Hogar Esperanza

Hogar Esperanza is an orphanage that was started a few years ago just outside of Trujillo. It's a wonderful place that provides a home for kids who's parents are either unable to take care of them or have just abandoned them.
For the past few weeks I have been going out there on Saturdays to hang out with the kids. It is so much fun, and I'm learning lots of Spanish from them too.

Enjoy a few pics of the cute kids.

Hola!

Well friends, I've been in Trujillo for almost three weeks now. It feels like longer. Moving to a foreign country is often like that. Life is so different here, and it makes life back home feel like a distant memory. But, I'm loving it here.

Living here has been an adventure so far. I live in a tall white apartment building with 4 other girls on the busiest corner in Trujillo. (Our apartment is lovingly nicknames Casa Blanca.) There is traffic noise in the back ground constantly. Outside our front door I can catch a cab, micro-bus, or collectivo (public transportation like none other. six people crammed into one small car) to any part of the city. I can walk across the street to a wonderful little bakery and buy empanadas and sweet breads for breakfast and pick up fresh squeezed fruit juice of any kind imaginable from an old man with a bicycle cart on the corner. Not too far away is the Plaza de Armas where all the locals gather in the evenings to mingle and enjoy the night air. They often have music groups playing. It's a wonderful place to people watch. Today we had a scheduled power outage. So the whole city center was without electricity for most of the day. It's just one more thing to adjust to. So, Trujillo is a busy, developing city full of life and excitement. It has taken some getting used to living here in Trujillo, but I am enjoying it.

This week we (the interns) are beginning our specific jobs. Meaning: we will be serving in various ways in each of the three churches that are supported by Peru Mission. We will be teaching English classes, helping in a small library, assisting in sewing classes, working with the micro-financing organization, teaching music lessons, and working in the medical clinic. I will be teaching English at one of the churches. Today we are going to the community to spread the word and promote the classes, and tomorrow I will start teaching. I'm super excited about it. I'm looking forward to helping anyone who wants to learn English and gain a useful job skill, and I am very excited to help connect people in the community to the church. God is at work in Trujillo. There is a lot happening here, and I am blessed to get to be a part of it all.

On a side note: I am taking Spanish lessons. It's so fun to learn a new language, and hard, but mostly fun. I am very glad to be getting formal language instruction. It's frustrating to not be able to communicate with people. Pray that I will learn Spanish quickly.

For all my friends reading this blog: I miss you terribly. I think of you often. If anyone would like to send me letters (which I would love to receive and would cherish forever) my address is
Av. España 121 3 piso
Trujillo, Peru, South America

A New Beginning

The time has come to blow the dust off this blog and begin writing again.

In three weeks I will be leaving friends and family yet again to move to a different country. This time I will be heading south to South America and the beautiful country of Peru. My final destination is Trujillo, Peru where I will spend the next 10 months working with Peru Mission. I'll be teaching English, serving in a church, reading some good books, studying God's word, loving on the students that I will teach, making new friends, and keeping in touch with old friends.

I want this blog to be a venue for sharing about life in Trujillo. I will be telling stories and posting pictures telling of God's work in the lives of those around me in Peru and his work in my own life.

So this is a time of big changes for me. I'm moving to a foreign country, and my blog got a new name. Stayed tuned for more stories of my life 'between here and there'.

Turning the Page

Today I am leaving Limoges; the sleepy little town in the middle of France that I have called home for the past four months. I have been wishing to leave this place for so long now. But, here at the very end I am a little sad to be leaving. I have made good friends here. I am just now beginning to feel at home in this city. And, I have made significant gains in speaking French. I wonder if I stayed longer how much more I would learn.

Yesterday, I cried while standing on the platform at the train station waving goodbye to friends heading off to Paris to catch a plane home. It hit me at that moment that the semester was really over. I have finished this short chapter in my life. I have turned the page right when the story was getting good and found it cut short.

So, today, as I turn the page on a chapter finished, I look forward to what God has written for the next chapter in my life. I know the basic outline. I will be in Norman among friends in a place that has been home to me far longer than this small town in France. In that I take great comfort.

A Strange Thing that Happens Sometimes

In the early morning hours between sleep and waking, I have the fleeting impression that I am in my bed at home in Dallas. One such morning I heard someone banging around in the small kitchen down the hall, and I was sure it was my mom in the kitchen downstairs cooking breakfast for everyone. I could also hear the trash truck outside my window on its weekly round emptying the trash cans, and I was sure it was my dad driving across the front yard in the truck pulling the noisy, rickety cattle trailer we have. I laid there for a few minutes completely convinced I was at home sleeping in on a Saturday morning wishing my parents weren't being so loud. But as I rolled over in my tiny bed and hit the wall, reality struck full force. It was not Mom making noise in the kitchen, and it was not Dad outside my window rattling along. I am in France, alone in my room, being awakened by the sounds of a busy dormitory far from a Saturday morning at home.

This has happened several times, maybe three or four times. Its strange, but pretty soon I will be waking up at home in Dallas. As of today, I have less than three weeks to go here in France.

A New Look

I found this awesome site with free backgrounds for blogs, and I escaped the boring black. Yippee!! I think now I will be more motivated to blog....maybe.

Thanks for the tip Anna.

Climbing on Castles

A couple of weeks ago a few friends and I were taken to see the oldest castle in this region of France. It was built sometime in the Middle Ages. I don't remember what it is called, but Richard the Lionheart made his home there for awhile.

The castle is in ruins now, but it was originally build as a fortress. Notice the different sizes of windows. The small ones are the originals. The larger ones would have been cut in during the renaissance when it became fashionable to live in a castle and outdated to have fortresses.

Sitting on the wall by the front gate

The interior is closed to visitors. At the back, there is a break in the back wall and a small cage to stand in on the edge so as to look down into the ruins. We didn't stay in the cage.

Standing on a castle.

The room below me. It was a long way down.

Another room of the castle

Sitting on a wall

Mary was braver than me and climbed up the opposite wall. She is a little bit crazy.

I have lots more pictures of the castle, maybe I should have made this an album on facebook. I'll end with those.

I kept thinking about the hundreds of people who had lived in that place and what life would have been like for them. I'm surrounded by lots of history here in France, and much of the stories have been forgotten. I enjoyed seeing this place.