The Journey - Part 1

Peru. A land of great history and a place where God has been working for so very many years. Melissa and I were blessed to visit the country of Peru at the end of January. We traveled from Fresno to Lima, with a pretty significant delay in LA along the way. In Lima, we were put up for a few hours in a hotel adjacent to the airport by the airline due to the delays. It was an unexpected but welcomed respite in our journey.

That Sunday evening, we reached Trujillo, a town of almost 1 million people near the coast, about an hour's flight north of Lima. Trujillo is the home of George and Adriana Rodriguez and their family. George is both the pastor of the MB church in Trujillo, and a printing business owner, along with father and grandfather to a wonderful extended family. He and his wife were excellent hosts, and we felt loved and connected immediately upon our arrival.

We had a great time sitting around the breakfast and lunch table with George and family, and celebrating at an evening prayer meeting with the church. We got a chance as well to see a bit of Trujillo, and experience the tail-end of the national Marinera dancing competition which Trujillo hosts annually (see a sample on YouTube). As we landed at the airport, I saw a curious site - a Segway in the parking lot! The church building and city were beautiful, and they had just finished hosting the national MB conference convention.

From Trujillo, we traveled by "Bus Cama", an up-scale double-decker bus to Piura, about a 7-hour non-stop trip across desert lands, through tiny villages, and always near but out of sight of the Pacific Ocean. Where water was available, we saw sugarcane, olive trees, mangoes, cotton, rice, and many other products being raised.

Piura is located inland from the coast about an hour's drive. It is an agricultural community, surrounded by fields of rice, cattle, and other products. A town of over 500,000 people, it is fast growing, with a vibrant city core surrounding the Plaza de Armas and the typical Catholic cathedral in the center.

We spent most of our trip in Piura, with Otto and Lidia Funk, missionaries in this community for the past 2 years. They again were wonderful hosts, and Melissa and I stayed in the pastor's apartment at the Miraflores church.

I will wait til tomorrow to post more of this saga. As always, we welcome the opportunity to talk personally about what we are doing and would love to share our journey to Peru with you ( and lots more pictures!). Til then.

Lowell