A Place to Serve, at Last

We had lunch, met some brothers and sisters in Christ, and rested a bit, but we weren't finished traveling. We all took a deep breath, and made a determined pace toward the bus. We got as far as the sidewalk. A parade was passing in front of Pastor Pablo's house.

A line of mini-sub-compact cars were decorated with tissue paper in all sorts of styles held on with packing tape. One looked like a tank, another had Disney characters on it, still another had tiger stripes. Each car had a boombox taped to its roof blaring music or prose appropriate to its design. Children dressed to match the cars walked in front, along side, or behind. We were excited to see that the Pastor had arranged such a nice greeting for us-not really, we knew it was for Independence Day. Boy did we ever. We 'celebrated' for seven hours in Lima.

OK, now we're on the bus. We move through the hilly, narrow streets of Arequipa, out on to a highway through rolling, dusty hills below Mount Misti (the snow capped volcano that overlooks the city) then down switchbacks through a valley and back up again on to a desolate plateau. Yes, I did say snow capped. Remember we are at the edge of the Andes mountains. They are tall so snow collects on their peaks.

The close up view of the terrain on the plateau confirmed the impression from the sky; no evidence of plant or animal life, just rocks, sand, and dust and a long straight ribbon of asphalt. The road was sparsely traveled, few car and trucks, no houses at its sides. Somewhere in the middle was a gas station. Other than that the only signs of life were in the canyons. We would see a cliff approaching, then we'd be on a downgrade into a green valley. Houses and stores were perched on the hillside. The road was against a cliff straight up on the right and straight down on the left. We crossed a river then up the other side and on to the next plateau.

After two hours of travel, Pastor pointed to street lights across the last canyon and told us that was Pedregal. About 20 minutes later, well after sundown, we stopped in front of a hostel and checked in. Rooms were spartan-beds were locally made and slept better than an airplane seat. Some of us had a little hot water in our showers. Toilets were of the bowl style, like we use in the US, but seats were optional and usually opted out. Out of necessity we got used to using the toilets that way. Details will be left to the imagination of the reader. Many children in Peru will grow up wondering why there are two holes behind the toilet bowl. On the subject of toilets, I have determined that the water vortex circles clockwise into some drains but counter clockwise into others. My data for this research seems inconclusive.

After check in we loaded the bus and went to dinner served by a local church. A member of this church cooked our lunches and dinners Saturday through Wednesday. Team members named this the Dinner Church.