Lima reflections

We have been here for ten days and spent a week in language school.  We now have an apartment and have wandered the city – at least the area around where we  live – for part of the afternoon each day.  Yesterday was our first day off from language school so we wandered further to Barranco.

The fact of being car-less is interesting.  Granted we are in a big city and there are busses and taxies to take it is nontheless a fascinating experience.  As Americans we are so used to being mobile and most of us take it as some kind of inalienable right.  In Vermont we could not survive without a car as we are over five miles from anywhere.  I am not proposing to get a car here unless the work I will be doing makes it necessary.  Frankly that will save us having to learn to drive “Limenois style.”  The effect here will be an interesting one – will this make us see the car differently when we return to the USA?  Will this change our attitude to driving and expecting to go places at the drop of a hat?  I am thinking that this may be a spiritual issue!

Language learning is a somewhat humiliating experience!  We are as little children in the hands of skilled teachers.  These teachers are very patient as we learn not just new words but indeed a new language.  We have to learn new idioms, word order, how to conjugate.  I have always taken a great pride in my mastery of English and here it is useless.  Granted I learned other languages in my youth and somehow that was easier.  Polly tells me that I am now learning new brain pathways.  I believe that to be true.  The end result is that we are at the beginning of a process that will make us in a way NEW people.  It is not simply a language that we are learning but how to be Peruvian/Spanish.  That surely is akin to our early steps in learning to be a Christian.

The early steps there were worship, bible and prayer immersion.  We learned a NEW way of living and being.  It was all part of being a NEW CREATION.  We are now in those same early stages and being led by the hand.  What an excellent way to enter into a new ministry in a new place.  We are “babes in Peru!”  In Christ!

To those who read this – please pray for us that the process will continue to be blessed and grace filled.  There are many “angels” who surround us and help us in this transition.  Pray for the miracle of brains that will grow new pathways.  Pray that God will be wonderfully glorified.

I am including some pictures of our big city environment and mission field.