The return trip to the North America began with a 3:30 a.m. departure from Home Peru. There is not much traffic at that hour so we arrived at Jorge Chávez International Airport ahead of schedule. The students got checked in quickly and we said our final goodbyes.
There was joy mixed with sadness — excitement to reunite with family and friends, and the reality of saying goodbye to the people they have lived, worked, studied and played with in Peru.
God bless each of you. Safe travels!
A semester full of learning, service and adventure closed with a three-day retreat at a beach named Kauai. We began with final project presentations featuring research done while on service. The topics included:
On Sunday we worshipped, discussed each student’s service assignment and relaxed on the beach. On our last day we talked about re-entry into North American culture. Afterward we returned to Lima for one last evening before heading home.
How thankful we are! This morning ten students returned to Lima after spending six weeks volunteering in the mountains and rain forest. Tomorrow Joshua will return from Acopia and our group will be complete.
The students are thankful for many things: new direction in life, a stronger relationship with God, safety, opportunity, Lima, the United States of America, their host families, discovery of self, reordering of priorities and relationships with Peruvian friends.
We celebrated Thanksgiving Peruvian-style with a Pachamanca dinner, an ancient dish prepared in the mountains during harvest time. Alicia and her family were gracious hosts. They prepared a meal of turkey (our request), potatoes, yams, broad beans and sweet tamales roasted over a bed of hot stones in the garden beside their home.
Thanks be to God.
Acopia, a town of several thousand inhabitants, sits between two lakes in the Andes mountains. At 3,715 meters (12,188 feet) above sea level, this is highest and most remote of the service locations this semester. We met Luis Delgado, founder of Yachay Wasi (House of Learning in Quechua), during a visit with the whole group to plant 100 native trees back in September. Luis and his daughter, Sandra, expressed interest in having a student volunteer at the organization and arranged for a host family — Feliciano and Teodora Fputturi and their five children — to open their home.
Joshua came to Acopia with the understanding that he would continue the tree-planting project as well as teach environmental education to children in the local primary and secondary schools. As it turned out, this spring season has been unusually dry — there was no significant rainfall for over a month after Joshua arrived. Some locals blame climate change. Others gather frogs to take to the top of the hill so they can call for rain. In any case, the tree planting has been postponed until wet weather arrives.
In the meantime, Joshua has given talks on water quality and trash cleanup to large groups of children while assembled first thing each morning in the elementary school playground. Later he visits the secondary school where he speaks to individual classes on the same topics. And when he is not in school Joshua spends time with his host family — moving animals to pasture, cutting alfalfa for the guinea pigs and playing with his two-year old sister, Maya.
Four students are serving in the Selva Central, the central section of the rain forest that lies in the eastern foothills of the Andes. Elevations here range from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, with rolling hills and luscious green vegetation.
Ashley is volunteering at a school for special needs children called San Manuelito in the small city of San Ramon. She assists with a class of 5 and 6-year-old children, several of which are hearing impaired. She also helps the physical therapist who works with physically-disabled children.
Jana works at a children’s center called INABIF in the same city. This is a place where children from low-income families come either before or after school to work on their homework, eat one or two meals and play. Most of their families are at work during the day and many cannot afford to feed them.
Kelly helps out at a clinic in San Ramon. Patients come here from all over the region for medical attention. She assists by mixing solutions for IVs, cleaning wounds and other tasks. She has witnessed several surgeries and is benefiting from the chance to apply what she has learned in the nursing program at Goshen College.
Michael is volunteering in a native tree planting project at a family-owned coffee farm in the mountains high above the city. He helps to collect seeds, plant them in small bags, stake out the locations for planting, and transplant the seedlings into the ground. He has also had opportunities to accompany his host uncle and tour guide, Moises, on several tours of the area, accompanying groups of visitors on hikes to waterfalls and other places of interest.
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