Day 4- Markets, dancing and praying

Thanks to all for the continued supports through prayers and comments fellow Sunrise attenders and family. :)

Saturday, June 19, Day 4.

Everyone got to sleep in this morning about an hour, except Heather who slept in a little too late and missed her morning coffee. Bad for her, worse for us. ;) We got to sleep in because a trip to San Ricardo wasn't in our agenda. Instead, we ate a late breakfast, took a short bus ride to another section of Miraflores and had ourselves a great time wandering an ever-present market. Filled with purses, bags, scarves, food, shirts, jackets, hats, jewelry and trinkets of all shapes, sizes and colors I can safely assume that everyone on the Peru Mission team had a great time. Composed of four groups, each with a translator, we dispersed only to meet up later. From my (Tony) personal experiences, Laura is a very interesting person to shop with. She will spot something she just has to have from across the way and will have our translator, Daniel also known as "Tiburon" (Which means shark in spanish), haggle for a more than reasonable price. Then, just after she would hand the clerk her money, she would do a complete 180, see something she didn't see before, let out a little squeal and the haggling would start all over. Lucky for us, and Mitch, she forgot her credit card at the hotel. From our other perspective (Eric) we can only say that it was a wonder to behold Bethany haggle with her knack for creating original spanish words. Most everyone bought something today during our market time, even the repeat mission trip goers.

At 12, we took a couple of group pictures and made our way back to the bus. After a short return to the hotel to put our bags back in our rooms, we headed to Rustica for a peruvian style buffet lunch. We were introduced to a new drink, Chicha Morada, which is a purple corn juice. Then our attention was shifted to the buffet. Five tables loaded to the brim with mounds of food including, freedom fries, chicken, refried beans, salad, super spicy salsa, Lomo Saltado (Jumping Beef), rice pudding, Ahi De Gallina (A yellow pastey thing with chicken and pepper) and Ceviche (Raw fish marinated in lime juice along with other ocean critters). The quality of lunch was dwarfed in comparison to the after-lunch entertainment.

Three grown men climbed on top of the bar. One with an acoustic guitar, one with a drum contraption and one with a bass guitar. After warming up, a rogue singer walked in with make up smeared all over her face, "Like 60s Vegas" says Laura. "More like open mic night," says Eric. The singer sang two or three songs, one of them being her own rendition of Happy Birthday to a customer. We were just on the verge of requesting an Elvis impersonator when two salsa dancers, dressed in Baby Blue, joined her on stage. The dancers were quite the opposite of the singer. They were actually good entertainment. Hips swaying and arms flailing, the dancers danced and pranced their way into our hearts and memories. After their first song and dance was over, they decided that some help on stage would be nice.

Enter Laura.

The male dancer bent over and reached for Laura's hand and asked her for a dance. After some friendly encouragement from the team, she reluctantly made her debut. The lounge singer and other dancers gave her and the birthday boy quick salsa lessons complete with swaying hips and flailing arms. Laura was a little out of her element but made the best of her situation and I think that we can all agree that if the speech pathologist career choice doesn't work out for her she has something to fall back on. She was very gracious about it and laughed almost the whole time but was in no hurry to stay at the restaurant any longer.

With subtle pressure from Laura, we quickly made our way out of Rustica and back onto the bus. With one more trip back to the hotel we were on our way to Reina for an afternoon of hanging out with the girls and their babies. An important part of this day was interviewing the girls and taking their pictures and prayer request for our Reina de la Paz Prayer cards. After Heather interviewed them with help from Carolina, the girls were sent to the auditorium to pray with Laura, Bethany and Kay. This is something that we have done every year and as Bethany said, "It was an honor to pray for and with these girls." Many of the girls asked for prayer for wisdom, patience and to be good mothers. All requested prayers for their children. What was really humbling, and shocking, was the prayers that some of the girls had for the people in their lives that had hurt them -- prayers for love, prayers for forgiveness and prayers for protection. Some of the girls will be leaving Reina this year and they often do not have any idea what they will do following their departure. Please be praying for them and their futures and how we can best help them.

The rest of the time we played approx. 216 games of volleyball. This is the other side of spending time with them, playing games and laughing and getting to be teenage girls. After some more visiting and photos with them and their babies we piled back onto the bus and made our way, one final time, back to the hotel.

After a ten minute break, everyone regrouped back in the lobby and walked to Vivaldino's, a very nice restaurant, in Larco Mar. We ate a wonderful dinner, some patrons tried the octopus the restaurant had as a appetizer. I (Tony) thought it tasted like a chewy black olive. I hate olives. Then it was back to the hotel for a 10 p.m. meeting for devotions and debrief from the day. A special guest was waiting for Kay in the hotel lobby; a guest from the first year mission trip.

Ana Maria was at Reina the very first year Sunrise came to Peru. Ana Maria had declared Kay the Godmother of her daughter, Valery. Kay has kept in touch with her over the years as best as she can. It was a special reunion for both of them. Ana Maria was able to meet Kay's family (Derek, Heather, Larry) and the rest of the team.

We look forward to going to an authentic Peruvian church in the morning before we head to San Ricardo. It's about midnight and we are quite tired so we must be leaving you now. We say hi to everyone.

As the man in the stocking cap once said, "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!"