Today I had an interesting phone conversation. My sister, who supervises the cleaning staff of a hotel in Virginia, needed help speaking to the other staff members. Most of the other employees are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. She needed to pass along some important information and there was nobody to translate. What do you do? Call your Spanish-speaking brother in Peru! After a few moments everything was communicated and hopefully the rooms will be a little cleaner and finished a little quicker than before!
Did you know that that Spanish is spoken by more than 400 million people in the world? It is the primary language of 21 countries and is considered by many as the third most influential language in the world. In the United States alone there are 44 million Hispanics with 34 million Hispanics using Spanish in the home.
It sure is beneficial being able to communicate in two languages! My sister would probably never have imagined that someday her little brother would live in Peru, speak Spanish, and help her translate for a group of Mexican co-workers. Plus who would have imagined that she could call Peru free with a local telephone number? The world sure is changing! So the only question I have now is, "¿Puedes hablar Español?"
No Place Like Home
After an especially long break we are now back to blogging! Thanks for your patience. We returned recently from our two weeks of camp in the tiny village of Aucallama. We sure are glad to be home. It would be safe to say that we are "city folks." We've grown accustomed to life in the mega-city of Lima. Camp presented us with several unique challenges. In Lima we awake to the sounds of buses and honking horns. At camp we were able to wake up to several special sounds. On one side of the camp there is a huge duck farm with over 10,000 ducks. On the other side there is a pig farm with thousands of pigs. It really is humorous to hear countless pigs snorting at 5:00 a.m. when their food arrives. Plus you haven't lived until you've heard that many ducks "quacking!" Then of course our next challenge is the special smells at camp. What is more noticeable than the snorting of thousands of pigs? You guessed it! The smell of a thousand pigs! We won't go into details but you can imagine the smell of the camp's "dairy air!" Then there are the minor challenges of living in a tent for two weeks and early morning cold showers. We returned home extra thankful for the great apartment the Lord has provided for us.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of the last week was our health. All four of us came down with a nasty stomach virus. Our poor girls were sick nearly the entire week. We weren't alone. About a third of the other campers came down with the same virus. Thankfully we are all doing better and back to normal. Despite the challenges we had some great times at camp. We were able to make plans as a mission for the coming year. We had many great challenges from our guest speaker Pastor Maynard Belt. Plus we enjoyed the great fellowship with our other missionary co-workers. Perhaps the highlight of the week came when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of service for Bob and Betty Whatley. They will soon retire from Peru but left us with many great memories and stories. It was their last week at the Baptist Mid-Missions camp.
So now we are back home relieved that we survived another year at camp! Look for regular updates now on the blog. Thanks for your prayers now and in the days ahead.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of the last week was our health. All four of us came down with a nasty stomach virus. Our poor girls were sick nearly the entire week. We weren't alone. About a third of the other campers came down with the same virus. Thankfully we are all doing better and back to normal. Despite the challenges we had some great times at camp. We were able to make plans as a mission for the coming year. We had many great challenges from our guest speaker Pastor Maynard Belt. Plus we enjoyed the great fellowship with our other missionary co-workers. Perhaps the highlight of the week came when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of service for Bob and Betty Whatley. They will soon retire from Peru but left us with many great memories and stories. It was their last week at the Baptist Mid-Missions camp.
So now we are back home relieved that we survived another year at camp! Look for regular updates now on the blog. Thanks for your prayers now and in the days ahead.
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