Kimber's Peru Mission Trip

With excitement, nervousness and anticipation I (Kimber) set off for a return trip to Peru. This time was not for vacation but to participate in the creation of a relationship between Webster Presbyterian Church from Houston area with a small Presbyterian church in Ayaviri, Puno Peru.  This small church is part of the Iglesia Evangelica Presbiteriana church of Peru.  The Hamiltons remain connected to the Webster church through the Associate Pastor Helen DeLeon who invited us to participate in this adventure.  Kirk does not have the same amount of vacation as I do and Sidney was not able to participate because of her age.  Our opportunity to go to Peru and Ayaviri was due to the coordination of the Presbyterian Mission Agency and specifically Sara Armstrong and her husband Rusty Edmonson in Lima and Helen and her on the ground work from two previous Peru trips. 

Sara and Rusty have been serving in Peru since 2009 and are masters of organization, translation, logistics in order to facilitate and coordinate visits by delegations (visiting churches) to their partner churches. The goal is never a one time visit but to be able to build relationships between churches and people that will stand over time.  The work that Sara and Rusty do impacts the lives of many by helping to build bridges between diverse people and cultures. Sara and Rusty are amazing people.

Ayaviri is located in southern Peru and is home to around 20,000 people.  It certainly does not appear to have that many people. Most roads aren’t paved and there is a single light.  It is a small and poor farming community. But is it home to the small Presbyterian church, a Catholic Church of course, and the farm run by the Presbyterian church. The main language is Quechua.

We were also required to read “When Helping Hurts” about short and long term mission trips and the potential cost of those trips to the “help” receivers if thought about sustaining and appropriate relationships doesn’t occur. 

The church in Ayaviri

I departed for my adventure on July 1 from San Antonio. I managed to just make my connection in Houston to catch up with the rest of the team coming from the Houston area.  We arrived into Lima at 10 pm and it took about 2 hours to clear passport control, get bags and clear customs.  So we arrived at our hotel, Casa Kolping in the Magdalena area of Lima at around midnight. Just FYI a single room here costs about $16. A triple costs about $36.  The hotel was fine as far as clean and in a good area of Lima.  But the bed was as hard as a rock so I didn’t sleep much that first short night.  Additionally, we were on the 3^rd floor of course and there are not elevators so it is haul stuff up and then back down.

Lima itself never sleeps.  There is traffic and noise always.  We passed some road construction and the barrels used to mark the area are actual barrels (the kind that stuff comes in), with a reflective stripe glued or painted on. Construction is also occurring on nearly every block in Lima. It is a rapidly growing city. There are already an estimated 9 million people in Lima but 15 million electricity meters are read each month.

Saturday

We got up Saturday morning and prepared for the next step in our adventure.  The hotel had a lovely garden that we noticed in the morning while eating what would be our standard breakfast fare, coffee and rolls with butter.  The coffee was typical for Peru.  A very strong liquid coffee is in one small pot and hot water in another. To make a cup of coffee you put a tablespoon or two of the coffee into a cup and top it up with water. 

After breakfast a couple of us went for a short walk to the store and around the block.  The store in this area was very nice and similar to a very small store in the US.

After our walk, we began our education. Sara and Rusty provided the majority of our education on Peru while a leader of the Presbyterian church in Lima provided some history of the church there.  First we learned about the water in Peru and its affect on populations.  Over 1/3 of the people of Peru live in Lima but there is very little water.  The majority of water that falls in Peru as either rain or snow falls in the Andes and flows east into the Amazon area.  It is expected because of this that Lima will be one of the first cities to begin to de-populate due to lack of water.  Additionally, water is poor quality all over Peru and is unsafe to drink. We also learned about the Time of Terror and the affect on people.  The Communist Party of Peru, know as the Shining Path launched internal conflict in Peru in 1980 attempting to establish a dictatorship using brutality and fear.  Many people fled their villages in fear for their lives creating many of the shantytowns around Lima and other large cities.  Our education ended with a story about Brother Mouse and Brother Elephant. Brother Elephant and Brother Mouse were best friends.  Brother Elephant wanted to throw a party so he invited many friends including Brother Mouse.  Everyone danced until late in the night and fell asleep.  Brother Elephant said goodbye to all his friends in the morning but Brother Mouse was missing.  Brother Elephant finally found Brother Mouse trampled on the floor.  The story is meant to describe American short-term missionaries.  They come in, dance and save the day but the people left behind feel trampled and worn.  We were taught to focus each day on the people and the relationships.  The work was second.  To be successful over the long term we needed to take it slow and steady with patience and love.

Our goal is not to do something fast and furious that the people of the church can do themselves.  They are very capable of building chairs.  Most people have built their own chairs.  Our goal was to work side by side in communion on a project that would help the church grow in both numbers and faith with each other.  We would be used to challenge the church, men and women, to commit to the church and its growth and to become people who were right with God, right with the church, right with each other, and right with the world.

We headed back to the Lima airport to catch our flight to Cusco.  Our flight was delayed so it took some extra time to get there.  We didn’t arrive at Hotel “San Juan Masias” until nearly 5 pm.  Everyone was at least on the second floor but there were already people suffering the effects of high altitude.  The altitude in Cusco is 11,200 feet.  Fortunately I felt fine, I just found myself more easily winded. 

We wandered around for a while looking for a restaurant that could accommodate us all as we were so late.  I think this wore everyone down but we did finally get to a place that had nice soups and simple main courses.  I had a nice dinner of asparagus soup and fried trout. Dinner was where the high altitude casualties started and they continued for the next two days.  Some had vomiting or extreme fatigue, headaches and dizziness.  You can buy small bottles of oxygen there that can be used similar to an inhaler.  Several people needed these. 

We also met Manuel and Urpi at dinner.  Manuel would help us with translation and Urpi would be our chief healer and head the kitchen. Urpi is short for Uripicha which means heart if the dove. Urpi showed time and time again that she was one of the most beautiful people, inside and out, that I have ever met.  Her food was nourishing, healthy and good and the love that went into it could not have been greater.  She coached many of the illest team member how to breathe and take care of them selves.  

Our hotel was simple but clean with heat and hot running water.  The hotel is run by Dominican nuns on the grounds of a busy private school.  It is also near to the Plaza De Armas, the central plaza in the area.  I slept much better and felt well rested for the next day’s adventure.

Sunday

We were up early for our 5-hour bus ride to Ayaviri.  Our goal was to get there by noon to celebrate the end of worship.  However you can’t predict the travels from Cusco to Ayaviri for several reasons including the continuing affects of altitude on some of our members, the winding road, and the traffic.  We had a member get sick very early in the ride so we took an early break to rest and stretch our legs.  We also took this at the lowest altitude on the ride, maybe 9000 feet to allow everyone a few extra molecules of oxygen.  Urpi lead us in some nice breathing exercises before we piled back on the bus. 

Abigail

The ride was both windy and winding.  And of course it was beautiful.  The green we experienced on our Christmas trip where we traveled the same route was replaced with gold and brown of winter.  But the mountains were still majestic and beautiful. We saw a fox with about an hour of travel left.  He was up in the high flats.  We later learned that once the fox ran across the road, the driver slowed down because the fox was telling the driver there was danger from the wind.  And there were very substantial winds including swirling winds near to Ayaviri.  There were several birds we had seen before plus a new one I had not seen.

We made it to Ayaviri safely, 48 hours after we began our travels.  One small snag was that because we were late, we went straight to the church and the bus had been paid to deliver us to one place so we had to offload all of our things from the bus and store them before we could join church.  We were about a ½ hour late but the church was still waiting.  We did our greetings and all introduced ourselves.  We would start and end each day with greetings for the rest of the trip. The church members did as well and then we spent the next 30 minutes saying hello to everyone.  This illustrated the point that hello comes first and work comes second. 

The kitchen and bathrooms

After church we ate pasta with carrots, onions, garlic, and chicken with the church members.  The food was surprisingly good but in portions enough to feed two at least.  Several of us weren’t very hungry due to travel weariness and fatigue. Two church members have cars and offered to take all of our things to the church.  Two of us went in the first cars of things to help unload.  We were the healthiest feeling ones.  I was in a car fully loaded with luggage with 4 adults and three kids.  It was like a clown commercial where you just keep stuffing people and things in.  Others came by Tuk-Tuk, a small three wheeled motorcycle car than can carry three people if they like each other. Our hotel was the “Hotel Lumonosa”.  It had no heat and extremely limited-to-no hot water. It was located on the square though and clean. Oh and of course half of us were on the third floor again and of course there is not an elevator.

Those who were well and adventurous wandered around the square before dinner. We met a couple of young leaders of a Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) who were leading a group of students in a mission in the villages for two weeks.  This group has been working in the region for several years.  They were staying at a dorm owned by the Catholic Church and it was just across the square from our hotel. One of the leaders of the group had been a college basketball player.  I was extremely short in comparison. Talking to them touched my heart and brightened my day.

Some of the chair and table parts

We ate dinner in town, the only night we did so. We had semolina soup for an appetizer followed by an omelet and potato and rice. I passed on the omelet.  We went back to church for an evening worship where there was a great deal of singing and praying all in in Quechua and Spanish. The keyboard player, Antonio, plays only the chords for each song. Sometimes he plays them at the right time but it is happy music anyway.  Middle C has fallen off the keyboard he uses. 

I entertained Abigail, a four year old girl in the church, with a sticky note.  I am certain she had never seen such a thing.  We stuck it to our noses and chins and after the sticky wore off we folded it into a fortune teller. We had a devotion and then the challenge began. Antonio, the keyboard player, is also the master carpenter.  He designed the chairs and had all the parts milled.  He spoke to the congregation and indicated that he and others were somewhat afraid of us.  That broke our heart.  We want to serve and love, not inspire fear.  We had our work cut out, not just physical labor but acts of love. The leaders of the church Moses and Aaron (yes that is correct, Aaron is the Pastor and Moses is the elected lay elder) issued a challenge to the members of the church.  The challenge was that we weren’t there to work alone.  This was the project of the church and the members were expected to be with us and participate in the building of the chairs and tables.  The challenge had a hidden meaning as well.  The church has struggled in recent years with attendance and participation.  This project was an attempt to start new and fresh and to bring members back fully to the church. Moses and Aaron are strong Godly men trying to guide and lead thier flock to be stronger Christians.  They are truly men who are chasing God's heart and growing n faith and love.  I am blessed to have met them.

We finally headed back to the hotel.  The sun had long since set and it was below freezing.  It is winter there right now and we were at 13,000 feet. Everything was cold.  Our rooms, our beds, our clothes…..

Monday

Breakfast this morning was rolls with butter and either scrambled or fried eggs with tea and coffee. At this hotel we had instant coffee.  After breakfast some of us, again the well ones, walked to the church. It was a nice walk and we got to see some of the town, encounter kids and other residents of the town.  We were stared at wherever we went.  A gaggle of Norte Americanos walking down the street.  The others took Tuk-Tuks again but we still beat them to church.

We started the morning, after passing around greetings of course, with a chair building demo by Antonio which took two hours. I had already figured out how they went together but patience is a virtue I need to practice. Antonio also carefully spelled out what was women’s work (the sanding and filing) and what was men’s work (the fitting, gluing and squaring). I did actually try to stick to women’s work but you know. We worked in teams then to build chairs. We tried to make sure all the teams were a mix of Americans and Peruvians.

After our demo we built chairs until 2 and had soup for lunch with an appetizer of carrots, tomatoes, celery, onion, peas and garlic salsa. The soup had local squash, potatoes, onion, large green leaf, carrot, quinoa and chicken feet. We were not served chicken feet. Those were saved for the Peruvians which they loved.  I learned quicly to ask for small portions. Towards the end the Peruvian cooking ladies started to say, “She doesn’t eat much, does she?”  But seriously, they had huge bowls and I just can’t eat that much at once. Nothing went to waste though.  The ladies put everything left over into bags to take home.

We took a break after lunch for a rest, then kicked in again. We had three teams working on chairs in the morning and added a team in the afternoon.  Those who weren’t working on chairs worked in the kitchen or played with kids or simply held us in prayer or made sure we took breaks and drank water. We built 20 chairs that day. We had 20 more to build and then we need to lightly sand and varnish them.

Dinner was chicken wrapped around veggies in broth with rice and peas. It was amazing. We then had devotional with our friends.  Tonight at least the stories indicated the tall people weren’t so bad.  But a challenge was issued, from Antonito and using us as an excuse, that our workmanship need to stay high quality and members needed to continue to participate. He also challenged all of us that he didn’t think we would get done. Then we went back to our not-as-cold tonight hotel for some rest.

Tuesday

Breakfast was rolls and "oatmeal". The oatmeal was good, tasting similar to American oatmeal but creamier and you drink it. By the way, the average rural Peruvian does not use silverware. They have used it sometimes around us and sometimes not. Think spaghetti and rice with fingers. We were always given some. We brought several dozen forks and spoons which we left there.  We explained that when people like us come, we want to use silverware. Also the cooking team made a strong effort to serve vegetables. Vegatables are not a normal part of a Peruvian diet but every meal had veggies while we were there. The cooking was coordinated by Urpi. All I can say us the food was fantastic.  One more amazing thing is that we had planned for enough food for just our team for lunch and dinner. Yet every meal had at least twice our number and we never ran out of food.  All I can think are the loaves and the fishes. 

We headed to the church after breakfast, enjoying the sun on our walk. We finished building the chairs and started 2 tables. We also got most of the chairs sanded for a first pass.  We finished the day with 8 tables to build plus a more sanding and varnishing. 

The chairs and tables were very simply constructed.  For the chairs, there were four legs, two short for the front and two taller for the back.  Then there were three different pieces used to put it all together.  There was one front seat support, two side seat supports, three bottom rails (each side and the front) and the four pieces that built the back (two at the top for the back support, one for seat support and one bottom rail).  The wood was very pretty and everything had been milled.  We did need to round off the edges of the tenon and clean out the mortise.  The tenons were square cut and the mortises had been drilled.  Sometimes we also needed to remove some tenon because the fit was too tight.  We would build a front and a back and then join those.  Each section was squared up and when everything was fit, glued and square, we nailed on the seat. 

The tables were also simple. In this case there were four legs and four top supports, two long and two short.  The tenons also needed to be filed to fit the mortise and in this case we went for a looser fit because we saw early that the wood would split if the fit was too tight.  Once everything was fit, glued and squared, we would put four screws in each corner through each tenon and mortise.  Out system this time was a team would dry fit a table and then pass it to another team who would glue and square.  Finally a third team would put in the screws.  Most of the Peruvians had not seen an electric drill before so we spent a great deal of time on education.  We did not have the table tops yet so we couldn’t put those on.

There were a few more kids today so they played with the chalk and made friendship bracelets. They drew pictures and colored the concrete on the bottom of the sanctuary.  In my mind that is loving God’s house as it should be.  We also worked outside all day. It was warm and sunny and by now most people were feeling OK.  But we needed sunblock and water. The sun is intense at that altitude.

Antonio providing instruction

Lunch was soup with carrot, onion, squash and cheese for the appetizer. The cheese is referred to as squeaky cheese. It does squeak a bit when you chew it but it was good. The main course was beets, cucumbers with tomato, and the stuffed potato. The stuffed potato is a mixture of meat, peas, carrots, a hardboiled egg and an olive all wrapped in mashed potato and fried. We had this before in Peru. Another good but a huge meal.

Dinner was spaghetti. Dessert was a rice pudding and of course tea. We were discovering Antonio is a tough guy to please. He has enormous attention to detail but again I also think we were his excuse to challenge the church members to participate and participate fully. 

Ladies preparing the chicken feet for soup

We walked around the square after dinner for a while. You can buy anything you need on the square from the vendors and booths.  There was the tool section, the electronics section, the music and video section, the bread market, the fruits and veggies along with grains and potatoes.  There is also the meat section, clothing section and the tiniest fish section.  It is fantastic to wander around looking at things.  You won’t see the same thing twice. It gets dark and cold so all we want to do is sleep. Tomorrow is our last day of work. Most everyone is adjusted enough to the altitude and can eat and not be ill. I could probably run but am not to go out by myself.

 

The horns on the buses sound like sirens and are annoying.  They start at 7 am and go until 10 or so. The walls of the hotel are as thin as a tent.  So you can hear everything inside and out.  I took the fastest and coldest shower ever.  I thought I was going to freeze. 

Wednesday

Breakfast was rolls, cheese, and quinoa with apples. Delicious. Over breakfast we brainstormed ideas for the next trip that Helen could talk with the Peruvians about. We talked about a kitchen, bathrooms, common area, or playground.  We also talked about various classes including nutrition and cooking. We could have some team members who worked on physical labor while others taught the women and children.

 

We worked on tables all morning. Got 7 complete and all dry fit before lunch. Others sanded and varnished the chairs.  We were racing the weather today as it was going to rain in the afternoon.  We also were preparing our hearts and minds for the farewell that would occur after dinner. 

Helen met with Moses and Aaron while we worked and amazingly they had the same ideas on their heart as we had.  We will see what happens over time.  Is the church there committed to growth and renewal and do they have the funding necessary to allow us to meet in the middle?

Lunch was mutton with beets and red peppers and potato, some hot veggie mix. The sheep was alive in the morning out on the farm. We all got a small part with bones. I couldn't figure out what part I had. It had some tubes on it still. The flavor was good but the meat was tough. I took 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies with me to share with the Ayaviri team and Webster team.  We polished those off after lunch. I brought abut three boxes per day unitl now.

After lunch I swept and mopped the kitchen. The floor is concrete and was very dirty. I am actually not sure it was much cleaner when we finished. The first step was to sweep.  Then we used the same brooms to sweep with a bunch of soapy water to “mop” or basically scrub the floor.  After that there was a good bucket of water on the floor, which we mopped up with a couple of rags. We worked around the remaining sheep parts (heart, lungs, etc) and other things like potatoes, veggies and eggs.  It was interesting to see the inside of the simple kitchen.  There is no running water.  Everything is washed in buckets outside. There is a small wooden table.  There wasn’t even a cutting board until we bought one in the market.  There are also simple stoves, almost like camping stoves that use propane bottles.  Very few houses outside of Lima and even in Lima have piped gas.  There were no ovens. The fact that they turned such amazing food out of this simple kitchen in such huge volumes was amazing. 

Chalk art on the side of the church

We got a first coat of lacquer on all the chairs and all the tables built except for tops.  We did a lot of cleaning up and then I made bracelets with the kids. Dinner was chicken with rice and sweet potatoes. No desert and of course tea. We did have purple Chicha (chicha morada) every day after lunch. Chicha is made by boiling purple corn. After lunch we also had a very small portion of a liquor like anise (called Anisette). It was similar to Ouzo and the only thing we saw anyone drink in the church that had alcohol.  The Presbyterians there do not drink.

We attended our farewell service after dinner.  We all sang nice songs and exchanged presents. We gave notes from VBS, crosses, Texas bags, bracelets, etc. The church gave us hand made Alpacas. It was a fitting farewell.  Antonio thanked us for our work and with happy but also sad hearts we made one last trek back to the hotel.  It was hard to believe the trip was nearly finished. 

Musician on the bus

Thursday

Breakfast was salty, very bad quinoa and potatoes with fried squeaky cheese. The potatoes and cheese were good.  Then we loaded and boarded the bus. It was a very small bus and all of our luggage had to go on top. I hoped it didn't rain or the stuff come off.   We then put 27 people (several church members joined us) on a 19 passenger bus and went to a rock formation near Ayaviri called Tinajani.  There are a number of stories about the name but one part of the word means receptacle and the other is the rock that can be used to dye wool blue.  It was a beautiful place.  Several of us took advantage of the extra red blood cells we had been building and tried to keep up with the kids climbing.  We still huffed and puffed. 

At Rachi

We took  the church members back to Ayaviri and said our last goodbye before we started the ride home.  We learned a bit more about the farm on the way but we didn’t get to stop. The farm had 26 sheep until we ate one. It has 6 milk cows. It also had a hectare of oats but lost them to the freeze. Kindergarten being built here and the buildings have plaster and wood floors.

Moses' Car

We made a very short stop at Kunurana church where there was a small flurry of snow.  This was at 13160 feet.  We then stopped for lunch at Rinconcito Langueno restaurant in Sicuani where we had fantastic grilled fish.  Each of us got our own fish and there were cats everywhere.  There were also potatoes that are naturally freeze-dried in the field then reconstituted to cook and eat.  They apparently last like seven years. We stopped at Rachi which was an important Inca and Wari trade center.  We had stopped there during Christmas as well but I did get to see some parts I had not seen before.  We also picked up a hitch-hiking banjo playing singer in Rachi.  Apparently he rides around in buses, sings and plays his banjo like instrument then passes his hat.  He gets off and then back onto another bus.  It was very dark on the last few hours into Cusco and the stars were stunning. 

Because we were running late, two of us volunteered to be late to dinner in order to go unload bags at the hotel while everyone else started dinner.  I was happy to unload bags as I already had the experience of Cuy (cooked Guinea Pig).  We did join the rest at La Casona del Inka as soon as we were offloaded.  The restaurant had only OK food but the view of Cusco was beautiful.  You could see the whole city. The nice restaurant has a toilet with no seat that you flush with a pitcher of water.   From Cusco to Ayaviri, back to Cusco most toilets did not have a seat. 

We spent the night at Hostel San Juan Masias again.  It has heat and hot water.  As a matter of fact our room had no cold water. Oh the irony. My room slept like lumps on logs.  Our last bed for 48 hours.

Friday

Gift from the church to Webster

We saw the Machu Picchu group off after breakfast.  I also finally got to see David, our beloved guide from our Christmas trip.  We traded gifts, I brought things for his son and he brought an alpaca bear for Sidney, a weaving of the church in his town and a lovely pillow cover.  We also met Esther.  Esther was staying at the hotel and overheard us talking about God.  She came up to us and told us that she had been praying that she would meet other followers of Christ that day.  It was wonderful.  We also got to see the school at the hotel/nunnery in action.  The kids were all in the central courtyard in their uniforms singing songs.  It was fabulous.

We got checked in at Cusco airport. I bought a Pukara bull like the ones Peruvians put on their house for good luck, earrings, and Inca corn. I also dined on an empanadas de rocoto. It was an empanada stuffed with meat, cheese, veggies and spicy peppers.  It was so good.

Peruvian Air flights look like old Southwest planes. We caught our flight back to Lima.  We visited Sara and Rusty’s house there to drop off Vicky who was very ill.  We went to eat lunch and a great little sandwich shop. It was very close to where we stopped on our previous trip to fill Sidney up with churros.  The construction that was going on before is complete and there is a very nice walkway and bike lane. 

We went shopping at the market in Mira Flores area. We picked up Vicki and finished our trip with a visit to the Larco Museum where we walked around for an hour before dining on a delicious meal at the restaurant there. The Larco museum is a great Peruvian history museum. One thing that is unique is that they display everything they have in possession of the museum.  The archives are in glass front cases and include 40,000 pots. We headed off to the airport to catch our delayed flight took that took off at 12:40 am on Saturday.

View of Cusco at night

Amazingly I slept for most of the flight, which I needed.  We arrived in Houston on time, which is good because I had TSA difficulties.  They couldn’t get any of their machines to run.  Plus I had to unpack my tightly packed backpack.  Oh well.

Panorama of Tinajani

I am hoping and praying about the next opportunity.  I hope we can build a long-term relationship with this church and that we can support each other through the ups and downs.  I am so blessed to have been able to participate in this trip.  I can’t thank Helen, Sara, Rusty, Manuel, Urpi, Moses, Aaron and others enough for the work they did to make this trip reality. 



Kirk and Kimber are off to Austria in four days.  We will meet Sidney in Vienna where she will be coming down from Norway. We will be spending 2 weeks there participating in a choral festival.  It should be an amazing experience and we will get to spend some time with a few members of our Katy church family.