Easter in Peru

As I (Elicia) am writing this, the team is packing up, getting ready for our airplane ride back to Lima. We will be staying there for the day, doing some sightseeing and debriefing and then getting on the plane for Atlanta around midnight.

Yesterday was our last day in Cusco. It was Easter Sunday (also Veronica’s birthday) and we attended three different church services. The first church we attended was one of the churches that attended the camp. Five of the team played with the children and made them animal balloons which they loved! The other half of our team sat in on the service which ended up being really great!

Then we came back to the Strong’s house and had some really fantastic Chinese food, and some women and children came to fellowship with us. The women and children were the first fruits of a church plant, testimonies were shared, and Daniel was able to give them a guitar that was given to him. It was a pretty emotional moment.

We left the house to go to another church service, this time it was a Quechua church. We saw some of the kids from camp and Veronica and Elicia translated the Spanish for us so we knew what was going on. We showed the slideshow from camp and introduced ourselves. They seemed very happy to have us. After the message, Noah got up and shared a prayer with the congregation, and told them how happy we were to be there. When we left, a young couple from the church came with us.

We got to the house to find the Bolivians were already there. We had dinner and then we all circled up in the main room of the house and the Bolivians shared their favorite memories with us. After this, the couple that came back with us from the church service was introduced to us and we found out that they had both accepted Jesus during the retreat; we circled around them and prayed. The night ended up being a time of sharing between our team, the Bolivian team, and the Strong’s about the time we spent in Peru, how it affected us and how we were encouraged through our visit. After this, the Bolivians left. It was a sad time of good-byes.

Note from Nathan: since we are in transit mode right now, I am sorry there aren't pictures to go along with this post. I will post some more on Tuesday evening when we get back into Wilmore.