Feliz Dia de Gracias

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post - and a busy few weeks it has been, studying Spanish, and getting things together and ready to move into my apartment with my new roommate Claire. Below is a picture of Claire and I in La Punta, Callao (an area of lima on the coast).


I have also been getting to know some new Peruvian friends who invited me to join their bible study. Getting to know them has been great, and definately has helped me to start feeling more at home here in Lima.




But I wanted to wish you all a belated, but Happy Thanksgiving. As last Thursday was not a holiday here in Peru, today is actually my Thanksgiving day. So...what has my first Thanksgiving in Peru been like - an awesome blessing of friends and fellowship. There are 10 "Hunger Corps" (non-peruvian FH staff) here right now in Lima and together we put together a huge Thanksgiving spread complete with turkey (10.9 kilos to be exact), stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, candied yams, and of course - pumpkin pie :). We each invited a Peruvian guest to share in a gratefulness and it was so special share this tradition with our friends here. Bellow are some pictures of our festivities.


God is good - and I have so much to be thankful for - this awesome opportunity to serve here in Lima, the community friends God has provided here, and amazing and supportive friends and family at home in the US. Thank you to all of you have been so supportive of me in the last year. Your prayers and support have been such a great encouragement to me in the days when I am homesick.

This next week I am going on the all staff annual meeting. We will be meeting for 4 days at a retreat center a few hours south of Lima on the coast. I am so excited to get to know better some of the people I will be working with. Right now the plan is that I will start working in the office on the 11th of December, and continue taking spanish class one day a week. Please be praying for safe travels and that as an organization God would enable us to learn and grow through this meeting, and also pray for my upcoming transition into working in the office.






I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Many Blessings,
Lauren

Awesome!

Peru is beautiful. Even when the city is loud and bustling, there are still awesome places to go. Just the other day I took a walk down to the Miraflores (the district of Lima where I live now) Coast. Paragliders, sufers, and beautiful green clifts. I am blessed to be here.

Caio!

Lauren 

Keeping In Touch

Some of you have been asking me how you might contact me or send something while I am here in Peru. Below is the FH Lima Post Office Box address where I can also receive mail.

Lauren Woodside
c/o Fundacion Contra el Hambre
Casilla 18-0917
Miraflores, Lima 18, Peru

It has been said that it takes about 1 to 2 weeks to receive a letter from the States...

If you are thinking about sending a care package, there are some restrictions so I can avoid paying customs.
- the package needs to be less than 2lbs
- it needs to be sent in a padded envelope versus a box.

Of course you can always email or you can give me a call at my old WA telephone # which I had to an internet phone service. No international phone charges for you and none for me too :)

I would love to hear from you!

Night and Day

This has been such a full week, I wanted to update you all with some of my new experiences. On Tuesday, I got to visit the FH office along with all the other Hunger Corps to meet with the FH International President, Greg Vestri. It was a great time of learning more about FHI and about FH Peru and the projects going on in the communities where FH works here in Lima. After a morning of presentations and a fabulous lunch of Chifa (this is what Peruanos call Chinese food) we then had the opportunity to visit some of the FH communities in los pueblos jovenes (the "young towns" on the outskirts of the city).

After seeing my pictures of where I am living now (from my last post)- the beautiful mall, beach, and even a Starbucks, some of you might be wondering...."I thought Lauren was going to Lima to serve the poor - where are they?" So let me show you another side of Lima, and a difference of night and day.


One of the hundreds of communities in los pueblos jovenes de Lima ("the young towns")



Greg Vestri, with a women and her children we visited with an FH case worker. Two of the children are apart of the child sponsorship program through FH, but during our visit, the case worker made sure to ask about the health and welfare of everyone in the family including the parents.



One of many steep steps going up to the homes in the communities. While these stairs look difficult to climb (and they are) they are a great improvement to having just a steep hill to climb. You can also see many 55 gal. garbage cans in this picture. In this community there is no water, so every day a truck comes by with water to fill the "water tanks." Imagine having only 55 gal of water a day to do all your wash, cooking, cleaning for a family of 5 or 6 - very difficult.

You can also see in this picture the retaining walls built to hold back the dirt and make a level place on this hill for building a house. As we walked around the community, Rousaura, the country director, kept nudging me to look at these huge stones fit together with no cement or reinforcement. Imagine, she said, what would happen if there was a big earthquake....I don't want to, I replied - this is just a little evidence of the great need there is for disaster prevention and mitigation work here in these communities.



Singing at a FH Kids Club (after school program for sponsored children in the community - although all are invited - where they do crafts, sing, play games, and learn about the word of God and how much God loves them).



Me and Anabel, a little girl who clung to my arm the entire time were visiting Kids Club.

While there is great wealth in this city, there is great poverty as well. But there is hope in these poor communities as well. One of the most powerful projects we got to visit was a meeting and training for women who have experienced violence in there homes. Organized by FH, the women and their husbands (during a different training) are receiving guidance on how to build a stable, loving, violence free home. Several women expressed how much they and their husbands have learned form the biblical teachings, and how much it has change their attitudes and behavior in the home. As one women expressed - she is not going to pass on this violence to her children.

I can not say how great it was to see lives in the process of transformation, and how much this experience has both challenged me and given me excitement to begin my work here.....but first a month of language school, which I started today :)

Caio!

Lauren