We arrived at the hostal yesterday and everyone agreed to be up and ready at 9am... but our wake up call never occurred. We (Bob, Tony, Brian and I) woke up at 4 minutes til 9 – everyone else was already up, showered, and ready to go.  My roomies and I rushed to get up, in denial that no one noticed that our door hadn’t opened and that our suite mates didn’t notice that we hadn’t used the bathroom.  <laughter> ... definitely no time for a shower.  It was a humbling experience.

Breakfast consisted of bread and juice.  I noticed the hesitance in the room, as if we were waiting for the actual food.  That subsided and the preconceived notions fell when we started the daily planning on prayer time.

Eventually we took off on the journey to the orphanage.  I noticed that there were hardly any stop lights or traffic signs, and the vehicles were as unclean as those in Guatemala - lots of smog.  We drove thru what seemed like mounds of rubble (plenty of dust and rock) with the occasional building, but no trees, grass or shrubbery.  45 minutes later, we arrived at the orphanage.  We went thru a tour and got to hug and greet lots of children.  I exchanged my email address with a guy who went thru some Bible school, named Marcos.  Then we started the work.  There were three teams - rebar, rock, and concrete.  It was certainly alot more work than had been implied with the term "light construction", but I loved the challenge.  I mainly worked the concrete team... moving sand, rock, and concrete into a huge pile and then haul water over in 50 gallon trash container to the mix site (ie, a location on the ground).  Then came the mixing with shovels and carting the wet mix in wheel barrels.  They had a very challenging way of mixing the entire pile... seemingly all at once.  At the end of the day I left with a couple blisters because of all the shoveling and wheel barrel work.  It was awesome.

Lunch was a small sandwich with a small bag of chips, juice and a couple cookies.  After lunch we listened to a woman's testimony on her spiritual journey.  Her testimony included a struggle with her former understanding of Christianity since she grew up as a Catholic.  As she explained, and as I understood in the translated form, she struggled because her understanding was of a religious practice about how to *be* a Christian, and not an understanding of the heart about the true knowledge of God.  She knew work, punishment and relativism - not God's love and grace.  She also talked about her son who had Leukemia and was supposed to die within 2 years.  She was separated from her husband at the time and was a very broken individual.  She went back to church after reading a very informal flyer about seeking God.  Long story short - she and her son joined a church, eventually had people praying over her son, her son was completely healed of his disease, she and her husband got back together, and now she's helping at the orphanage. 

Later in the day, we switched work stations.  The concrete crew got alot of work accomplished, if that was ever a goal.  I hauled some large rocks and spent time on a hacksaw, cutting rebar.

The best time that day was yet to come.  I was bonding with the MPPC team members, but up until that time I wasn't yet connecting much with the Peruvians.  I was thrown into the fire, so to speak, when I asked a couple of Peruvian workers if they wanted water.  I went to inquire where to get it and found myself in the midst of about 15 people (3 adults and the rest kids) that didn't speak English.  I found out thru the process that an adult thought I wanted something other than water, so she sent one of the children to go buy some cola from the nearby vendor.  Anyway, the experience was memorable, and eventually I just started playing with the kids.

I conversed with a 16 yr old boy for a while, regarding the US and different aspects of the lifestyle here.  I could see the heartache he had because he knew that he wouldn't be able to every get enough money to see those things.  Although I was sad for him not being able to see the material things, it was even more sad that we (US folks) are less privileged in the areas of faith and love.

Before we left the orphanage that day, they kids turned on some music in an old banged up Volkswagen beetle.  A group of us started dancing, and I began teaching a couple hip/hop moves.  The kids absorbed the different dance styles like a sponge does water, and they loved it.

We returned to the hostal to shower (without hot water, since that wasn't available).  The food (chicken, rice, sauce, coffee) was prepared for us when we returned, and it tasted fabulous after the long day of activity.  I'm stoked.  God, I love this level of awareness and life in you.  I'm concerned that when this trip is over, I'll return to my previous inadequate level in my false sense of reality.  Help me avoid the normalization gutter that so many lives roll down... peace out.