Amazing Race

Today is Sunday morning, the 26th, and I (John) am writing this from a bus in Peru somewhere near the Ecuador border.  We tend to write our blog posts while offline, then wait for a chance to post them, FYI.

We have passed thru several days of the Amazing Race, the team training for our interns.  There's 11 interns plus the Executive for Inca Link.  Other than Katie and I, there are no two interns from the same state in the US.  We are enjoying getting to know everyone.  A few have been on Inca Link trips before.  Most of the interns are college kids, except for one who is closer to our age and is a lumberjack from the northeast.  There's one from Toccoa Falls too!  Half the interns will be remaining in Ecuador after the Amazing Race, and the rest come with us back to Peru.  Our Peru team includes Matt, who is a second-year intern architecture major at UK interested in construction.  We also have Bekah, a college student studying youth ministry at CIU.  Gideon will also be with us, the aforementioned logger.  Our team is rounded out by Brittany, a bilingual Puerto Rican studying at Nyack.

The Amazing Race training is really interesting.  It's much more intense than we expected.  The goals are to learn how to be self-sufficient on our own, grow in team strength, and be stretched.  We break into new teams each day and pass through a series of clues - challenges that we have to figure out with help only from nationals we don't know.  Typical challenges include things like walking great distances with only the name of a destination, figuring out how to take public transportation across an unknown city, hiking up or down mountains, finding people we only have a name for, and team challenges like army-crawling through mud pits.  It's exceedingly physically-demanding...we probably walk 3-5 miles per day, much of it on an incline, in addition to other physical challenges.

We enjoyed our time in Bogota.  We got to climb Monserrate, a famous mountain, Saint Cecilia, a ministry in a slum on top of a hill, and an Alliance church in San Cristobal.  We also got to explore the city a bit, seeing some famous places in the city center including a museum of glamorous gold artwork.  We spent just an evening in Lima, spending most of our time in the Plaza de Aguas, a park that features a lot of creative water fountains.  Then we bussed to Trujillo overnight, and spent two nights there at Pasitos de Fe, a new orphanage past Porvenir.  We also spent some time in the city center and at a small children's ministry just outside the large garbage dump.  We've just finished bussing overnight (about 12 hours) to the Ecuador border, where we'll change busses and go another 12 hours to Quito.  Still to come is Quito, urban ministry, Portoviejo, the rural ministry, and Huaticocha, the primitive ministry (aka, the middle of nowhere).

Looking forward to continuing to keep everyone updated as we continue our adventure!  Katie and I are tired and sore but healthy, and looking forward to slowing down the pace to settle into ministry.  We still are not sure what ministry will look like for the summer.  We're enjoying our teammates and having fun with everyone.  My Spanish is growing rapidly, and although my comprehension is still sub-par, I find that I can communicate about anything I need to.  Katie is learning more words and phrases and doing great.  Navigating public transportation is pretty easy, and we're feeling confident!  We're all a lot more comfortable asking strangers on the street for help with just about anything!

Thanks for your prayers, we love and miss you all and think of you often!  Blessings to you!