Everything an Adventure

After explaining to people that we've lived here for 3 months now, Katie and I are frequently asked, "Ya estas acostumbrada?" "Are you used to it here?" We usually answer, "un poco mas cada dia," a little more everyday. And we are getting more and more accustomed to life here, but even daily tasks are so much different than they are in the U.S.

Our landlord had to explain to me how to wash clothes and how to mop our floor. I didn't even realize we owned a mop. In the picture below, that piece of carpet-like fabric is the mop. You slide it over the broom to use it. The little tub is our washing machine.

I live in the desert, so it's really dusty here. To prevent so much dust from getting in the house, every morning the Peruvians throw buckets of water on the dirt outside so it doesn't blow in. Katie and I don't bother to do that. We just sweep when it starts to look like we could plant things on our floor. That happens about every 2-3 days. Maybe in time we'll adopt the water-throwing custom, but for now we'll just live with the dust.

We used to eat out all the time because it's cheap, and we honestly didn't know where to get all the ingredients we needed to cook. Plus we don't have an oven, so that limits the things we can make. However, we've started cooking more frequently since we are learning which stores carry what food. All the "grocery stores" here are really just people's houses where one room at the front is set up like a store. The owners go to Canete (the closest city) and stock up on things for their store once a week. Fresh produce is sometimes difficult to come by, and for a long time I didn't know where I could buy meat. I bought some chicken for the first time last Friday. It's not a matter of finding some packaged chicken breasts, though. When I asked if they had chicken, she went to the freezer and pulled out a full chicken (feet and everything--minus the head), took it into her house (the back of the store), and cut off the midsection for me. It made me wish I had paid better attention to how to butcher chickens back when I was six and living on the farm. Below you'll find a picture of the chicken I took home and me getting it ready for the stir fry.

Little by little I'm getting "acostumbrada" to life here, but I've still got a long way to go. Until then, everything is a bit of an adventure. And I'm ok with that.

Vino

My Panamanian friends, James Neuendorf and Milton Castillo, worked on this video and are presenting it now in Panama. It's titled "Vino," which means "He came" in Spanish (it also means wine, but not in this case). The video illustrates what it might have been like if Christ was born in Panama City right now. If you go to the Youtube page, you can go to the bottom of the video and turn on CC (closed captioning) for subtitles. You might want to have your Bibles handy to look up the verses that explain what's happening. The verses appear in the bottom left corner. Take some time to think about what it would be like if Jesus was born in your city in 2010. And praise God that "He came," continues to come to us, and will come again in the future to take us to live with Him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glGUzgz6lac

Limited Reality, Unlimited Grace

Thanksgiving came and went, and if it wasn't for all the Facebook statuses expressing excitement to over-eat and watch football, I would have completely forgotten.

There are Christmas decorations in Lima now, and Katie plays Christmas music around the house, but it doesn't feel like Christmas.

I used to love watching sports on t.v., at the stadium, or in the high school gym. Now these games hardly cross my mind. I've only watched one football game this whole season, and it just wasn't the same. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat weren't there. (That's probably a good thing since the only game I saw was Nebraska losing the Big 12 Championship. It wasn't nearly as exciting or painful as last year's Big 12 loss.)

I say all these things not to complain. I didn't feel sad about not being home on Thanksgiving, and I don't really miss the hustle and bustle of December or the excitement I used to have for a football game. They just don't fit into my reality here.

As I was reflecting on all of this, it made me realize just how limited our minds are. Even if we've lived one way for over 20 years, it's so easy to forget that way of life when living another, and it's impossible to really live and feel two realities at once. I know that it's freezing cold in Nebraska and St. Louis right now, and I've lived through 28 cold winters, but below-freezing weather is easily forgotten while experiencing springtime in Peru. And when I'm stuffed full of Peruvian cuisine, the feeling of hunger pangs are far from my mind.

With the humbling realization of my limitations, I begin to grasp just how mind-bogglingly amazing God is. He not only understands the realities of heaven and earth but also created and experienced both of them. I can't even keep track of two cultures at once, and God knows what's going on throughout the whole world in every culture right now, every detail of what has happened in the past, and what will happen in every place for all of eternity.

And to imagine that this God, this all-powerful and all-knowing Alpha and Omega, would humble himself and join us in our limited human reality in order to save us so we could live with Him forever, is incomprehensible. I will spend the rest of my life with my limited mind trying to fully grasp "what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe" (Ephesians 1:18-19). God's grace is literally the gift that never stops giving. And that makes it even more amazing, because my limited, sinful self will need that grace forever. And God knew that. He planned for it--even before I was a reality.

"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21