Rare photo op...

This is a piece of photo- graphic genius (I took it of course). It wasn't easy to get close enough to take the picture without spooking them. As you can see, at the moment the picture was taken, Steven (on the right) looked up. I managed to take Robert by surprise; he never even looked up. I caught these two in their natural habitat, completely oblivious to my presence. The were doing what is known as "Mac-ing". Immediately after I took the picture they were startled, and they ran off an disappeared into the underbrush. (You can see other wildlife in the background if you look closely). It was a rare photo opportunity.

Suppertime...

This is where we ate everyday... dinner and supper. I lost my pictures of some of the dishes, and that's too bad because the fish was a good one. I expected that I would loose some weight during the week at Peru, but I didn't. They fed me good. Carrie tried to keep up, but she just couldn't eat as much as me and Priscila could, and we would fight over Carrie's leftovers. I weigh about 150 pounds more than Priscila, but she ate as much as I did.
This was the family who fed us, and the took real good care of us. I looked forward to getting to go eat everyday.
You want to talk about fresh food...one day we came in for dinner and they had a chicken tied up by the bathroom...when we cam back for supper, the chicken was gone, and guess what was on the plate? It was good stuff, and I really miss these folks.

Home sweet home...

These pics show a few of the home we visited during our week in Pisco.
The top pic is the home where the little girl who brought the baby lamb to the meeting lives. Just for a reference, the guy in the picture is 5'6'' tops.

I wasn't able to get many action shots, but the next pic is of Carrie and Hulda talking to a man, and then two ladies from the church are talking to his wife (I'm pretty sure).
The next pic down is actually a little store in a home, and Carrie and Hulda talked with two ladies there.
The second from the bottom is the very first home we visited. I'm not sure how many people were living in that little place, but the Mother and Grandmother were two of the new Christians who came to the Bible study meetings.

The bottom picture is the home where we were fed everyday. We ate dinner and supper there. I was worried about how I would handle the food, but I never left a scrap. It was good stuff.
For the most part, this is what homes look like all over Pisco, all the way back to Lima. Some are concrete structures (the ones that didn't fall down in the earthquake), but a lot of them are like tool sheds. As a matter of fact, most people's tool sheds are a lot nicer than some of the homes we visited. We have no idea how good we have it in the US. We should thank God every day for the comforts He has allowed us to enjoy here.

Prayer walking...

I almost forgot this part, mainly because I didn't take any pictures. It was evening time on Saturday when we got to San Miguel, the community we would be working in for the week. All the different teams went to the places they would be ministering too, and did a "prayer walk". We basically walked through the place where we would be for the next week, and prayed for God to bless our efforts, and open the people's heart to the Gospel message. The picture above shows San Miguel, and beyond. We stayed to the bottom left of this hill, on pretty much the same "street". We ended up at the top of this hill (where the big cross is) and said a prayer for the people we would be visiting. It's too bad I don't have a picture, but it was an important part of the story.

Flying by the seat of our pants...

My pics may be a little out of order, but that's ok. All three of these were on Sunday. The top one is Carrie, handing out straight sugar to a little girl. By the end of the week Carrie was a celebrity to those kids. She was really good with them. She even gave out some toothbrushes to fight the tooth decay she had been promoting with her backpack full of candy.
The next one is Carrie, talking to the kids on Sunday morning. They do thing a little different. Kids church is in the morning, and they blast the songs over a loud speaker throughout the town to call kids to church. There was nothing for the adults, just kids.
The last one is me...preaching. I'm not kidding. As we walked in the door for church that night, Pastor Bernabe' said something to Priscila, and she turned to me and said "you are going to preach". I had about 1 minute to come up with something. It was amazing. God gave me the words to say, and got me through the whole thing. It was actually my first time really working with a translator, and we didn't have any trouble at all. Priscila did a great job, because nobody threw anything at me. I can hardly remember what I said, but I used the passage in Acts 8:26-40 about Phillip preaching to the eunuch. The focus was on two verses: So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. The lesson was that the church people had to be like Phillip and take the time to teach the new converts so they would grow in their faith. The church memebers responded well. We had one of the best turnouts as far as church members coming out and working with us. And they are still doing it now that we are at home. We really got attached to those folks, and it did us good to see them invest themselves into eveangelism and discipleship in their community.

The luxury ride...

How many people can you get on a 15 passenger bus and still get it to move? Our best guess is 32, but some bodies may have been underneath others when we counted. We could have got more, but me and some other guys are over 250 lbs., so who knows.
In the top picture, there are two South Americans, and 1 North American. Take a wild guess who's who. I won't mention any names to protect the identity of my fellow North American, but don't tell Matt Benson about this page.
The middle pic is somewhat chaotic, but the white haired fellow is our fearless leader Sam Nuegent. He did an amazing job organizing everything, and keeping it all together. Visit his site, brothersam.net. If you ever get the opportunity to go on an e3 partners mission trip, you won't have to worry about anything if Sam's in charge.
Last is another crowded picture. The only one you can make out is Daniel Oscata Gutierrez, one of the translators. Me and him have the same birthday, every year...November 5th...and we accept presents...every year...on November 5th. Everybody loved Daniel. He's just a good guy to be around. Just look how close everyone is sitting to him.

The Mother Church...

This is the mother Church in Pachinga. They were the ones planting a new church in San Miguel. Starting from the top...this is a picture from the foyer inside the church. They decorated it for our arrival.
Next, three of the little church boys in the entrance of the sanctuary. I really like them because they thought I was a professional wrestler.
The middle picture is of two little church girls on the stairs. Yes, that is sky behind them where there used to be a concrete wall.
Next down is the view from where the little girls were standing. You can clearly see the men out on the street. Also, if you look close, there is no roof in the room that the doorway behind the boys leads to.
Last is Priscila in front of the church. It doesn't take and architect to figure out there has been some damage to the church. The pastor showed us around, and on the street to the left of the building you can clearly see where the crack from the earthquake was. The crack literally ran straight to the church, around the back, up the side, turned out again, and kept going. I don't see how it is even still standing, and it's not safe by any standards. No doubt in my mind...God spared that building.

Wake up call...

This is me and pastor Bernabe' in front of a church that collapsed during the earthquake that hit Pisco last year, which registered 8.0. I was told that 300 people ran inside for shelter from the quake. The roof fell in, and the the walls fell over on top. From what I understand, all the people inside were killed. This was all that was left standing, and they are in the process of tearing the rest down. The pastor told us a lot of stories about disasters that happened during the quake. It was hard to think of everyone we met as "survivors", but we learned later that many of the people we met had lost friends and family during the earthquake. Some were the sole survivors of their family. It was a real wake up call. Here in Alabama, we've never had a natural disaster on this scale. The earthquake at Pisco killed so many people, it affected everyone somehow. I'm glad the pastor took the time to help us understand all of that at the beginning of the week. Those folks still need our prayers.

Our crew...

These are the folks I was around most of the time. On the left is Hulda Rut Cam Espinoza, but we just called her Hulda or Rut (she looks just like Rosario Dawson). She was Carrie's translator. Carrie Hamilton is right next to her . She's also a member of Concord Baptist. In between me and Carrie is Priscila Quiroz Tippe. She was my translator, and bodygaurd. She was fearless.
Like I said, we spent almost all day long together, and for me and Carrie, our translators were the only ones who we could talk to. We didn't see our friends from North America from 9:00am until around 10:pm. Everyone became close friends with their translators. Without them, we couldn't do a thing. Even I picked up a little Spanish, but I didn't even know enough to read through a coloring book.
Not only did Hulda and Priscila translate for us, but they really did look out for us. They let us know when we were in a bad place, and shouldn't take out money or a camera...things like that. Also, they watched what we ate and I know they kept me from getting sick all week. As soon as we said goodbye, I ate some bad ice on the way home and was sick for a week.
Hulda and Priscila became really good friends of ours in just a few days. Me and Carrie will always miss them.

The cross on the hill...

These pics were taken at the hill in San Miguel. San Miguel is like a suburb of Pisco, and it is at the base of this hill with the cross at the top. You can see this cross from miles away. The top pic is pastor Bernabe' surveying the outskirts of Pisco from the top of the hill. The next one is our first bible study meeting on Monday evening, around the cross. The middle one is the sunset from the top of the hill. The next is a closer view of the cross. If you look close, you can see the concrete broken away at the base of the cross from the earthquake in late '07. Finally, the bottom pic is of the cross from the bottom of the hill at dusk. These were some of my favorite pictures. Me and Carrie and our translators worked all week in San Miguel, and you could hardly go anywhere that the cross wasn't visible. It was a pleasant reminder of the work we were there to do.

On the road...

The picture at the top is where we stayed our first night, in Lima. Me, Chris Puckett, and Robert Hope were roommates, but we didn't have a room. Around 1:00am, it all got straightened out and we each ended up with separate rooms. Not much sleep that first night. It was absolutely the hardest mattress ever.
The center left pic is the view headed out of Lima toward Pisco, and the center right pic is the street in front of the hotel.
The pic below those was a typical view of homes on a hill outside Lima, and pretty much all the way to Pisco, which was over a three hour (terrifying) bus trip. Most of those homes are small, concrete shells, averaging around 600 square feet.
The bottom pic is the Pacific Ocean from the Pan American Highway. Even though we were on the Pacific Coast of Peru, they are actually on Georgia time, but since they don't do Daylight Savings Time, they were on the same time as Alabama.
As we got closer to Pisco we realized that it was more of a desert region. I had expected a jungle I guess. There were sand dunes to the east as far as you could see. Everything was the color of the beach in the bottom pic.

On the ground...

This is what it looks like when you take twenty-something North Americans and drop them of at the airport in Lima, Peru. Lima is the size of New York City. Just about the only difference I could tell between Lima and NYC; everyone spoke Spanish and I could see over every one's heads. Some of us looked like giants down there.
You'll notice we are wearing short sleeves. It was the first day of winter in Peru, and even though it was a comfortable 65 degrees, the people there were bundled up like Eskimos.

First flight ever...

This is the view of the sunset off the wing of our plane as we flew over the Gulf of Mexico. At this point we had passed over Cuba already and were probably very close to flying over Panama or Colombia I suppose. I had never see a view like this in all my life. The way all those colors ran together...you just couldn't help but stare a know it was all God's handiwork.
After seeing a view like that, I wasn't to worried about the flight anymore. I had been pretty nervous I'll admit, but the view was just to peaceful to be worried about anything.

In the beginning...

I should shed a little light on what I'm trying to do. About a year ago, I signed on to go on a mission trip to Pisco, Peru for 8 days. I've been home now from Pisco for about a week, and this is how I plan to share the pictures and stories with everyone. At the moment, I still have dial-up, so this could take years. I'm just going to take my time and start...in the beginning.