Day One - Part II

After organizing our supplies and meeting together for the first time, we were ready to head to the Chorrilos Community.  But first we went to eat lunch at Rustica.  This was our first taste of Peruvian food.  Also, there was musical entertainment.  We all really enjoyed ourselves.  But then it was back to serious business.  We got back on the bus and headed to our destination.  We arrived there mid-afternoon and looked for the place where we were to meet the children.  This community is on a hillside, so we slowly went up street by street.  We  parked in front of the small building and unloaded the supplies and the shoes.
The El Buen Pastor Community Center had 2 side by side open rooms and one small room in the back where we put all the boxes of shoes. We soon found out that what Rachel had told us was going to be true this day; be flexible.  We took about 20 minutes to discuss the plan and here came the children, ready or not.  They had gathered at the local church and their leaders brought them up to us in age groups, starting with the youngest.  They greeted us in a single file line, giving us all a kiss on the cheek.  Once the room was packed, Julie began with leading the children in several songs.  This kids loved the songs and Julie was so good with them.  In order to be seen, Julie, Rachel, and one of the interns all stood on a bench.  And the kids kept  coming.  Julie seated the kids, and Jacquie began reading  the story about Hermie the Caterpillar with Julie  interpreting.  They all loved the story and Julie had them actively participating.  Once the story was done, we seperated the children  by age taking the older ones outside.  We began doing the craft activity while taking  small groups at a time to fit them with shoes.  By the time it was all said and done, we had given  over 200 pairs of shoes to the children.

At the end, it was dark and there was only 1 or 2 light bulbs for us to see  by.  We loaded back on the bus, very tired, but with the knowledge that we had shared shoes and the gospel with a lot of children.  We were not done, yet, as when we got back to the hotel, we needed to make sure that the materials for the next day were all ready.  It was at least 11pm before we got in bed ready for some  very much needed rest.

First Day in Peru

After a long day of traveling, we were now in Lima, staying at the Colon. It was a nice modern hotel. On Saturday morning the full team met in some small conference rooms where we had all of supplies that had been brought by team members who were from all parts of the U.S. As Rachel Garton, our team leader had stated, this part of getting all the supplies out of the suitcases and sorted into various places around the room was nothing more than organized chaos. But everyone pitched in and soon it began to look somewhat organized in this very crowded room.

On the way to Peru

In order not to make the trip any longer, we decided to leave Wednesday night after work and spend the night at the Comfort Inn next to the St. Louis airport.  They had a shuttle to the airport and we got to keep Terry & Shelly's car there for free.  We got up very early on Thursday morning and headed to the airport.  Our flight to Chicago was to leave at 7 am.  It was a short flight and we had a short layover and we were on our way to Miami.  At Miami we met Kelly Winquist who was part of our group.  She recognized our Buckner t-shirts and inquired if we were going to Peru.  Her husband was supposed to meet up with her  in Chicago, then Miami, but had missed his flights.  He caught up in Lima.  We left about 4:15 pm EST from Miami and made it Lima about  8:30 pm.  It was about a 5 hour flight, so  it was not  too bad.  We had much longer on our trips to  Kenya.  At the airport we met up with Morgan Byrd, who had  traveled down by herself.  Again, the t-shirts did the trick as we were recognized.  We  made it through customs and were picked up by Peruvian Buckner staff.  We met several other trip members at airport.  A van was there to transport us to the hotel.  There was about 8 of us.  We had had 2 carry on bags in addtion to 2 check in bags.  Was not too  certain we  would  fit them all, but our driver  put them on top and tied them down.  It was about an hour with traffic to the hotel.  We checked in and were  definitely ready to hit the sack.  Tomorrow morning would  be early enough and it would be a busy day.

Preparation for the trip

I guess I've waited long enough since the trip and now it's time to post.  We had talked for quite some time about making a "Shoes for Orphan Souls" trip.  We had done a shoe drive in 2007 & 2009 at our church, and in 2009 had taken a family mission trip to Dallas to work at Buckner's shoe warehouse.  We thought it would be cool to be at the destination of the shoes and that would be to actually put shoes on orphans' feet.  We looked at various trips to see which ones would fit our schedule.  The one's to Peru and to Vietnam sounded the most intriguing, each having aspects that sounded very interesting.  We had talked with Terry & Shelly Dykes, who were making the trip with us, and decided upon Peru.  At the time we did not know that the Vietnam trip would be cancelled due to a reunion trip to Vietnam being planned by Buckner.  In addition to handing out shoes, we would be conducting half day VBS at each stop.   We received the VBS curriculum and supply lists a few weeks prior to the trip, so we scrambled to collect the items that we would take with us.  We asked our church family to help with collecting the various items that we needed.   The Tuesday before we were to go, the Dykes came over to our house and we worked in trying to pack all the items into 1 check-out bag for each person.  It didn't quite all fit, so we squeezed items into our other luggage.  We were now ready to go and we couldn't wait.

2010 Peru Buckner Shoe Trip - Orphanages

2010 Peru Buckner Shoe Trip - Lima

2010 Peru Buckner Shoe Trip - Pre Trip

2010 Peru Buckner Shoe Trip - Machu Picchu

2010 Peru Buckner Shoe Trip - Cusco

A Taste of Peru

Prior to our Shoes for Orphan Souls trip to Peru, a friend/co-worker, who is from Peru, invited us to her house for dinner. Cecilia fixed salad, a corn casserole and Chupe (pictured here) and Flan for dessert. It was a wonderful meal and a fun time of visiting with her and her family.

Starting it up again

I decided it's time to "fire up" the 'ole blog here and start some posting.  The big event is a Buckner Shoe Trip to Peru.  We fly out on June 4th and return on the 13th.  In addition to putting shoes on the kids, we will be doing a 1/2 day VBS at each orphanage we go to.  That's a lot of kids.    We got our list of VBS and humanitarian supplies only recently and so we are scrambling to get all the things we need.  If you want to help, go to the list to see what you can get.  But contact us first, to make sure that supply has not already been received.  Our deadline is Sunday, May 30th, so that we can purchase what has not been received and organize the packing.  We, of course, will take cash to make purchases or take with us to Peru and make purchases there.

First Post - getting you caught up

I was hoping to get this set up prior to Christmas and use this as a Christmas newsletter of sorts. I'll do a short summary and then add to it as time goes on. We had a number of "events" this last year to keep us hopping. I'll list some in no particular order other than them coming to my mind.

We went to Italy in June to the 2009 International Church Music Festival .  We spent 1 day in Venice, 1 day in Florence, 6 days in Rome, and 12  hours in the Madrid airport.  Other than the Madrid airport, it was a fabulous time with members of our Memorial Baptist Church choir and others from all over the world. 

We had a job upheaval as an agreement between the University of Missouri and the Cerner Corporation created the "Tiger Institute" as a collaborative effort between the University Healthcare and Cerner.  A part of that is the "migration" of our department to be a part of Cerner.  So, both Naomi & I will be Cerner associates.  Because of my 30 years of employment, I was able to retire from the University, but will still work for Cerner. 

We were able to have Christmas with all of my children.  Erika lives in Columbia, but Jill lives in Portland, OR, and Michael in Hollywood, CA.  Jill had spent most of the summer in India with an internship.  She now works with Mercy Corps International while finishing up her degree at Portland State University.  Michael graduated from Columbia College of Chicago in film editing and now works for a media company in Hollywood.