Three New Volunteers - a.k.a. "The Texas Trio"

A week ago, we received three new volunteers (Priscilla, Princess, and Bianca--left to right in photo) who have pledged to be here until next May. We are very excited, because they are living with us out at POPPYS House. They are a wonderful help with our girls. Their primary focus is on educating our younger girls and toddlers of the house. These three señoritas are from Harlingen, Texas, the hometown of Lisa Hann, and all three are bilingual. Below are some words about each one, compliments of Lisa:

Bianca Zambrano who is 19 years old is taking a break from college to come and volunteer with People of Peru Project. She is a sophomore in college and has yet to decide what she wants to major in. Bianca is a sweet, vibrant, energetic young lady. She along with Priscilla Maldonado will be starting a childcare educational program. We have four little ones at POPPYS house that will greatly benefit from their program. Bianca’s had extensive experience in childcare from Vacation Bible School to Mission trips, including babysitting my adorable nephew Kai. She has a heart of gold and the patience of a saint. It has not taken long for our four munchkins to warm up to her. Bianca is bilingual and will also be helping teach the children English.

Priscilla Maldonado with be working with Bianca in the childcare educational program. Priscilla is 24 years old and a junior in college studying elementary education. Priscilla has also had a great number of experiences with childcare. She is active in her church Pathfinder club and has been in charge of Vacation Bible School. This being her first mission opportunity she is very excited to be here with us. Priscilla is bilingual and has a passion for children. She is affectionate, sympathetic, and very patient. We know these two young ladies will do an amazing job with our kids at POPPYS house.

Princess Zambrano (Bianca’s sister) is the third of the young ladies here with us. Princess is 21 years old and is majoring in special education, a very hard and needed profession in our world today. Princess’s smile and energy is very contagious, she is wonderful asset to our home. Princess’s role at POPPYS house is to be the teacher/tutor for our primary girls. She will be attending school with them every morning from 7am-12:30pm. Our young ones have adapted to her presence at school and are excited to have someone there with them. Princess was also blessed with an immeasurable amount of patience. She has been involved in summer camp ministries, mission trips, and also babysitting. Princess has a natural touch with kids and her energy is magnetic.

We look forward to forming a relationship with them, and likewise, them with us and the girls.

Marcos gets a check up

Today little Marcos went to get his monthly checkup with his mother. This included things like height, weight, overall health, etc… Marcos was also asked a series of questions and we would like to share with you his responses.

Nurse: “Marcos, How old are you?”

Marcos: “Dos (two).”

Nurse: “Marcos, What is your mothers name?”

Marcos: “Mamita (little mommy)!”

Nurse: “Ok. But what is her name?”

Marcos: “Da! (this is short for Ermelinda)

Ermelinda: “Ha ha ha.”

Now the nurse is holding up some flash cards with pictures of animals on them.

Nurse: “What is this picture of?” (Holds up a photo of cow)

Marcos: “Vaca!” (In Spanish, vaca is cow.)

Nurse: “What is this picture of?” (A photo of a dog is shown)

Marcos: “Vaco!”

Ermelinda: “Vaco is the name of our dog, so every dog is called Vaco.”

Mother: “Ha ha ha.”

Nurse: “Ok Marcos, what is this picture of?” (Holds up a photo of a monkey)

Marcos: “Herkie!!” (Herkie is our monkey)

Ermelinda: “We have a lot of animals at our house…”

And so the test went. Marcos actually received very high compliments over his checkup. He is a particularly intelligent boy that is learning faster than most, growing tall quickly, and gaining a lot of strength. His mother is doing a wonderful job!

October Birthdays

This last Friday, all the workers and staff got together out here at POPPYS House to celebrate each birthday for this month (we happen to have quite a few). Mr. Casey had a birthday (29), as did Milagros (14), Olga (23) and Nitsy (She does all the purchasing and is in charge of the education of all our girls as well as the other sponsored students through the Organization. Also really close to our girls.).

The party involved a parillada (Deliciously, grill –cooked, seasoned, chicken), a home baked cake, rice, maiz morada (purple corn drink), and yucca. It was a joyous festival that also included a friendly soccer game once everyone was stuffed full of food. I wish that I had photos to share, but our camera is being fixed. It was a great opportunity to have staff from the organization come over and socialize with our girls as well as have one big birthday party for everyone (cuts on costs). Sadly, no-one was egged (culturally acceptable and customary to do on birthdays), but I suppose it turned out beautifully for the birthday people.

The Worlds Longest Raft Race

Knowing little to nothing about what to expect, we embarked on a 4 day rafting trip down the mighty Amazon River. We (check out the photo above), Nathanie (far left), Casey (second from left), Felix (third from left), and myself, had been planning for this race since the first of this year. When I say planning, the idea was to go out paddling, do pushups, sit-ups, exercise, etc… It is safe to say that we barely fit in our supply run the night before.

Day number one was spent bussing to a town about two hours away to get our supplies i.e. paddles, life jackets, 8 logs (each one 15 feet long), rope, nails, and a tent to sleep in. When we arrived at our destination, it was a fight for dear life to get logs. The process of selecting your logs was supposed to be monitored, but, it was not done well and sadly we were one of the last to arrive. After finally getting everything in order, we were allowed to begin constructing the raft with 2 hours of daylight left… Thanks to a friendly local, we were able to complete it just before dinner (she was awesome).

That night was unique. We were given an army tent (which was made for 6, short, Peruvians) and we crammed in 9 Americans. It rained all night long, we slept on nasty mats, we snuggled with 5 Americans we had just met a few hours earlier, there were a plethora of mosquitoes, and needless to say we slept horribly.

Day two, we quickly shot ahead of 5 teams and then quickly were passed by what felt like all 35 teams. It took us the better have of the morning (we started at 8 am) to figure out who should sit where –we kept veering to the right. It also took some time figuring out the currents, when to rest, rowing is tiring, and that the saying, “oh yeah, the finish line is just around that corner up there,” translates to, “2 hours up there, past 5 corners, you will be able to see the finish line.” Oh well. It was fun. We saw some magnificent pink dolphins and finished the day in 6 hours and in 17^th place out of 35 teams –we even passed a hard core female team –which was not too shabby.

Day three started at 7 am after another beautiful night crammed into a tiny tent with 9 people, rain, mosquitoes, and drunken people partying in front of our tent and bright lights on until 5:30 am. Needless to say, we were all rested up. This proved to be the toughest, longest day. It felt like the day went on for ever. We were extremely sore, trying not to complain, but still enjoying the scenery. Today we learned that when you ask, “how much farther is it?” and the answer is, “just 20 minutes up there around that corner on the left,” this really means, “it is 2 hours or more up around many corners on the right side of the river.” We placed 18^th with a time of 9 hours for the day.

Day four had us all pumped. We knew it was the last day, and we had managed to square away a little hotel room the night before that the four of us crammed into (it had two beds, but still better than sleeping with 9) for only $8.00. It was beautiful. It had a personal shower, bathroom, fan and mosquito proof netting –we slept like kings.

We looked at the map this time, and had a fairly good idea of where to go. We found some slow currents at first (the course of the race had us veer off into a tributary) which provided some great swimming and playing, and then later on we found some extremely fast currents. Today was dubbed the “no complaining day” so it was comical to voice our problems and pain into a “positive” form of communication.

In order to displace boredom and sore muscles, we rowed to the count of 300-500 and then took a 2 minute break. We followed this pattern for about 1.5 hours, and quickly found ourselves passing a few teams and pulling ahead of the back of the pack. Sadly, the finish line was up a river (against the current) about a quarter mile. This would not be too bad, except when you are built like a barge, and are plowing water, it makes rowing upstream difficult. If, and when, any one of us stopped rowing, we started going backwards –it was depressing. We were able to finally reach the finish line that felt so close, but was so far in 6 hours (we came in 17^th place out of 35). We even finished ahead of a team of Peruvian women that kept screaming in our ears, “Beat those white boys!”

All in all it was an awesome experience. The food was good, sleeping arrangements interesting, the race quite disorganized, tons of really nice people, sub-par communication, but an adventure down a beautiful river filled with incredible and breathe taking wildlife (we saw tons of birds, pink dolphins, fish, mosquitoes, beautiful and uninhabited jungle, and friendly, local, people). It was an unbelievable raft race which we eagerly await for to compete in September of next year –but not one month sooner.

Here we are trying desperately to construct our raft. We had some curvey logs!

Here is a photo of our raft after day one of rowing. It actually floated!

We had a beautiful rainbow finish line after day one. It was amazing.

We had some locals greeting us as we came across the finish line with their beating drums. You can see some of the other rafts in the water.

The Dating Talk

Recently, Casey and I got the opportunity to sit down with two of our older girls and do the “dating talk.” Personally, I do not remember how mine went, or rather, I purposely forget it... I do not know Casey’s background either, but whatever the case, we ran with it. Both of these girls are in high school and have interest in boys –specific ones –so now it is time to talk about conduct, boundaries, God, relationships, etc…

We talked to each girl about how special they are, how boys think, public appearance, God’s role in relationships, the difference between boundaries and healthy boundaries, how if either boy ever did anything bad he would have to face two, rather large, fathers, and few other points of interest. Society, especially in this culture, tends to put females very low on the totem pole. Women are there more or less as objects. We constantly try to reinforce to our girls their value and what they should expect in life with relationships, however, when the opportunity to date arises, they make their own, distinguishable, paths.

They both were feeling fairly awkward, but were able to manage a good hearty chuckle when we told them that any boy who tried to do something inappropriate with them would need to realize there are two fathers at home (enough said, I know). We wanted to remind them how special they were, and how special they should always be treated. Overall, I think that the conversation went rather well.

There are so many conversations that we have embarked on down here, many in which I would not consider myself “well educated”. Many have been ones that I would never really want to engage in, however, when you are the parent, and no-one else is around to give advice, you just pray about it, and ask the Lord to give you the right words to say. We will just wait, pray, and see what comes next.

Loma Linda School of Dentistry

A few weeks ago, we were fortunate to have the Loma Linda School of Dentistry helping out the People of Peru Project. They were able to do some much needed work up and down the Amazon River, here in Iquitos, and also out here at POPPYS House. We were blessed to have them for two whole days. Not only were our girls able to receive superb treatment, anyone that came to our gate was also able to receive some much needed work. The group was able to work on all ranges; from little kids with rotten teach to grandmas and grandpas that have never and probably never will brush their teeth. We are very grateful for the work that they performed. They worked late in each night, never complained, and always wanted to help out more. It was great having them here and Santo Tomas (our town) looks better because of it. 8)

Here are some kids waiting for their turn in line, as well as the free toothbrush, toothpaste, and stuffed animal they each received when done.

Here are some docs from LLU yanking out some teeth...

Revisiting Disney

I have always been a supporter of Disney. When I was a kid my grandparents were always adding to their Disney collection so that we grandkids would always have something good to watch. Well, Disney has now hit out here at Santo Tomas. Thanks to some amazing donations, we have been able to watch movies like Parent Trap, Swiss Family Robinson, Milo and Otis, Dunstin Checks In, Baby’s Day Out, and others. The girls are in-love with these classics. Every Saturday night, movie night, we either watch a new movie or a rerun. It is a lot of fun –even though we usually watch them in English with Spanish subtitles, the girls have a blast with the 80’s/90’s humor.

If anyone would like to get rid of some Disney or similar DVD movies that you don’t watch (make sure they are dubbed in Spanish or have Spanish subtitles), let us know, and we would love to have them for our girls.