Day 59

I got up at 8:30 on Sunday morning, with plenty of time, I thought, to get ready for church, which starts at 10:30, but somehow the morning got away from me. I was drinking coffee, reading, emailing, writing a poem about buses, etc., and I didn't get into the shower till 10:15 and didn't leave for church till 10:45. It would have been fine -- I was only a little late in Peruvian time, except Pastor Ramiro mentioned in the sermon about people being late to church. Oops. I had to rush out of church to walk to Metro (the grocery store) so my roommates could pick me up in a taxi on the way to Camos, a neighborhood about 45 minutes away where Racquel's family lives. It was her niece's 13th birthday, so we were all invited to celebrate. It was cool to see a normal Peruvian family -- kids, neighbors, cousins, aunts running all around to cook a meal. It was fun and we had anticuchos again, although this time they were a little more chewy -- I could see the heart muscle and I'm pretty sure a ventricle on another, so it was a little more difficult to swallow. We had a cake (tres leches with lukuma) and then rushed out of there back to our place so Meredith and Elsa could get ready for the Culto Unido. On the way from the taxi to the apartment, I ran into a group of people from church -- Claudia, Christian, Josue, Andres and Nadia -- who were on their way to eat. Although I was stuffed, I went and sat with them at Corrallito and then we rushed over to the culto at Buen Pastor. It was a historic event -- in 30 years of the ADIEL in Lima, this is the first time they've sent out Peruvian missionaries. It was a kind of commissioning service for Elsa and Julio (who are going with Meredith to Tarma to plant a church) and Felix and his family (who are going to Chincha to help rebuild homes and host short-term teams from the U.S.) It was so cool because it felt like the last scene of a play -- you know, where everyone from the whole play comes back together for one last scene with song or dance (I guess not so much in tragedies...). Maybe that's more accurate of a Disney cartoon or something (I'm picturing like "The Little Mermaid" or "Beauty and the Beast"). It was really neat because I saw everyone I had met in the ADIEL since I've been here -- not only people from Buen Pastor, but all the other missionary families, all the pastors from all the churches, the people that I help teach English to at El Alfarero, the jovenes from Los Pillares in Callao that I had gone to the youth conference with, etc. And we were also able to see some of the worship bands from the other churches and all of the pastors played some role in the service. I really enjoyed it and was very encouraged by it. I went home exhausted, though, still needing to finish my homework and call Steve and my family. I didn't go bed till after midnight.