God Blessed My Sole!

Catching y´all up on the recent misadventures, I suppose I should start from my departure out of San Jose Costa Rica. After saying goodbye to my new dear friends (casey, whit, carol, and saaarah) the morning of the 15th, I had a few hours to poke around the city of SJ for a bit before my flight at 2... Mitch (our Dominical travel buddy) and I got some time watching What Women Want at our hostel - don´t judge - and then it was off for a 32 hour sprint towards Trujillo.

Bus to Airport... Plane to Miami... 6 Hr layover... Chili´s and beer for dinner... Plane to Lima... land at 430... AM... sleep in airport for 3 hrs... no cash... only gringo in sight... bum 2 soles off a woman for bus to Miraflores... bus to miraflores (craziness, to be explained later)... get there.. still no cash... no atm card (remember)... no open bank... wait outside bank.. get cash, only after seemingly EVERYONE in the bank had to inspect my passport.. my drivers license.. my credit card.. check my eye color.. sniff my butt.. apparently its standard in peru.. i dunno, chalk another one up to a cultural experience i guess. Ha.. but seriously people. Moving on.. finally got cash... get on internet.. call my orphanage contact back home and say ´whuddup, i´m so lost!´... her answering machine apparently couldn´t answer my questions, so it was off for another adventure! Found a bus..

... ok, before mentioning busses anymore, i really feel I should explain just exactly what I mean when I say.. bus. Really peruvian busses are more like what we would know as 12 person vans. You think, ok, they probably just don´t have that many people in need of public transportation, makes sense right?? FALSE!! These vans.. painted in all kinds of different funky colors (which i´ve come to find out represents the district of the city it serves), apparently do not have a limit to how many can fit... just when i think, ´ok, there´s NO WAY anyone else can get in´.. another 6 jump on, another butt in your face... So you´ve got the driver, and then you´ve got the ´caller´... this fellow is surely the most entertaining of the two. With 25+ people awkwardly squished inside, he´s the dude hanging out the gaping door (ya, the door is open almost always) yelling our destination to the people on the street.. So we got this guy hanging off the side of the car, sorry, van, while speeding 30+ mph through incredible amounts of traffic missing other vans by inches at most... these guys are crazy! It was great, my first time was the most akward (thatswhatshesaid) because i literally had no choice but to sit on some old mans lap.. for 30 minutes! Throw a white beard on that dude and I woulda had my whole christmas wish list done and done! So the driver has one goal, get there (wherever the heck ´there´is!) and get there FAST! They have these time card things that the ´caller´stamps at various locations and then yells out the time to the driver.. its pretty funny, them trying to beat their own time and all. Allora.. enough of that!

So where was i?! Ah yes... taking the bus from Mira flores.. oh by the way, this is after being at the internet joint sitting right next to a guy snorting coke.. haha.. and he had a pretty interesting choice of career.. haha.. i´ll explain later if u want. He was actually a pretty nice guy, really interested in my travels, where i was from, my favorite color etc... Tangents!! stayfocusedluke!

The bus from Miraflores to Trujillo i thoguht was at 1259, so appropriately i showed up at the station (after an incredible 3 course lunch for 5 SOLES!! aka $1.75!!) at around 1201.. turns out i had been dealt some misinformation and the bus was actually to leave at 1159! (keep in mind, my WHOLE time in peru, I haven´t meet a single person who speaks a lick of english.. seriously.. and my spanish is terrible, which makes for even more misadventures). I get there and the bus is in dock waiting to leave.. the lady yells to the operator to ALTO EL AUTOBUS! The next one was in 4ish hours, and I had people waiting on the other end... I got my ticket.. climbed on up.. and spent the next 9 hours on a bus.. not a van.. a bus.. the G5 of busses in fact, it was pretty nice! I´m on a bus.. I´m on a bus!!

It being several days ago, it isnt as fresh as it was, but I remember this bus ride as being really the first time I had committed a significant amount of thought to what I was getting myself into. Up until this point it was all about the adventure, the unknown, until now that was, i seemed faced with the reality of it all. I spent much of this ride in prayer, prayer for the kids I was about to love, prayer for my fellow volunteers, prayer for my sustained energy (at this point i had been traveling for 25+ hrs with little-no sleep), praises to Him who up to this point had led me safely to this place where I was to be His hands, His voice, His love.. to these kids. I told the Lord that I trusted Him with whatever plans he may have for this month.. for my life. Saying this I couldn´t help but struggle a bit over my words... This bothered me, the fact that I couldn´t say with confidence that I fully, 100% trusted Him with my life. I spent time thinking and praying about this... thinking about how its scary to lend complete confidence and trust in one being. Its hard to put into words i´m now realizing, but i guess its as simple as saying that with this trust, came an equal amount of fear.. fear for where that trust might lead me. Fear that trusting in Him might mean going down a path i haven´t yet realized, a path much different than my own. And I came to the conclusion that... It´s OK LUKE!! What would this kind of trust be without fear?!? We are called to fear Him! So.. it became reality.. a beautifully mysterious reality it was still.. but a mystery that I now ´felt´ for maybe the first time as i crawled northward along the Peruvian coast towards my new home.

I rolled into Trujillo around 9, grabbed my stuff, wandered off the bus to a crowd of about 9 volunteers all there for my arrival! (actually they were saying goodbye to one of the longterm volunteers as well, but it made me feel special nonetheless) haha..

So now i´m here... I´ll save the details of the orphanage for another time...

However, Sunday was filled with church (all in spanish.. gah), and then a trip to Pacasmayo beach!

I´m 5 minutes late for work, so I ought to go, but now that i´m here, and have access to a computer, i´ll try and throw another one up in a day or so...

Love to you all!! I love all your comments and am excited to share with you stories about the kiddos! Maybe I can actually learn how to throw up a picture or two... that would be awesome!

Keepin it fresh!

luke