Herkie singing with the kids

He´s actually calling out for his woman (who sadly doesn´t exist). His normal sounds are little chirps like a cricket. This call is a very surprising sound from his little body. This is also unusual for him to do it with humans. He normally does it in the early morning from the top of a tree. He really likes Mama T´s singing.

A couple more photos

All of us POPPYS House volunteers at a Christmas party with a bunch of missionaries in Iquitos.

We got American food!

On the bus heading in to the plaza on Christmas Eve, all us Americans sang our hearts out. We sang everything from "I´ll Be Home For Christmas" to "The 12 Days of Christmas". In the middle of most songs, we realized we didn´t actually know the songs, but kept yelling them out anyways. Zuleica´s reaction to our singing represents how all the other girls felt as passengers stuck listening to us. A couple times she stuck her head out the window. We sang for about an hour straight. In the end, we changed to the little kids songs the tots like to sing.

Christmas at the hospital

A wonderful missionary family here in Iquitos, Adam and Jen, invited us to help bring cheer to the children´s ward of the Regional Hospital. A group of us joined them to pass out little candies and toys on Christmas day. To our surprise, they provided us with costumes. We were butterflies, Aaron was the giant clown and Adam was Captain Power Verse. We were very happy to see that there were few children in the hospital on Christmas. Better that they are at home and relatively healthy, right?

One of the weakest babies, hospitalized for malnutrition (and clearly had been a pre-me). Her arms were like toothpicks.
Aaroncito, "el payaso guapito" according to some of the women in the hospital. I kindly informed them he was mi payaso!

Pictures of Christmas

Christmas was really fun at POPPYS House. All the girls and kids got new clothes to wear in the plaza downtown. That is the tradition down here. They were all looking good in their brand new clothes, including the little dudes, and after a turkey meal we went to downtown Iquitos. Here are some of the pictures.

Aaron (with his Spartan beard) and Kevin. E!

This girls ready to eat.

Ermelinda and Marcos

Milagros and Rosany

Saraí, Zuleica and Valesca

Some cute pictures

Herkie grooming Aaron´s arm.
He really is a beautiful monkey. Seriously.

Leo is our cute, stinky, alien monkey (squirrel monkey...he is squirrelly).

Saraí, Valesca and Zuleica in the wheelbarrow.
Saraí: Miss Santo Tomás

Thanksgiving!

Distance is tough. Being apart from family, friends, and customs is difficult. Thanksgiving and Christmas are two enormous holidays for our culture, and being somewhat disconnected from them is challenging. Thanks to some other missionaries in town, we got together a group of about 15, and celebrated Thanksgiving dinner. We had pumpkin, cherry and pecan pie, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, enchiladas, corn, green beans, and some other scrumptious dishes. Thanks to some old DVDs, we were even able to watch a little football as well.

It felt really good to sit with other missionaries who were feeling similar; a long way from home, but thankful none-the-less for everything God has supplied. We all went around, before the first bite was taken, and talked about why we were thankful. Despite being thousands of miles away, we all were feeling a little closer to home. The food was a huge emotional boost (with it being American and all), but more importantly, the connection to customs and friends was just what we needed. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, and were able to take some time to openly discuss the blessings that God has provided.

Micro Finance Update

Thanks to some amazing help from the WWU School of Business, the loan program has been continually growing. We now have two groups (group one have 6 and group two having 4), and both are demonstrating why God has chosen them to be apart of this program.

Group one started their third loan with this group yesterday (each member has completed two other loan cycles within this program). Each of the six ladies received S/.500 each (equivalent to $140 or one month wage) and will repay this back over a six month period (we meet every Monday). Group two is one month into a five month cycle and is doing very well. This is their first time with this program, but each has shown, and is currently showing why they want to be apart of this program. The have each received S/.300 (equivalent to roughly $100).

Thanks to WWU School of Business and Andrew Corson, we have effectively loaned out more than $3,000 to local business women here in the Santo Tomas community. Each one of the 10 women have committed to being apart of this educational process that will hopefully plant a seed of better living (through encouragement and learning) while giving them funds to help achieve this goal. As of current, we have a repayment rate of 96% -a strong percentage considering no collateral is required to receive a loan. We pray that God continues to bless this program as he has been doing.

Thank you for you prayers and support.