The Chadwick Chronicles

I talked Elise into coming this time to pick up the team. They actually arrived 15 minutes early. I had waited well over an hour for each of the previous teams to get through customs, but this time we met the team within 5 minutes of walking in the door.

We thought that we’d give you a glimpse into the typical first day for a team. With this team, we made it home by 12:30am. Usually, it’s more like 2:30 or 3:00am, depending on lost luggage. The missionary team always meets together for prayer on Tuesday mornings so we let this team sleep in.

During orientation everyone introduces themselves, tells what they do here, and then provide them with necessary info for survival. Jon enjoys explaining the culture, how to interact with the kids, the ins and outs of our team apartment, and what to do in case of emergencies. Elise usually gives a brief teaser about how the kids and different programs are supported and then will provide opportunities for them to get involved more permanently, but this time she had to prepare for a pizza party with the kids.

The team then ate lunch (Elise’s from scratch sloppy joes) with the missionaries that could stick around at the team apartment. Afterwards Tyler (our construction guy), Leo (our driver), and I take the team around to the different sites. It’s 3 hours of bumping up and down and swerving around potholes and buses. It’s typically fairly quiet except for lots of periodic questions as the team explores a whole new meaning of poverty. When we get back the team has a little down time before heading over to the children’s home for dinner.

After dinner the teams typically spend a little time talking with the kids, pushing them on swings, and, of course, snapping lots of pictures. Yesterday, though, it was one of the children’s birthday and the team was able to meet the kids amidst some serious group sillyness. The team then goes back to the apartment where some sleep, relax, or, like this team, find the deck of Phase 10 cards.

Our next work team arrives tonight.  This is a six person team from the Toronto area that will be doing some work at the Oasis care center and possibly working on the new site in Pachacamac.  This is the first team to be on an “early” flight and will arrive at 10:30pm.  This means that if there is no lost luggage that Jon will be able to be home as early as 1am! 

We lost our electricity on Saturday night and didn’t get it back until about 4pm on Sunday.  Normally, this wouldn’t be worth noting, but with the rat problems that we’ve had we have been keeping the windows shut at night.  In addition to the heat, the lack of fans enabled the mosquitos to attack.  Elise at one point in the middle of the night had to get up and stick her head out a window to get some fresh air and cool off a little. 

Jon has been able to kill two rats with rat traps, but we’ve decided not to include a picture.  This might be the thing that pushes us into getting a cat here (we’ve been wanting one since we arrived), but we want to wait until the baby comes to see how we feel.

We have had very strange weather here.  Lima is a desert that typically receives less than one inch of rain per year.  Two nights in a row last week we had steady rainfall from about 7pm through the night.  It typically rains so light that you can’t really feel it, just hear it, but it actually rained hard enough that we needed to use windshield wipers.  This morning we are being treated to an extremely unusual blue sky.

At Elise’s (and baby’s) doctor appointment last week the doctor said that the baby could come any day now!!!  The due date is still march third, but we are excited (and nervous). We decided to be silly and will leave the car seat in the car from here on out and this morning I decided to take a picture with Elise’s overnight bag and our prayer quilt in the car and ready to go.

Answers to Prayer

Praise God with us that he has provided for us here in Peru. We were finally able to purchase a car! Finding a used car is not an easy thing to do in a third-world country, especially one that we can trust isn’t stolen or have stolen parts. We quickly found that dealerships don’t sell used cars, but were able to find a couple of body shops that had a few dozen cars each. We selected what looked like was the best deal, had a Christian mechanic approve of the price, and with the help of our boss were able to purchase it within a week. We were amazed that the process of buying the car only took a few hours, which is amazing considering all of the red tape involved here.

After several days of driving the car around Jon opened the door and was greeted to an ear-piercing car alarm. We called the dealer to find out how to de-activate it and his response was, “what alarm.” We were able to figure things out and will soon have a remote to use. A minor inconvenience and a free alarm system.

We had another doctor visit last week and the baby is still safe and sound. We still have almost a month to go, but according to the construction workers that we had here last week, Elise is ready to pop. We now have everything completely ready for the baby except for a pediatrician.