bottled water, and not eating fresh cut vegetables unless they’ve been disinfected, but in reality we know we’ll likely be sick quite a bit our first year here.  That won’t be fun, but it’s all part of moving to a 3rd world country, and we know God will provide for all of our needs through the good and the difficult.

We’re so thankful for all of the prayers and sweet notes of encouragement on facebook from all of our friends and family!  What a blessing it is to know so many are interceding for us before our heavenly Father.

It’s 8pm, now, and though it’s early, I think it’s bedtime for me.  We’ve made it through day 2!

 At the Birmingham airport


 In the airplane, coloring with Finn.

 The view of the Arequipa volcano from our living room window
 We found a Dunkin Donuts with free wifi today!  Finn enjoyed his doughnut!