It has been a while since I have posted a blog, and for that I do apologize. It has certainly been quite a few weeks and there is a lot of great stories. So lets get started.
The jungle.
If you read jennys post then you saw that we went to the jungle. This was an amazing trip, and I wish you could have been there, whoever you are. We went to a town called pulcalpa in the amazon jungle. While we were there we built the foundation for a church in a village of people who mostly spoke shipebo, a local amazona language. It was a little frustrating that after all this work we have put into spanish, there was a large group of people that we could not communicate with because they didnt speak spanish either. Overall the trip was a success as we were able to complete the project at hand, and also spend a lot of quality time with the kids and people of the area. we also had a half day were we went to the river and went swimming off a boat. I climbed a tree with a sloth also, which was a pretty sweet adventure in itself. When I got up in the tree i realized that it was covered in the largest black ants i have ever seen, and they were getting on me. I tried really hard not to move too much as I was hanging over what looked to be prime real-estate for anacondas and crocodiles. After trying to keep my cool for a while, a local told me they dont bite, which really wasn't very comforting.
Mens Advance.
I decided to bring a little AFC tradition to Lima. Last week the guys and I loaded up for a 2 day trip to get as far into the mountains as we could. We were far more than successful as we left sea level that morning and set up camp a few hours later at 14,800 ft. I was blessed with good health for the night, but i wasnt blessed with warm clothes in the well below freezing temperatures. Everything became well worth it just to see the stars from this place. THEY WERE AMAZING..... I have never seen anything like it in my life. I could not tell where constelations were because they were overwhelmed by clouds of stars. Later that night 3 of our 4 guys had to evacuate the mountain side to to major altitude sickness. Some cookies were lost, some heads were pounding, but all in all they managed to make it back down to 5000 ft were they could survive. When I woke up in the morning the end of my sleeping bag were my feet where was coated in ice. This gave me the impression that it had gotten very cold the night before. John mark and I woke up early, and being the adventurers we are we decided to set out for a nearby summit of 16000 ft. After one and a half breathless hours we reached the goal and stood at the highest point of our lives. It was a good, but very short of breath feeling.
Ministry,
We were able to organize a service project to do with the peruvians, in the neighborhood of Mark. We repainted an alleyway that had been covered with graffiti in support of a local soccer team. I was a little discouraged at first as not as many peruvians showed up as we had hoped, but the project turned out to be a blessing as we attracted the attention of some of the locals.
One of my friends at the beach came up with a great idea, and I would like it if you guys could be praying for it. He suggested that we get some of the older kids from the villa maria area, where we do our sunday morning kids church, and give them surf lessons. The surfing class here is for the most part dominated by the upper class. The kids in villa maria, will likely not have a chance to enjoy things like the beach very often. Im hoping that by taking some of them out there we will be able to deepen relationships, and maybe find a good niche for them.
Thanks for your prayers and support,
Kyle Glaeser
