Lima

This is Erin and Pepe Acat. Erin first went to Peru in 1983 on a short-term mission trip during Spring Break from Stanford. That’s when she first met Pepe, a native Peruvian, who was helping with the trip. They struck up an international, long distance romance , with Erin making several trips to Peru. They were married earlier this year and live in Lima. Their organization, Front Line Peru (http://www.frontlineperu.com/) connects teams from the U.S. and Canada to short-term mission opportunities in Peru (Lima, Pucallpa, and Cuzco). Until she moved to Peru in June, Erin was a Spanish teacher at The King's Academy in Sunnyvale, CA (where David's brother Blake was a student last year).

Erin and Pepe arranged for us to work with the Refuge of Hope School for disabled children in Pucallpa (in the jungle region of Peru). But since we had a free day we decided to tour Lima. We went to the Cathedral of San Francisco to see the catacombs where over 120,000 people were buried over the last few centuries. Since one possible side effect of malaria medicine is bizarre dreams, I hope the accusing eyes of the skulls and bones don’t visit us in our sleep!

We also saw Huaca Pucllana, a site with the ruins of a Pre-Incan civilization that is now in the heart of downtown Lima.

On to Pucallpa, where we would found out what it would look like if you welded a motorcycle to a park bench and called it a taxi...

- Steve

Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, we saw how God wove two dreams together.

This is Amanda Gutierrez, her husband Thomas, and her 10 month old daughter Samantha. I first met Amanda when she was in the high school youth group at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. I heard that she was now doing mission work in Nicaragua. When I contacted her, she invited us to visit after our trip to Honduras.

Amanda fell in love with mission work in high school and worked in Costa Rica after college. Wanting to work in a less-developed country, she jumped at the chance to start a project in Nicaraugua several years ago. That´s where she met Thomas, an amazing (and fun!) Nicaraguan man who showed up at a meeting of people volunteering to help on one of Amanda´s projects. They married about 4 years ago. Thomas is a teacher and computer technician at a Christian school in Managua. One of his many talents is saying Spanish tongue-twisters at about 200 words a minute, complete with Spanish rolling ¨r¨s.

This is Halle and Kathy August. They are ministry partners with Amanda. Several years ago, Halle and Kathy did a short-term mission trip to Nicaragua with their 3 teenage children. Some of the kids absolutely, positively did not want to go. But by the end of the trip, everyone had a profound experience seeing the needs of the Nicaraguan people, but also their friendship, hospitality and generosity.

When they got home to WA, Halle felt that God was asking him to give up his 22-year career with FedEx and serve the Nicaraguan people. When he approached his wife and 3 kids about they idea, they enthusiastically supported it. They decided to leave a comfortable life, friends, family, and high school in America for an unpredictable future in Managua, Nicaragua. Wow, that´s faith!

It was only later that Halle and Kathy remembered that they had attended a church conference many years ago where they had committed to God that they would be willing to be missionaries if God chose to send them somewhere. God had not forgotten their promise and now they are living an amazingly rich life full of adventure and significant relationships. Here´s a picture of the view from Halle and Kathy´s property.

After they moved their family to Nicaragua, Kathy started a pre-school for local children (which is now run by Nicaraguan women). About that time, Amanda met Halle and Kathy. The 3 of them worked on several mission projects together and realized they had a similar dream. They were passionate about sports but had seen many baseball or soccer games in Managua with drunken brawls, crime, or terrible facilities. They dreamed of creating a safe, high quality sports complex for local kids and churches to use

So in another huge step of faith, Halle and Kathy spent much of the proceeds from the sale of their home in WA to buy a run-down baseball field and large piece of property on the outskirts of Managua. Their hopes of building a dream home would have to wait. They moved into a modest home next to the property (along with Amanda, before she met Thomas) and started removing the 6-feet high weeds that grew everywhere on the property. Now, several years later, they have a first class sports facility with an upgraded baseball field, a soccer field, basketball and volleyball courts, a computer lab, and a book-lending library (very rare in Nicaragua).

While we were there, Halle was building a covered basketball court / indoor soccer field. He asked if we could paint. Of course! But he neglected to tell us that we´d be painting steel girders 25 feet off the ground and have to climb up and over big gaps to get there!

I´m not sure if David got more blue paint on himself or the steel bars, but we completed our job of painting the places where welding had stripped the paint off the girders. Now they can put a metal roof on it.

We also got to join Amanda as she delivered money to schools for some of the 200 students in a scholarship program she started (supported by a church in PA). Some of the schools were little more than tin roofs over dirt floors. Others had many small classrooms packed into small buildings off busy city streets. In one school, the ¨soccer field¨ with an energetic pack of 10 year olds was an alley about 12 feet wide by about 40 feet long. Finding the schools was a challenge since Managua has no street signs. Everyone gives directions by landmarks. For example, ¨Go to the corner where the PetroNic building used to be, then left for 2 minutes to the roundabout, then right for a little while.¨ The school fees for these students is just a few dollars month (sometimes just $1-2), but what a difference those few dollars are making. Without an education, these children will be street vendors, beggars, or worse. With an education, they have a fighting chance to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

At the end of the week, Amanda and Thomas loaned us their truck so could drive 2 hours to the Pacific coast. We got to see the beautiful Nicarguan countryside.

In San Juan del Sur, we rented surfboards and boogie boards and got directions to a good beach for beginners. We drove 20 minutes down a road (you call that a road???) with ruts and potholes that only a chiropractor could love. But at the end, it was worth it. We arrived at a gorgeous and mostly deserted beach. The air and water temperature were perfect even though it was a bit of a challenge for novice surfers like us. It felt like we were living a chapter in the movie Endless Summer. Were we really surfing a remote beach in Nicaragua? Amazing.

When we got back to Managua, Amanda´s parents - John and Denny Van Deman - had arrived for a visit. It was great to spend time with them and see that grandparents love to spoil grandchildren no matter where they live.

Finally, we had to say goodbye to our Nicaraguan friends. We´ll miss the fun times, generosity, and hospitality of the Gutierrez and August families (and the late-night games of Speed Scrabble!). I´m convinced that Joe found a way to put one of the Rotweiler puppies in his backpack. We pray for God´s blessings on their ministries and know that they will have a profound impact on many people in Nicaragua.

After a fantastic week in Nicaragua, Amanda drove us to the airport and we were on our way to Lima, Peru so that David can buy an Alpaca sweater...

- Steve

Honduras

This is Pastor Ambrosio... the hardest working pastor I've ever met. On our 2nd night in Honduras, we drove to the tiny hill country village of La Colina (outside the city of Seguatepeque) with 20 team members from Menlo Park Presbyterian Church - mostly high school students - for a church service in the village we'd be serving in all week. One problem: It was pouring rain, pitch black outside, and they don't have a church building yet. (That's what we'd be building.) But Pastor Ambrosio seems unperturbed as he puts up a tarp and strings a light bulb with suspect wiring in the heavy rain without a raincoat or umbrella. Though Ambrosio is drenched from head to toe in his dress clothes, he radiates joy and excitement. When all is set up, about 40 of us crowd under a small tarp in the mud during a downpour for a worship service we will never forget.
Ambrosio worked non-stop all week on the church construction crew, along with our team, several men from the village, and pastors from 5 other churches that Ambrosio has started in the last 5 years. Here's a picture of what the church site looked like when we arrived. Ambrosio and his wife and 5 children were with us all week as we started building the new church from the foundation up. Ambrosio has been in ministry for over 16 years. He has a vision for helping the poor in Honduras through educational, vocational, and dental programs sponsored by local churches. In partnership with Ambrosio, we helped with two projects: building a new church and putting on vacation bible school programs (sports, songs, crafts, puppet shows) for the children in the village.

We were fortunate to be under the leadership of Steve Reed from Partnership Ministries. Steve leads up to 30 groups a year from the U.S. to partner with local pastors in Honduras and Guatemala. He knows how to lead teams and how to work effectively with local churches. He was joined by his wife Laura, Eric & Gloria Hodel, and Katy Medina. We benefited tremendously from the organization and experience of the Partnership Ministries staff. They handled all the logistics so that we could focus on serving with the people in the village.

Our team stayed in a hotel in Seguatepeque. Every morning, we would drive about 15 minutes into the nearby hills to La Colina. We spent mornings working on construction of the new church. Though we worked hard, it took at least 3 of us to match any 1 of the Honduran men. They were tireless, kind, and patient with us even when we were taking five times as many breaks as they did. On one of those breaks, one exhausted student looked over the work site and proclaimed, "I think I'm better at management than labor." We got the foundation and all the walls up by the end of the week.


In the afternoons, we put on day camp programs for about 60 kids in the village - sports, songs, crafts, and puppet shows. The high school students did all the pre-trip planning and they were well-prepared. The kids loved the activities and would walk long distances to join us each day. The children were delightful... full of energy and love.

One child that stood out for me was Gravin. Gravin is deaf and mute, but he has one of the most amazing smiles and joyful attitudes I've ever seen. Whenever you look at him, he breaks out in a smile that is like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day. Though life as a deaf mute child in a poor Honduran village must be difficult , you'd never know it from Gravin. He had a lot to teach us about being joyful in all situations.

We saw another vivid example of joy and gratitude when we visited a church that Ambrosio started in a nearby village. They were just beginning to build a house for the pastor. It was about 20 feet by 20 feet and will have 2 rooms. This small house is intended for the pastor, his wife, and 5 children! But the pastor and his wife were genuinely thankful for what they considered to be a blessing.

I'll leave you with one last picture. I don't know this girl's name because she was too shy to tell me (even though she told me it was ok to take her picture). She was sitting outside a small house in La Colina and embodied for me the friendliness, authenticity, hope, and dignity of the Honduran people.

At the end of the week, we went to a beach at Tele on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. And while we were enjoying the warm ocean, sand, and palm trees, we already missed our new friends from La Colina.

As we watched our 20 team members head back to San Francisco, we went to Gate 9 departing to Managua, Nicaragua...

- Steve

Our first day

On Wednesday, we found out we were leaving on Friday, not Saturday as we had planned. Surprise! Packing our lives into a 30-40 pound backpack shifted into high gear and we all made it to the airport at about 11:30 pm on Friday, July 18th. Our flight left at 1:45 am and we changed flights in El Salvador around 7:30 am before arriving in San Pedro Sula, Honduras around 9:45 am. Overnight plane flights with screaming babies (even if they are cute Latino babies) makes for a long night. Due to the scheduling mix-up, we arrived in Honduras a day earlier than the rest of the group we'll be joining for this segment (a high school youth mission trip from Menlo Park Presbyterian Church). Going alone kick-started our education on entering a country and finding our way. Joe's Spanish is priceless in helping us find transportation, food, and a hotel (not so much the first one we saw with peeling wallpaper, 1960's bedspreads, and pools of water on the floor... but the second one was great!). With an extra day on our hands in an exotic Central American country, what did we do? We watched "Batman: The Dark Knight" at the local cinema for $3 (with Spanish subititles to build our vocabulary, of course). Not exactly high-adventure or world service, but it was fun. By 7pm, we're exhausted.

We'll meet up with the rest of our team in the morning and travel to the Honduran hill country where we'll help with church construction and day camp programs for children. And so we begin...

- Steve

Welcome! This blog will update you on the year-long travels of Steve Grey, Joe Tepe, and David Conway. Our goal is to see the world as we serve the world. We'll try to update this blog about every week or two. Check out the schedule on the right to see where we are now.