i left a little piece of my heart in peru {part TWO}

if you didn't catch my blog yesterday, go back and read part one first. do as you're told. gracias. and you can check out my photos from the trip here.

we got to peru late afternoon on monday. it felt so good to just BE in peru. what i was not prepared for was our first bus ride...or really any of our bus rides. when i say they drive like maniacs down there - i mean, take the volume of cars in new york, add the aggressiveness of new york drivers and then take out all of the laws, rules, road surveillance, patrol cars, common decency & logic. americans beep and scream obscenities for cutting them off. peruvians just beep. all the time. it never stops. it's their way of telling you their cutting you off. when you wanna switch lanes or a lane ends, it's really just a matter of who gets there first. i could reach out and touch another car at almost any moment. that first ride was terrifying. and people laughed at me for freaking out. imagine that. :)

we got to yeyas, our hostel and ate dinner and had a meeting and prepared for our work days. the guys that were already there went to our scheduled site for monday and did what they could with who and what they had. our entire children's team was in chile. we had a lot of the medical supplies. but God can do much with little. and i know they reached the people they were called to that day.

the next day we went to the freys' church. alan and diane frey are some of the best people i've ever met. they've been in peru since 1984. and they have the kind of hearts i hope to have. {annnnnd, i'm tearing up. didn't take long. never does ha!} we met the most beautiful and loving people that day. we met little stephanie who is 7 and shocked us all by being bilingual. i hired her as my interpreter for about an hour. ;) she's bilingual because of time she spent in new york last year. her dad lives in new york and works there to support her, her mother, and her baby brother in lima. heart = broken. she was funny and she was beautiful and she was wearing yellow. no coincidence there. :)

i got to meet and talk to some of our team that day too. there were people with us from mansfield, ohio and from the freys' home church {our connection is that chad, our leader from origins, grew up knowing the freys at the same church outside of chicago}. everyone that was with us was amazing. and david, a college kid from chicago, guessed my age at 21 so we quickly became best friends. obviously. :)

i met a woman, whose name i couldn't pronounce, when i was doing her nails. she knew a little english and i could tell she was trying hard. she ended up coming back 2 days later to another site we were at with juice she made for me {that i felt awful not being able to drink because there's no way to know if she boiled the water but she doesn't know i didn't. whew!} and asked me write on the back of a picture of us so she could practice her english even more. i told her i hope to see her next year and that she knows more english...and that i know more spanish. :) she is a sweet, sweet woman. and i hope i get to hug her again.

that night, we were going to the mall. i didn't feel great that afternoon, but i was okay. by the time we got to the mall, i knew i wasn't feeling well at all. the final nail in the coffin was when everyone got ice cream and i didn't want any. if you know me, you know that i never pass on ice cream. it just doesn't happen. so then i knew i was sick. i just needed to get back to the hostel. well to do that, a typical peruvian bus ride was in order. and that bus ride did me in. i rode with my face covered and dalene's voice in my ear telling me we were almost there {and we never were ha!} and because i'm me, i started crying. i just didn't want to get sick on that bus. we pulled in front of yeyas and people cleared for me to run in. my room was locked so brandon and tara ran up to theirs with me and {bless their hearts} i got sick in their bathroom. thought it was over. it wasn't. i was sick all night long. and devastated. the next day was the orphanage and i was dying to go.

so i went. sick or not. and lasted half the day before i got sent back to yeyas to sleep it off. which i'm so glad i did. by the time i woke up from that nap, i was good to go. thank you Jesus! my short time at the orphanage was great. i saw some of the most beautiful children in the world. and got to love on them. doesn't get much better than that. we went to the fountains in downtown lima that night. make sure you check out the pictures of that. so beautiful.

the next day was very much like the first. the doctors saw a bunch of patients, which was awesome and we got to love on the people. peruvian people are so loving. it was hard to say goodbye to them that day.

and the goodbyes continued. we had our final meeting that night with the groups we worked with in lima. addy, a 29 year old angel with a vision to reach her people, shared that vision and her needs with us. the men from origins laid hands and prayed over our peruvian friends and partners {i cried. like a baby.} and they gave us gifts for coming to them and hugged us goodbye. a woman i hadn't even talked to all week brought me a gift,  hugged me, and in english said "i love you". {weeping over here.} and i know that she meant it. and i love her too. i can't tell you how quickly my heart was won by these people. what little we did meant the world to them. and their smiles meant the world to us.

that same night, back at yeyas, a few people shared their hearts. if i thought i had cried before, i hadn't even started. a man named tim that goes to our church got up to share his heart. i'm not going to tell his story because i wouldn't do it justice. but it's the beauty of my time in peru. i was encouraged and inspired and changed by the people we met. and that night, i was encouraged and inspired and changed by his daughter lauren, a girl i already know.

that night back in our room, we talked about our week there. God had provided money for people in his last-minute way. he didn't for me. not that i didn't have an incredible help from the people in my life, i did. but i paid a lot of my trip myself. and there were expenses outside of the money we needed that were costly and difficult and came at a time when business was slow and expenses were high. i wasn't bitter about paying it, it was just hard. and that night, sitting in that room, i realized that i would pay it all again for that experience. i almost think God wanted me to pay it. because he knew i didn't have the money. but he also knew peru was where i was supposed to be. and now, in hindsight, he has repaid me in full. and i'd spend twice as much next year for half of the blessings from my week there.

the first night, scotty {my incredible pastor} challenged us to pray over the question, "why am i here?" and there are easy answers there. "to change lives", "to change me"...and while they sound cliche, they're true. but i had to get specific with my prayer. and in no time he showed me. the change that needed to happen inside of me was more than i think i had even realized.

and he changed my heart last week.
and a little bit of that heart {okay maybe a big part of it} is still there in lima. and very well might always be. i'm okay with that. :)

i came back to the states with a new appreciation for my american life, with a deeper love for my savior, a newly found love for his children in peru, an intense gratefulness for the people i'm blessed to serve with at origins, and a beautiful reminder of hope. my entire time there screamed hope. hope for the people of peru, hope for all of us - the hope we have in Jesus Christ.

it would be impossible for me to walk away from my time there and not know that life is yellow.

it is so, so yellow.