The first Sunday here in Urubamba was an amazing experience! The church is only a few blocks away, so Rachel and I walked there.
Sunday school was taught by Eric Pardine. You can tell the people learn so much from his lessons and are totally listening and asking questions. Rachel says that he explains things very well. Mrs. Cassandra Pardine is translating my class into Spanish. They have 3 kids, and we are babysitting them next week. From the passages I could find, and some help from Rachel, his lesson was on Acts 1 and the great commission and giving of Holy Spirit.
The custom to greet all the church ladies is "Buenos Dias" give them a hug, touch cheeks, and kiss the air. :-) All guys get good handshakes... And yes, it's OK to give a handshake. :-) Buenos Dias to EVERYONE you meet on the street when your walking in the road or in the seminary. Rachel says that the person of lower "social status" is supposed to say it first, so you always try to beat them to it.
The morning service was so neat to be in! I'm really bad at guesstimating size, but for those who know, it's a bit smaller auditorium than my church, with a bit more people. The rows of benches are closer together. Rachel said it was a smaller Sunday. I immensely enjoyed the music. Hopefully I will be able to help with that soon. On Sunday, I had just gotten in a few days before. Many of the tunes are ones from hymns in the states, a few I didn't know, and a bunch of Ron Hamilton/Patch the Pirate. There was a piano, 2 guitars, and 2 violins. With hymnals, the Spanish words are broken down into syllables, and my pronunciation is decent, so i can hold my own decently. :-) Singing, announcements, Scripture reading, offering, and more songs. (Not in any particular order) Pastor Rojas, who we helped move, preached on 1 Corinthians 14 on the giving of tongues how everything is to be done for the edifying and in order. On the corner by the seminary, there is a Pentecostal Church, so it is applicable to the people here. He is Spanish, so naturally it is a bit harder to pick out his words. I was able to turn to the passages he mentioned though.
After service, Rachel was talking, and I went to speak with the music people. The pianist is 4th year from the seminary, and get name is Racquel... Easy for me to remember. :-) she is so much fun to taking to, and I communicated that I could play the piano, so I got to play a few from memory. And they knew them!!! In Christ Alone, Before the Throne, and another one, and then I played a few from the hymnbook. Hopefully I will be able to share my live for God through music in the coming weeks. That talk with Racquel kinda helped break the ice, which was one thing I was worried about, how to BEGIN a relationship with these people.
We took Eric and Cassandra Pardine out to lunch at a... you guessed it... Chinese restaurant! I got wonton soup and fried rice. I could live on rice, and that is a safe, yummy thing to live on this summer. :-) Either I'm not as hungry because of the high altitude, or they serve huge portions, or both, but every place I've gone, I have a take home bag. It was fun talking to them and getting to know them more.
That afternoon, Rachel and I chilled and talked about random stuff. Different missionaries and people here... Girls are good at that :-) we baked a chocolate cake and used the high altitude directions. "For use at 3,000-6,500 ft." Um, we are at 9,200 and Cusco, where I flew into was 10,000 ft. Their "high altitude". :-)
We walked back to church in the evening, and greeted people and started. There is a lot of Quechua, Peru mountain language, influence, so we sang 2 songs in that language. ... And I thought Spanish was hard. :-) the words are about 10 letters long, and your squnching a lot of letters and sounds into few syllables. That was a challenge!
Mrs Rojas' (the family we helped move and husband preached in the morning) parents are missionaries in the Bahamas where she grew up, so her dad spoke for the evening service. He spoke about the kingdom of God, and Jesus as king.
After service, the Rojas invited everyone that helped them move out to dinner. I think there were 14 people there. Another delicious and filling meal followed. You could choose between a giant chicken nugget, or roasted chicken. I choose the "nugget" and it came with rice and lightly fried potato wedges. And then we had chocolate cake because it was a church friend/Christian school kids birthday. Now the happy birthday threw me off. I was expecting our happy birthday with Spanish words, but it was totally different! And at the end, the count and you're supposed to blow out the candle on your number. Sometime they count by 10s to move it along, and one time someone who obviously wasn't 18, blew it out at 18 Rachel said. :-)
That was Sunday in a few words :-)
Monday was my first day of seminary classes. They went pretty well all considering. My notes are in Spanish which makes studying difficult. I was starting to pick up some words here and there. I introduced myself in Spanish including about my family, where I'm from, what I like to do, and who my favorite teacher was and why I liked her. :-) The class is on teaching children with visuals and making a lesson. There are 10 people in the class including me. Roxana and I share a desk. She is pretty quiet, but Rachel said by the end of the class she will be like "JOANNA!" and give me a hug. I'm doing decently on names. Raquel is the girl that plays the piano, Roxana, Milka, and Yanet are in my class, Alicia, Elise, Lisbeth, Alana, Jacqueline, and that's about all I can think of right now. My Spanish was doing pretty well yesterday, not as much today, but oh well.
The girls had chapel at Mrs Campbell's house yesterday. It was good, and I could understand it because she spoke English and Rachel translated. Lunch was fun! I sat with a bunch of girls, and had a pretty good conversation! About random stuff :-) Racquel said something about a tarjeta, which is card, but I couldn't figure out what she was asking. It ended up, that she makes these really beautiful cards with dried flowers on them, and invited me to make dinner with her sometime. Fun, fun! You know how I like to do that! I ate at the seminary both yesterday and today. The soup you eat before the entree is interesting, but not bad, and the main dish yesterday was really good. Today was OK, but it's with rice, so I'll survive. :-) I really enjoyed talking to the girls! My Spanish was kinda working, and I was getting my point across even if it wasn't grammatically correct.
I studied in the afternoon, and talked with Alicia who comes to help clean. I helped her take over cake and coffee to a meeting, and got to talk to her! Yay!!! She seems very nice, and even though we can't understand everything each other says, it's still fun.
Rachel is the sponsor if the sophomore class, sy they came over for a meeting and talked and said their memory verses. They are going through James (Santiago in Spanish).
Last night also, I got to call my family for about an hour! What fun! They had to turn on the air because it was getting hot, while I was under layers of clothes and blankets! :-)
Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for your prayers. If you want to leave a comment or talk, you can email me at joannaadams1031@gmail.com
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