Check Out Our Facility

Here is a photo of Kelly and Keyla (a young mother here) inside our kitchen. You can see that we have a kerosene stove because our power goes out all the time. It's a very nice kitchen down here. We have nice tile and 3 sinks.
This is a view of our sala, that is, where we eat, study, have Sabbath School and watch Christian karaoke.
Another view of the kitchen. Those open doors are our storage rooms for food and supplies. The left one is our "dry storage" and it is hot and stanky at times. The one on the right is our "cold storage" where we keep our produce. There is a photo later.
Here is our facility. This picture is taken from the kitchen door. The wing you see has 6 rooms total. The girls live on the top floor and the far left room on the bottom floor. The other 2 bottom rooms are for us administrators. We have the far right one.
This is a picture of why our "cold storage" is called the cold storage. It is the only air conditioner in an 8 mile radius. It's a fun room to go in on hot days. The air conditioner is the way the food is "refrigerated". It stays at about 16 degrees Celcius (we guess that to be in the range of 55-60 Farhenheit, but we don't know yet).

More photos are yet to come! We hope to give you all a better idea of where we live and who we live with.

Fresh Fruit!

It is incredible to see all of the fresh fruit down here. Kelly and I have always enjoyed juices, but we have fallen even more in love with them down here. We get fresh fruit juice at least once a day. Juice here does not come from a can, but rather from the fruit itself –go figure. Today I was in charge of making the juice for dinner, and here was the process: Peel all the fruit, take out the seed, throw it in a blender, then pour it in a strainer, pour water through it (to get out all of the rich flavor), throw in some sugar, and then mix it all around. After all of that, and 30 minutes later (yeah, who would have thought making juice would have taken that long?), it tasted beautiful. Our favorite, at least at this moment, is Maracuyá (or Passion Fruit). We love this stuff! We are really going to miss all of this when we go back to the states.

Our Food Process Out At Santo Tomas

Every Wednesday we receive a weeks worth of food - enough for enough for about 25 people, 3 meals a day. Food here perishes extremely fast. We have a dry storage, a cold storage (chilled by a single air conditioner), and a fridge. In the US, everything is pumped full of preservatives, down here, you need to eat it fast or else give it to the animals. When the food comes in, most of the items are soaked in diluted bleach for 15 minutes, and then sun dried. While all this is going on, we go through and wipe down the storage units and the fridge with bleach. This is a long and tedious process, but one that proves VERY beneficial to us and our health.

Tutoring the Chicas

Every day we have study hall with the girls. The younger girls go to school in the morning and then older ones (high school) go to school in the afternoon. The girls do their homework out of paper notebooks. They copy down what the teacher writes on the board, and then do the homework later. After lunch, the younger girls do their chores, and then do study hall. The older girls have study hall in the evening after dinner. There are so many things to work on, and so many lessons on patience (for us). Some of the girls are having troubles with their 2 and 3 times tables. Some don’t like to do homework period (just like us in the States!) and others don’t understand and comprehend it. Kelly and I were helping one the girls with her English homework the other night, and noticed that the teacher could not even spell it right. It was spelled “Inglish.” In another section, they were trying to say, “I am Chinese,” or “I am Japanese,” but the examples given were,” I am China,” and “I am Japan.” We have had some fun things to work through. They also write out their division a little different down here. It all takes a little getting used to, but this is an incredible opportunity for us to help in bettering the girls’ education, because as you now know, it is limited.

Aaron´s First Sermon

Every Sabbath since we have been here, we have had a small worship service for our girls, their friends, and anyone else we can invite here. We put together a Sabbath school program just before walking over to church (about a ¼ mile away) at 10:30 am. Our program usually includes a special music by one of us or the girls, a childrens story, and then a small talk/sermon. This last Saturday, I gave a small talk on hope, and not losing focus on our future in heaven. It is very challenging to convey word for word what you want through a translator. Kelly is my personal translator and she does a wonderful job, but we have found that it is easier to translate Spanish to English than English to Spanish - English is a complex language! Kelly and I prayed about it, and God did the rest.

Cold Front hits Iquitos with a VENGEANCE!

So, yesterday was interesting. The weather cooled down a lot. It was overcast and at a nice temperature of about 75 degrees. The locals hardly came outside and they were shivering if they did. Fútbol (a.k.a. soccer) is life down here and a game in our town, in which Aaron and Casey were going to play, was canceled due to the freezing temperatures. The impact of the ball on skin was too painful apparently. It was quite comical. We were just excited to be able to wear sweatshirts without drowning in our own sweat.

Oh, and the pictures below...those are just for fun. Don´t worry about it.

Visit to Belen

Kelly and I were fortunate enough to visit Belen last week. This is the poorest of the poor (and the dirtiest) here in Iquitos. Above is a photo of the bathrooms in Belen. They have these little barely standng structures that sit over a ditch and the people just go right there and the waste falls into the ditch. You can see a line of them in the pic. During rainy season the Amazon floods this whole area for several months and many people have to move out or use carved canoes as transportation. Needless to say, the water is nasty, mixed with all kinds of waste (like that above).

We visited the meat market, street vendors, and animals. If we had wanted, we could have purchased an Ocelote, or a mini jaguar, for about $100 soles, or roughly $35 USD. We could have also purchased some mini-monkeys, and an array of other poorly treated animals.

Visiting this city was a reality check. We thought that Iquitos was poor, but this community makes Iquitos look very lucrative. Walking through the city makes your heart grow sick because of the sadness that you see. We are so blessed. We have a place to stay, 3 meals a day, and a loving family (22 strong). Our Father in heaven loves every single one of those people. He died on the cross for everyone. He would walk up and kiss each and every single person on the cheek. Love is not superficial. Love is deeper than one’s aesthetic appeal. We want to love as God would love, but we have so much more to grow.

Aaron, Casey and Juanito build some stairs the hard way

There is a slight hill right next to the kitchen that has been a problem for a few of us in getting down –some of us, who will remain nameless, have fallen. The steps were chiseled out in dirt, and then a light covering of cement was applied. As you can imagine, that light covering was broken, and the stairs were eroding away. Casey and I, with some help from our groundskeeper Juanito, made some stylish stairs which will hopefully last for a while. This took an entire day. I was amazed to find out that the concrete is mixed on the ground, and instead of gravel or rock, they just mix in sand. Methods down here are different. Mixing cement on the ground in the hot weather is tiresome. It was a fun experience though, and they turned out better than any of us had originally thought.

The Newest Member of our Family...

Thank you to all of you who helped us to purchase our new motorcycle. Kelly and I were able to get a good deal on a used, but perfect, LIFAN 200GY-2. It is a 200cc all-terrain bike. This is a popular Chinese brand that has good standing among the locals here in Iquitos. It is the top of the line next to purchasing a new Yamaha, Honda, or Suzuki - those can be quite pricy. Here is a photo of Kelly and myself getting ready to head into town for a night off.

The purchase of this bike has already helped out tremendously. We are approximately 7-8 miles out of town, but 3 miles of that is solid dirt. The only other way to traverse this is by motorcar, or feet. When the road gets muddy, and it does quite often, the road is significantly more challenging to travel on. This bike has given us a good, and dependable, method of transportation. Thank you all for you help. We really enjoy this bike!

Sarai´s Birthday

This last Wednesday we had a birthday party for Sarai. It was most adorable thing in the world. She was all dressed up in a cute, pink, little dress. She is one of the little ones here at Santo Tomas. Some friends came over for some entertaining sing-a-longs, food, and conversation - she even had a piñata. The birthday song here is different than in the States. They sing the whole happy birthday part, in a slight different rendition, and then end it by saying something along the lines of, “…hurry up so that we can eat your cake.” I’m sure that I’m missing some key parts, but whatever is said makes everyone bust up laughing. Kelly and I were able to try our first ever Peruvian birthday cake as well. It was interesting. Not quite as sweet as in the States. It was very decorative - each different color was a different (and somewhat fruity) flavor. Above all, it was a fun experience.

Night Life

This is a video of Kelly and myself riding in a motocar at night. Traffic here is crazy. It makes driving in the states appear like a piece of cake. Traffic is packed, everyone drives fast, people drive on the opposite side of the road at times, and ironically, amidst all of this ¨recklessness¨there are few accidents. It took some time for Kelly and myself to get accustomed to this sort of driving, but now we are driving in it on our own motorcycle. Hope you enjoy the footage!

Aaron chasing the kids...

Here are two of the cutest kids. There are 5 little ones here at Santa Tomas, but these are the oldest of the bunch. The girl´s name is Sarai and the bigger boy´s name is Angel. They are full of joy, fun, and good times. Here was a game that we invented the other day to pass some time. Enjoy!

Our first few days

Sorry. No pictures right now. This is our first time on internet and we are sad to find out we will only have access to internet and phone once a week. Well, we made it here safely. It´s hot and humid, our clothes will mold if we don´t wash them in a couple weeks...there will be some losses. The girls at the POPPYS house in Santa Tomas are awesome. Many different personalities and we love them all. There are 4 awesome dogs at the property, 2 annoying goats, 2 crazy blue parrots (we keep our distance), 2 of the cutest pygmy monkies ever (Tito, the baby who is as small as two of Kelly´s fingers, and Tsunami, the adult who is the size of Kelly´s hand), and some chickens & roosters. We did have a gecko in our room we named Geico, but he´s not around much. And this morning we had a baby tarantula the size of my hand...yeah...that was interesting. He´s gone now. RIP.

The mode of transportation is most commonly motocarros (a 3-wheel motorcycle with a bench in the back, instead of back wheel). The rules of the road are merely don´t hit anyone else & get out of the way of oncoming traffic. Last night we had an interesting moto ride. Late at night (hopefully a rare experience) and without headlights. Our town, Santa Tomas, is about 15 min outside of Iquitos, in the daytime. It was hard to find a driver because they didn´t want to take us that far at night (no people wanting a ride back and it could be slightly dangerous in the pitch black). We were scared and we didn´t yet know the drivers don´t use their headlights to save their battery juices. It´s a long and streetlight-free zone on the very bumpy and rutted mud road out there. We picked up 3 people walking (which is a terribly long trip). Our driver got them, but they were very friendly people and we felt safer having them with us. Apparently our driver could see some remnants of the road (for we could not!) and we got there safely.

Speaking of which, we must get back to the house because it´s just as dark, but much earlier. We will post pictures soon, we hope, and you all can enjoy those. Thanks for your support and please keep praying for us! We are still adjusting.

24 Hours into the trip - in Lima!

We have had a fun journey so far. We are in the process of waiting out a 9 hour layover in Lima. Our flight for Iquitos leaves at 4:55 am local time (2 hours later than Portland, Or.). Here is a photo of us chilling at Starbucks at the airport. The drink was $12 (of course, that is in the peruvian sol, so about $4 USD). Oh the lengths that you will go to, to stay awake...

Here we are getting our luggage. We made it through customs without any problems...phew...

Great Message, Horrible Marketing

This was taken during our 5 hour layover in San Salvador, El Salvador. Somewhat of a humorous shot.

Family, Friends and a Farewell

It was a sad goodbye, but it felt incredible to have our families' support on this joyous, yet sad, departure. Christy and Brent drove from Illinois to beat us at pool, and say goodbye.

Arthur the Incredible also showed up to show his support and see us off. Andrew additionally was there to say, "Adios!"

My clan, and my father to boot, showed up as well to see us off, provide some laughs, and represent the Linfoot heighth -much to Kelly's dismay.





Here is another photo of the Linfoot/Harvey family at the nurses dorm in Portland. Mom (Becky) is in this one. Thanks for all the support everyone, it was greatly appreciated!

How to send us mail in Peru...

Here is our address down in Peru. We have been told that it would be better to send us letters, and not packages, through the mail. If you would like to send packages, let us know, and we will have you send it to a group that is coming down (groups from the states frequently come down for medical trips), and they can take it to us -otherwise, we will be taxed.

Aaron Michael and Kelly Marie Linfoot
Ave. Abelardo Quinones No. 3912 (k.m. 4.5)
San Juan Bautista - Iquitos - Loreto - Peru