Fishing From Our Front Door

Well, the water is still rising. Everyone keeps saying that the water will recede this week, but we have heard that for three weeks straight. Today, after talking to someone, we found out that way back in 2000, the water was about 5 feet higher than it is currently. That mark was also reached back in 1993. Right now we have tons of sandbags, tons of water, and no sign of either of them going away. However, both will continue to multiply.

With the high water, the fish have been easier to access. We literally can fish from our front door. We can also fish from one of the doors to our dining hall. Here is a photo of some of the girls fishing. This area was once only a drain off for washing clothes (about 4 feet deeper than normal).

Here is a photo of the sand bagging crew. We realized that the few sand bags that we had, were not sufficient, so we decided to fill more. These girls were troopers and helped us fill 50 more.

Here we are celebrating. We enjoyed some ice cream afterwards, all of them enjoying themselves –Kevin thoroughly enjoyed himself as you can see (he had decided to give himself war paint about 20 minutes earlier…).

Kelly’s Birthday, An Eggventful Experience

This last Tuesday, we celebrated a quarter of a century birthday for Kelly. Tradition, as we have stated in the past, involves smashing eggs on the birthday persons head. Here is a wonderful shot of Kelly, just after a recent egging.

Keyla, the girl in the photo, made sure to get Kelly 4 times, just to make sure she felt special. Needless to say, the tradition involves numerous eggs. Every girl decided they wanted to get in on the action. I, Aaron, gave them access to the eggs, so there are no other photos because I was busy hiding from my wife…

Side note--Kelly's family sent a package that included birthday gear (Kelly's Peruvian pose for a picture) and a new companion for the monkey. Here is a picture of Herkie grooming him.

Celebrating Easter

We have been blessed to have additional hands out at POPPYS House these last 5 weeks. Sandi, from Idaho, has been down investing a tremendous amount of time and energy in our girls –especially their kids. Tina, also from Idaho, has been helping out tremendously these past 3 weeks.

These ladies have helped us stain the playhouse, do art projects with the children, read with them, and more. Sandi especially has put in an incredible amount of time with the kids. She helped us develop a schedule, allowing the kids to get the rest they need, while making time (special) to spend with their mothers in a one-on-one format. She helped the mom’s with a love first attitude, while still encouraging them along the way. Their help has been especially wonderful.

These ladies decided to throw together an American Easter. The girls went on an Easter Egg Hunt (or rather plastic bag filled with goodies adventure), decorated Easter Eggs, and devoured candy. It is safe to say that they love this American tradition.

We will greatly miss these ladies as they are now in Cuzco, but they have left a beautiful imprint in our kids’ lives. We are so grateful for the help that comes down. God has, and continues, to bless us. People that care, that show love, that show friendship, help breakdown the barriers that our girls have developed. The time that Sandi and Tina invested, and the love that they showed, have brought about an incredible and beautiful change in our girls’ lives. For that we are forever thankful.

Swimming, Drowning, Surviving

All that water creeped in last weekend and we didn't have a single drop of rain. It has rained since this picture was taken. We currently have even more water and have placed sandbags all around the edge of the sidewalk. Our place is reminiscent of a war movie. But if you think about it, we have a beach (water and sand...bags). We even have fish swimming in front of our door. We caught one the other day.

The most recent favorite pastime--fishing.

We have more photos which will be posted on a later date shedding more light on our current situation. We happened to land ourselves in a year with the most water since the later 1990's... woohoo!