I made it back!

I made it back from my Peru adventure Saturday afternoon. The trip home was long and tough even though each individual flight went smoothly. Mark & I got up Friday morning and checked out of our hotel in Cuzco. After having one last breakfast with friends at "The Meeting Place" cafe, we went to the airport and checked in. We flew on TACA, which years ago jokingly stood for "Take A Chance Airlines". Now, however, they fly new, very clean and professional planes. When we landed in Lima, I knew that we faced an 11 hour layover, but I wasn't worried. I have had extended layovers in Lima before and I had been introduced by my friend Matt Wilkie to LarcoMar, which is a large, three level American style mall with everything you would expect to find in a mall. We even had the taxi situation nailed because Joel, who organized our adventure called a taxi driver friend of him and had him wait for us with a sign with our names on it when we came out of the baggage claim area. We felt like VIPs when Luis, in his black suit, whisked us away from the unwashed hordes who were resigned to flagging down cabs. We even arranged for him to come back and pick us up at 8:30 that night to take us back to the airport.

We had lunch at Chili's and went to a movie, Crazy Heart (or Loco Corazone). It was in English with Spanish sub-titles. Ok, as an aside, I am accumulating too many of these stories to be funny any more. When I bought the tickets, the young lady asked me if I qualified for the senior discount. I said, "Yo tengo cinquenta y tres anos. " (Which being interpreted means, "I'm fifty freaking three years old. If that qualifies for a senior discount, then sign me up. I just hiked the Inca Trail, for pete's sake.) She just smiled and said that I owed for a full price ticket. Anyway, it served to use up more than 2 hours of our layover time. Neither of us are much in the way of shoppers, so we wandered around until we had time to eat supper and meet Luis for our return to el aeropuerto. He was there right on time and there was no tension in the cab ride, unlike many I have experienced in Peru.

When we were reunited with our luggage, which we had stored at a paid storage area at the airport, we found that our flight had been delayed from 11:55pm to 2:25am. Before it was all over, departure time was closer to 3:45am. I sacked out for an hour or so in an airport chair, but It was still rough to get around when flight time came. On the flight I just wanted to sleep, so I did that as much as I could. When we arrived in Houston, we went through passport control and customs without any problems. The only problem was that we had nearly three hours to wait for our plane to OKC, so I ended up laying on the floor in a hallway for a couple of hours while I waited. The flight to OKC was only an hour long, but I smelled bad, my teeth need brushing, I needed a good meal and a good night's sleep. All of them were waiting for me at home. After a hot shower, a meal, and good conversation with my favorite person in the world, (Carole, in case you were wondering) I enjoyed a great night's sleep. And to top it off, I got to see my church friends this morning. What a great trip!

I saw something I liked today

Today I saw something I liked. As I have traveled around the world it is very common to see children on the street selling something or begging. It is also very common to see those same children treated rudely or ignored. I know that they suffer every kind of abuse imagineable as they scrape together a living, sometimes under the pressure of an adult who takes advantage of them. By necessity, I have to say no to the vast majority of their requests to buy something or to let them shine my shoes, but I always try to be kind in the way I say no. Many times my kindness means that they persist much longer than if I were rude, but I cannot bring myself to send them away rudely or just ignore them. Several times on this trip I have purchased trinkets or had my shoes shined. I guess I have a yes face.

Today I seated myself on a window ledge outside of a store while those I was walking with were inside. It was a beautiful clear day and people were everywhere. I watched them come and go. Across the street from where I was seated there was an upscale panaderia, or bakery. The folks who entered this bakery wore the uniform of the well to do. I was not paying any particular attention to the panaderia until I heard someone whistle the type of whistle used to get someones attention. I looked for the source of the whistle and saw a man in white, wearing a bakers hat emerge from a side door. He was whistling at a couple of boys, maybe 10 or 12 years ole. The boys stopped and looked at the man. I saw him hand the boys a couple of baked items, bread of some sort. One boy took the bread, and handed a piece to his friend. The man disappeared back into the door, the boys began to eat the bread and the whole episode was over in much less time than it took to tell it.

A smile crossed my face as I watched that simple act of kindness. I thanked God that I had the opportunity to sit on a window ledge in Cuzco, Peru and observe grace in action. Tears ran down my cheeks as I reflected on what I saw. They are welling up again while I type.

Still in Peru

Today we watched parades in the Plaza de Armas here in Cuzco. June is a month of festivals which will culminate tomorrow with Inti Raymi. It celebrates the Winter Solstice. (Remember it is winter here in the Southern Hemisphere.) This afternoon I went to a fair which felt very similar to our State Fair, albeit much smaller. There were cattle, with the requisite dairy cattle, there were sheep, and there were pigs. What reminded me that we were not in Oklahoma were the stalls of llamas, aplacas and vicunias. There was a large building with booths where vendors did their best to gain your attention by shouting, amigo! amigo! so they could try to sell you their version of soya chicharrones or herbal tea.

Tonight we are attending a music concert which will feature bands of many different genres of music. It has been great. I have several ideas for posts concerning the early activities of rafting, trekking and paragliding, but I want to wait until I get home to do those. But I am anticipating my return home. I have loved every minute of my time here, but home is where Carole is, and she is not here. I also know that God has some new and challenging things in store for me and I cant wait to find out what they are.

Saying Goodbye

This morning I said goodbye to the rest of the team. This group was really great. Each guy had something to contribute to the effort and to the conversation. Some were really fit and some were like me, but no one really got in someone else's way. Yesterday we went paragliding. I had anticipated that it would have an initial 10 to 15 seconds of terror before it got awesome but I was wrong. The wind filled the paragliding sail, I ran in tandem with my pilot and we were lifted into the air and began to fly without any noise save the sound of the wind rushing past my face. We caught thermals and rose. We turned and dropped. We flew over rivers and fields surrounded by mountains. Much too soon we headed down toward terra firma where some cattle were grazing. We passed just a few feet above a cow and came to a stop about five feet from a grazing bull. Niether seemed to be bothered by the close proximity of a duo of humans followed by a bright red cloud of nylon. We gathered up the equipment and walked a few yards to the road where I met up with Justin, one of the other team members. We recounted our experiences to each other as we waited for the van to come and pick us up.

This morning as we shared breakfast together, I realized that in the course of a week these guys who I ate chicken with just a week earlier (whose names I thought I would never get straight) had become friends. We have a shared struggle and shared victories and laughs. The members of this group are the only people who will ever be a part of this group ad I am richer for having been part of it.

More than I expected

Well, we finished the hike on the Inca Trail. It was the most difficult physical challenge that I ever encountered. Three and a half days of hiking uphill and down on uneven terrain at altitudes approaching 14000 feet may not sound like a lot of fun, but I had a blast. We had really good guys in our group with ages ranging from 14 to 53 (me). I will tell the tale in much more detail when I get home. The views were unimaginably breathtaking, the nights were cold but the sleeping bags were warm, the food was good and the conversation was great. Today we are relaxing and that's a good thing. My legs are sore. I just had my first straight razor shave in a Peruvean barber shop to scrape away a 5 day accumulation of whiskers. Tomorrow I am doing perhaps the scariest thing I have done to date when we go paragliding over the Sacred Valley. I will strap into a winged contraption with some guy I have never met and run off of a perfectly good cliff. Hopefully I will get to tell you how that went. :)

Anyway, I am missing Carole and everyone else, but so far this has been one whale of a good adventure.

Cuzco day 2

I have been here a full day now. The rest of the team is arriving today and i am feeling better about my place in it. My fear was that everyone else on the team would be 25 year old marathon runners, but there seems to be a good mix of age groups and personalities. There sooms to be real opportunities for great conversation on the trail, assuming I can breath enough to walk and talk at the same time. My vision is not so good up close this morning, which I expected. It always happens when I get to high altitudes, so I will apologize in advance for any typos that may occur in my posts from here.

Last night I attended The Church at San Blas. Pastored by Joel Malm, the guy who organized this trip, it was a really interesting and enjoyable experience. I will talk about it more in detail later. Tomorrow we are going white water rafting. It will be freezing cold, but thoroughly exhilarating.

More to come......

I made it to Cusco

Well, we made it to Cusco. The trip went as smoothly as it could. All three planes were on time, there was no bad weather, and all luggage arrived on the same planes as we did. We met our friends and the guide, checked in the hotel, had breakfast, and after a shower, will lay down for a nap. There is no place to lay down in the Lima airport, so I was up essentially all night. The weather here is clear and cold, and spirits are high. I will post again, soon.

Ready to go

Well, I'm tidying up loose ends in preparation for my Peru adventure. I have made it through the time I have before every international trip when I think things would be a lot easier if I just didn't go. I am now to the point where I am ready to head for the airport and get started.

I plan on posting pictures on facebook and I expect that I will able to blog from Cusco. Since we are staying a few extra days to visit friends of Marks, I am expecting to get the opportunity to eat all of my favorite Peruvian foods, and maybe even find some new favorites. I'm looking forward to lomo saltado, anticucho, and ceviche. I want to sip coffee in local streetside cafes. I want to buy souveniers from the interesting looking ladies from the hills, with their straw hats and brightly colored shawls. I wish that Carole could come. Carole wishes she could come. She loves this stuff as much as I do. But the hike is a guys only event.

I expect each day to have a moment where I wipe tears away as I reflect on how blessed I am to get to do stuff like this.

Aren't these newfangled phones something else. I now have mobil blogging capability. I could blog from the golf course now if I wanted to. But I wouldn't want to because I get aggravated at guys who won't stay off their phones while playing. If you're that important you should have stayed at work. Ok, nice rant. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Which one is best?

I began daily Bible reading back in 1991 and have kept it up ever since. It has become a part of my day that I really don't want to do without. Over the course of the nearly 20 years of daily reading, I have read the Bible through more than 15 times and in 7 different translations. I am currently reading it through in the English Standard Version.
I'm not saying any of this to brag; I'm saying this so you will understand the point I try to make about Bible translations. I have gained great comfort in reading these different translations because I find that different scholars in different eras have gone to the same texts and have translated essentially the same story. I will never be able to read Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, so I have to trust in the pure motives of scholars I will never meet to translate accurately. When I see that I am led to the same God in the same way in translations as varied as the King James and the Message, I take comfort that the translations are accurate in conveying the story of God's love for mankind and Jesus' substituionary death and resurrection.
I hear people champion different versions and it's fine to have a favorite. I have one version I prefer to read, a different one I prefer to study from, and another one I prefer to preach from. It is true when people say that the best translation is the one that you will actually read. Get started today if you don't currently do daily Bible reading. You'll be the better for it.

Discipline Frustration

Recently I have been having meals with pastor friends. I always like to hear their stories of how they came to be pastors. Most of them had no plans to pastor until God arrested their heart and mind and they couldn't be satisfied doing anything else. Their stories are charmingly similar. I think these stories reveal the wisdom in the saying that if someone can be happy doing something else, they should do something else. Pastoring is tough. It is so much more than preaching twice on Sunday and eating fried chicken the rest of the week.
I also like to hear what pastors say about their churches. What a pastor says about his church reveals a lot about himself. It is amazing how these pastors I have been visiting with love their churches even in the midst of sustained frustration. The frustrations aren't typically with the size of their church although they all want more people to come. They aren't frustrated with their facilities even though all of them have dreams of expansion and remodeling. Their frustrations lie with the fact that people today won't let their pastor love them enough to allow him to discipline them. In our consumer driven culture, if something happens that I don't like there is another church around the corner that will allow me to attend and they will be happy to cash my contributions. As a result, we have many churches where people stay as long as nothing bothers them. They are looking for a warm fuzzy, not spiritual growth. They will pay well for a good service. The pastor feels that he is faced with a dilemma; either cater to the desires of the congregation and know that he is falling short of what God has called him to do, or to preach the whole counsel of God and risk a churning attendance of people who won't stay for the unpleasant parts of the Bible instruction. Some churches churn pastors instead of people.
Church is people. Without people there is no church. But preaching is a high calling. There are eternities at stake. Both in the church and in the neighborhood.