Church Plant

It has been wonderful to be at home in California with C.J.'s family for the last week. We're looking forward to flying to Michigan in a few days where we'll spend a week with Keri's family before moving back to St. Louis! We mentioned a few times in our blogging what the main reason for our return to St. Louis is, but we have not had a chance to elaborate...

We are going to be part of a church plant. A core group of about 13 people, many of whom are some of our best friends in St. Louis, began talking about starting a church before we left for our fieldwork adventures. Conversations continued while we were gone and many of us were affirmed that we were being called to plant a church. A proposal was made to our home church, Greentree Community Church (Evangelical Presbyterian), and it was accepted.

An area of St. Louis was also placed on our hearts. Lafayette Square is an area of St. Louis just south of downtown. This area was very affluent at one time, but after "white flight" and the aging of the city, it became very rundown. This small historical area (www.lafayettesquare.org is a good website about the area) is now being restored and is being looked at as the start of restoration for the whole city of St. Louis. Many people are investing in this area, and Greentree and our church plant want to be a part of this restoration.

All the people of our core group have committed to moving into Lafayette Square, and we hope to have a church which will also be a site for many community activities. This church is very much in its infancy, and we will not be meeting formally for several months, but please keep us in your prayers. We are very excited about returning from our adventures around the world and returning to this new and different adventure in St. Louis!

Merry Christmas

Just a quick post to say "Merry Christmas", and that we made it to C.J.'s parents' house in CA without complications (and after a quick stop at In-N-Out!). We hope you all have a great day!

Reflections

We´re all packed and ready to come home! It took a bit of time and some creativity, but all our stuff is in four large suitcases, two smaller (carry-on size) suitcases, and two backpacks. We leave from the house tomorrow at 5:15am to begin our 15-hour travel day. If all goes as planned, we´ll be landing at LAX at about 7pm!

Before we leave Peru (and because we have the rest of the day to relax), we want to share some reflections on our experiences over the last 6+ months of travel.

We are incredibly blessed to have had this opportunity! How many people get to put their "normal" lives on hold for 7 months to travel all over the world as a couple? We are amazed at the financial resources God provided for us and have learned that He not only travels with us, but goes ahead of us to prepare the way. The two places that we´ve ended up living could not have been more perfect for us! We´re also so thankful to C.J.´s boss for giving him the time off and letting him keep his health insurance (and it looks like letting him come back to work in January!).

We´ve learned that Americans need to smile more. It was incredibly uplifting to be greeted every day by the people at CASP with smiles and (MANY) kisses on the cheek. Every time they say hello and goodbye (to pretty much EVERYONE), a hug and kiss on one cheek ensue. Peruvians have an amazingly friendly culture, and it really takes the akwardness out of meeting new people. No more having to pull out akwardly when one person tries to shake and one person goes in for the hug...you´ve all been there!

Pisco anyone? Three CASP administrators at the end of the year party

Trying new food has been fun (as long as our stomachs were up for it). We know it´s a big surprise to those of you who know him well, but C.J. has actually been really good with all the different foods--he tends to be quite particular with his food! We´re hoping that when we return home we can continue this trend. One recent food we tried was chicherones, which is fried pork and sweet potato on a bun (usually with chopped onions). Traditionally, this is a breakfast food!

C.J. with his chicherones

Somewhat related to the previous paragraph is that we´ve learned to be more flexible, mostly by necessity. Our schedules didn´t always go as planned, we´ve been thrown into situations where we didn´t know exactly what was going on, sometimes we just couldn´t understand what someone was saying, and we´ve rarely been in control of where we´re going and when (planes, trains, and automobiles--all three!).

We have missed creating music! Being a part of the Damascus Road worship band was a huge blessing in our lives, and it has been really tough to not have this. We recently heard that we get to be a part of the praise team at our church the first Sunday we get back to St. Louis, so we are incredibly excited! Creating music really touches our hearts and helps us experience God in amazing ways.

Community is very important to us. We have truly enjoyed the people we have met and spent time with in Halifax and Lima and thank God for letting our paths cross. However, we have often felt our hearts yearning to once again be a part of the community we´ve found in St. Louis. Things are going to be really different when we return (new church plant, new apartment in a different part of St. Louis, new job for Keri, new babies for friends there), but the people are going to be the same, and that´s what makes all the difference.

Marie (housekeeper), Elena, and Leise (Marie´s daughter) with Keri´s graduation cake

We really like each other (good news after being together for 7 years and married for 3)! The vast majority of days, we were together the entire day, but we´ve really enjoyed it. There have been times where one of us has looked at the other and said, "I like you!" This has felt really good, because our love doesn´t necessarily mean we always like each other! All of our time together has also helped us to mature in our relationship. Petty arguing just isn´t worth it when we´re always together. We´ve been forced to sit down, talk out our feelings, and be done with it. Though it hasn´t always been perfect, we are really hopeful that this trend continues in our "normal" lives.

We can´t thank you all enough for all your prayers and support through these times. Thanks for taking the time to read our blog. Now that our travels are pretty much over (we do plan make a few posts from CA and MI), we´re not sure what this blog will become, but we are hoping to keep it up. We´ll have lots of new things to update you all on once we´re back in St. Louis, especially on the future newest member of our family...no, we´re not pregnant...our Christmas present to each other is going to be a puppy! We hope you´ll keep reading. For now, signing off from Peru...

Centro Ann Sullivan del Peru (CASP)

This is from Keri again. I graduated yesterday! I am officially done with OT school! It´s little bit anticlimactic but still a very good feeling. The family we live with here was so sweet and bought a cake to celebrate at dinner. I´ll include a picture of that later.

Now that we've shown you pictures of where we live, I figure it's high time to tell you what we've been doing here! I promise it hasn't been all fun and games like some of our blogs might suggest. We have worked HARD here. Most days were between 9 and 11 hours of work, including many Saturdays. Part of the reason I haven't yet blogged about CASP is the overwhelming task of painting an accurate picture of all this incredible center does in a blog that doesn´t bore all of you!

CASP, or the Centro Ann Sullivan del Peru, is a school for kids with developmental disabilities, but it is so much more than that. The center mostly serves kids with diangoses like Down's Syndrome, Autism, or other developmental disorders. The students served by the center range from about 6 months old to 55 years old. They have a family model, which means that they fully include and support the families of the students. Most students only come to the center for 2-4 hours a day. They have a morning and an afternoon session. Because they spend so little time at the school, the families are expected to provide the rest of the training at home. Each student has goals they work on, much like an IEP in the States. However, each parent also has goals to work on in order to better support and teach their children. The families come to the "School of families" every other week where they support each other and get training and encouragement from the staff. Every student in this center (about 400 total) lives with their family.

The center also has a complete community focus. The students don't just learn math or writing, they learn it in functional ways to support their ability to work in the community (for example, learning to count money to buy food at the market). For the older students (14 and up), half of their time at CASP is spent in the community, learning to follow directions and be good workers with tasks like cleaning, making beds, etc. CASP has over 100 alumni working in supportive employment (at various levels) in the community. Some additional examples of the activities of the center include:

• Providing English classes, dance classes, and other activities for the parents during the school day (many come from far away to bring their children and wait at the center until they are finished)


• Providing consultation to a nearby orphanage on how they can improve how they handle behaviors


• Having the students put on bake sales and spa days for the students to practice money changing and appropriate work behavior

Because OT is rare down here, CASP has never had an OT come to the center. Many of Liliana´s (the director of CASP) contacts in the US who are OTs have expressed an interest in sending OT doctorate students down for fieldwork, but because no OT has been there, they did not know what the students could do. Therefore, my main job here has been to evaluate all of the programs and to write a report about where OT could enhance what the center is doing and what projects OT students could work on. Besides that, I have made adaptations in the classrooms, visited students´ homes to answer questions and make recommendations to parents, created low tech adaptive technology, and visited an orphanage twice to give them suggestions for their kids with physical disabilities.

My schedule has been nuts, but it has been rewarding, and I have learned a LOT about how to work with kids who have developmental diabilities. I am glad to be done with fieldwork, but I will not be forgetting this place anytime soon! C.J. has actually been really busy here too and did everything here from filming to making cardboard adaptations for me to editing my protocols I´ve written to giving suggestions on CASP´s building.

We have only 1 day left here in Peru! We will try to blog quickly tomorrow, but please pray for a smooth trip on Monday home to CA for Christmas (with no unexpected stops in other countries, please!)

Peru Home

We realized, now only 5 days(!) from the end of our time here, that we haven't put any pictures up of where we've been living. We've talked a bit about our everyday lives here in some past posts, but no pictures. The video at the end is of the family dog, Max. Max found himself a home by following one of the daughters home one day. He's a dog that is likable in spite of himself. If nothing else, he gives us a laugh every day when we return home to that! Also notice his gimpy leg--he's had surgery, but it was unsuccessful...it just adds more character.

Our home in Peru (the electric fence is very typical)

The view down the street--lots of walls!

Max

Weekend and Islas Palminos

Hello! This one is from Keri. We had a full weekend again. On Saturday, from 8-2, we helped at CASP with a free screening of about 1,300 babies. We had pediatricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, nutritionists, and specialists from CASP screening for developmental delays. At night we went with Elena and Santiago, the family we live with, to Barranco, a popular place to go out to eat and dance. We ate at a restaurant and had Pisco Sours (their STRONG national drink) and tried Anticuchos (skewered beef hearts). What made the night more exciting was the power going out in the middle of our meal. It stayed off for over an hour. This is the second time that´s happened to us here (Katie, Beth, and Heather, I thought of you and our time in Guatemala!). We also had a small earthquake last week (only 5. something), so we´ve been told we´ve now had a full Peruvian experience!

Yesterday, one of my lifelong dreams came true. No, I didn´t ride on a Zamboni (see ¨Hockey¨ blog from October). We swam with sea lions. Between the ages of about 7 and 16, I had a fascination (okay, some would call it an obsession) with seals and sea lions. I collected figurines, read about them, and did reports on them. And I have ALWAYS wanted to swim with them. There is a small company with a yacht that does 4 hour tours around the small islands that are close to Lima. One of the islands has become a natural harbour for thousands of sea lions. It was incredible! Because there are not predators around those parts (at least that´s what they told us), the tour guides let us get wet suits on and swim with them! The water was COLD because even though we´re in Peru and it´s summer, there is a current called the Humboldt current which keeps the water cold all year. We weren´t allowed to touch them, and the sea lions kept out of reach, but they were very curious about us and very playful, jumping all around us. What an experience! I will never forget it! What a blessing to be able to fulfill dreams like this during our time away from home!

Cuzco Day 3 - The Sacred Valley

The third day in Cuzco didn't start quite as early as the second, but we still had to be at our tourist agency pretty early. We had slept much better the after our exhausting day at Machu Picchu, so we felt a lot better. From the agency, we got in a van with about 10 other people for our Sacred Valley tour. The other people on our tour were from all over the world and most of them were about our age, so it fun to share the tour with them. In our three days of touring, we met people from Australia, Ireland, England, Germany, France, and Hawaii.

The Sacred Valley is a very fertile valley near Cuzco. The valley and the mountains on either side were home to a lot of really important Incan cities. The weather was amazing, our tour guide was really knowledgeable, and the people we were with were a lot of fun, so it was a really fun day.

Once again, we stopped on our way out of Cuzco to take some pictures overlooking the city. Cuzco currently has about 300,000 inhabitants, but this is just over half of what it had in Incan times. It's pretty hard to imagine an ancient city that large!

We were gone pretty much all day on the tour (until 7:00pm) and saw a lot, but the highlights of the tour were Ollantaytambo and Chinchero.

Ollantaytambo, like Machu Picchu, was the site of both a city and huge temple. There is still a small town there that is built almost completely on top of the old foundations of Incan buildings. Because they did build on Incan foundations, a lot of the roads between the houses were only about 2 meters wide.

The Incas built a lot of their cities to in the shapes of their sacred animals (Cuzco = puma, Machu Picchu = condor) and the temple at Ollantaytambo was built in the shape of a giant llama. One other amazing fact about Ollantaytambo is that the first place the sunrise of the summer solstice falls on the temple is the eye of the llama--incredible! You have to be on top of one of the adjacent mountains to see the entire shape, but we did get some good pictures of parts of the temple.

Chinchero was our last stop of the day and the highest place we visited in our three days at about 4000 meters above sea level. Even though we had gotten much more used to the altitude during our stay, we were still out of breath by the time we got to the colonial church at the top of the hill (again built over top of an Incan temple). Chinchero was the hometown of our tour guide, and it is home to a lot of people that are still pure descendants of the Incans. Our tour guide was pretty proud to tell us that he is pure Incan. We stopped to take some pictures of some snow capped mountains before we got to Chinchero and took some great sunset pictures on our way back to Cuzco.

When we got back to Cuzco we decided that we should head out for at least one night on the town. We asked some of the people from our tour if they would like to join us for dinner and ended up going out with a couple from Ireland (his name was Fergus...how perfect is that!?!) and two people from Hawaii. We were craving some more "American" food, so we ended up going out for pizza. It was a great end to another great day.

Cuzco Day 2 - Machu Picchu!

The second day of our trip was Machu Picchu! Machu Picchu is a huge city of the Incas in the Andes Mountains that was "rediscovered" in 1911 and is one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Our day started at about 5:15am to catch a 4-hour train ride from Cuzco to the base of the mountain that contains Machu Picchu. C.J. slept through most of the trip, but Keri got to see some amazing views as we rode through the valley between some HUGE mountains.

When we arrived, it had started to rain (summer=rainy season in the Cuzco area). We then had to take a half hour bus ride straight up the side of a mountain to Machu Picchu. The roads were barely wide enough for one bus, and there were no guardrails to keep us from plunging down the mountainside into the swirling Urubamba river below, but that didn't seem to stop the bus drivers from going as fast as they could around the curves!

Once at Machu Picchu, our guided tour started. We took a few pictures, but after about 45 minutes of our guide repeating himself and us really not understanding much of what he was saying, we overheard that the Waynapicchu hike closed at 1pm. Since we didn't have time in our schedule to hike the 4-day Inca trail, we really wanted to hike Waynapicchu (the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu where there are MORE ruins), so we left our tour and literally ran to the trail head.

We were 10 minutes late, but after some pleading the man at the gate allowed us to climb. It was HARD. The hike took us straight up the mountainside with stone steps the whole way that were slippery from the rain. Those of you who have a fear of heights should not schedule that hike if you ever make it to Machu Picchu. We were very tired when we got to the top after about an hour of stair climbing, but the view was AMAZING! It's impossible to capture in pictures what it felt like to be standing among many the mountain peaks surrounded by a swirling mist and overlooking a city that was built hundreds of years ago. This was definitely the highlight of the trip!

Waynapicchu

We made it!

The view

Keri was a little nervous about going down this way!

C.J. on one of the terraces

After being wet from rain and sweat all day, riding the bus down the mountain, and a having a 4 hour train ride home, we were good and ready for a hot shower and BED! What an amazing day!

Here are some more pictures from the day:

Cuzco Day 1

As we said in our quick update, we had a great vacation in Cuzco starting last Friday and ending Monday morning. It was the experience of a lifetime! We're going to break it up into each main day of touring so we can include more pictures and you can pace yourselves!

On Friday morning, we flew from Lima to Cuzco, Peru after we fixed a tiny mishap because the travel agency booked us on separate flights for the way there. Keri's flight was what we expected, but C.J. was supposed to be on one that had left 2 hours before we arrived to the airport! Thankfully, we're in Peru, and all we had to do was pay $14 to change the ticket to the right flight. Our boarding passes were handwritten anyways, so it really wasn't a big problem, but it made us quite nervous for a little while.

Cuzco is a city in the Andes mountains at an altitude of about 11,500 ft and is famous for being the capital of the Incas. Everyone here warned us over and over about altitude sickness--a huge problem for tourists. We did okay with the altitude until later the first night, when we both had headaches. As suggested, we arrived to our hotel and slept for an hour. Then we went with Jean, a friend of someone at CASP to the travel agency to pay for our tours in Cuzco and start the city tour. The city tour lasted from about 1:30 in the afternoon until 6:30pm.

The first place we went was Qorikancha, which is a convent that was built by the Spanish conquistadors on top of a sacred Inca site. To show their dominance (and because the Incan construction was very solid), the Spanish built this and a lot of other Cathedrals right over top of the Incan temples as you can see below.

After Qorikancha and on other extremely huge and impressive cathedral with tons of beautiful artwork and colonial architecture (no pictures allowed), we headed out of the city a little bit to 3 different sites of ruins. Since you're going to be seeing a LOT of Incan ruins over the next few days (and they do start all looking very similar) we'll only talk about one today.

Saqsaywaman was the first ruins we visited. It is a huge site on some of the hills overlooking the city. One of the most impressive parts about this particular site was the HUGE rocks that were used to build the temple. The rock that C.J. is standing in front of in the picture below is over 100 tons, but we were told that it was dragged by hundreds of Incans from a quarry many miles away.

We look pretty small standing by 20 foot+ walls!

After the tour, we ate in our hotel restaurant and walked around the main square to buy some groceries and necessities for our trip to Machu Picchu the next day. We were TIRED and went to bed early in a haze from altitude sickness (we got up to about 3800 meters or almost 12,500ft that day), coca tea, and Dramamine for the headache. We're not really sure how strong (or narcotic) the coca tea was, but our eyes were really dilated...

Here are some additional pictures from the day:

Keri with one of the "locals". Only 1 sola per picture!

We were HIGH!

View of the city on our way back from the ruins

Quick update

We just wanted to let you know that we are safely back to Lima. No crazy delays in other countries this time, but we've really hit the ground (literally...sorry for the pun...) running at work again. We had a great vacation in Cuzco and will post pictures when we have time, but we've been getting emails wondering if we're back and wanted to update everyone. Below is one picture to whet your collective appetites a bit.

A bit of Machu Picchu

Back to Work

We're back at work today and feeling much better--thanks for all your prayers!

After being at home Thursday and Friday, we were ready to get out of the house on Saturday. We were both feeling much better and decided to head to Plaza San Miguel for a few hours in the morning. Plaza San Miguel is a decent sized mall about a 10 minute walk away.

After lunch, we went back to the Corner Bar to watch some more college football. We watched two games and had dinner but left before #1 and #2 both got upset. This season has been ridiculous, and it's going to be tough rooting for LSU... We both ate more "American" food at the bar, and my (C.J.) cheeseburger turned out to be a big mistake. I quickly reverted to the soup and bread diet but felt pretty bad again on Sunday.

It's a short week for us--we're really excited about leaving for Cuzco and Machu Picchu on Friday. I'm also excited that I'm going to get to play soccer twice this week. Santiago (the husband of the family we're living with) is going to take me to play futsal (very similar to indoor soccer) on Wednesday night and back to San Marcos University to play outdoors again. I mentioned that I played soccer in the last post, but I guess didn't say where I've been playing--Santiago is a professor at San Marcos and plays with other professors every Thursday. I guess I didn't mention that I went surfing either...I did...it was fun...I need to keep better track of what I've put on here!

So, it should be a really fun week. Please continue to pray for our health. We're really starting to miss all of the good food that we had the first couple of weeks--soup is getting pretty old. Also pray for our safety as we travel to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. This will be the first time that we're really alone in Peru! Get ready for lots of pictures again!

The picture below is us having ice cream at Larcomar, a mall built into the cliffs over the ocean in Mira Flores (probably the nicest part of Lima). As you can tell by the ice cream, this was before we got sick, but for the sake of a picture and to remember better gastrointestinal days...