First Days!!!

Hey, friends!

I am so excited to just write to y'all finally! The internet here in Chosica (a couple hours from the airport) is fast, so I can actually do stuff. Unfortunately, I didn´t discover this place until yesterday, and we leave tomorrow morning to go back to Lima and then off to our respective villages.

Okay, so here´s a recap of what the past 5 days have been like. Saying goodbye at the airport was, to say the least, awful. I won´t say anymore. The flight was good, minus right before the flight when I realized that I didn´t have my folder with my official birth certificate, driver´s license, school id, and copy of my passport. Yeah....major freakout before I even left the US. But it all turned out fine, got my folder back, got on the plane, cried a bit, and settled in for my 6 hour flight. It was a really good flight and passed pretty quickly, but I´ll go ahead and get on to the more exciting stuff.

After we landed, went through customs, and got our baggage, we met up with the rest of the REAPSouth group that had arrived before us and got on a small bus to travel to the camp in Chosica. Trying to sleep that night was awful, but the next day was exciting as we started up training and as we got to meet and get to know our teammates and other summer missionaries. Pretty much every day (all day) this week we´ve been listening to people speak about various topics, including different ministry techniques, cultural differences, adjustingetc. It´s actually been really interesting stuff and not what I expected. I could spend hours and hours writing about all the cool stuff I´ve learned, but I won´t. It hasn´t quite felt like I´ve been a foreign country for these past 5 days because I´m still surrounded by Americans, and I´m so excited to get to the villages! It´s really beautiful here, and I could truly go on and on and on about the cool plants and sights here, but I just don´t have time.

All the staff, Journeymen, missionaries, and student summer missionaries here are awesome. Hearing their hearts and just the way that God has called them and used them has been so encouraging. I´m so excited about my team because I think we´ve all really clicked (for lack of a better word), and I think we´ll work well together. My teammates´ names are Shane Hess, David Jacola, and Kelly Pajal (she´s our translator and is so nice!). I´ve been practicing a lot of Spanish, which is good because I am building more and more confidence.

God has really been working on my heart since I´ve been here, and I wish I could express all that has changed in me and all that God is doing here in Perú. And these changes aren´t a result of some emotional high that came from this training because there hasn´t really been an emphasis on being emotionally charged. It´s much more serious and focused here, but fun at the same time. No, this change isn´t from emotion, it´s from God showing me that I haven´t been seeking him as I should and that I´ve been holding back out of fear and selfishness. I guess it takes a mission trip and the realization that I´m going to be ministering to people very soon to make me really study my Bible. I´m not just reading, I´m thinking, meditating, and God is showing me things that I have missed in passages that I´ve read dozens of times. Instead of feeling unprepared and unready like I did before, I´m excited and passionate about going and sharing Christ with people. That´s not to say that I feel ready and prepared, I´m just trusting God so much more and relying on him to cover my weaknesses, so I don´t feel unprepared....if that makes any sense. I wish so much that I could actually put this into words! I guess it´s just that before, I was looking at myself and how much I lack, and now I´m just focusing on God and how powerful he is. I can´t thank y'all enough for praying for me! That´s another thing God´s shown me this week: the necessity and importance of prayer. I´ve been spending so much more time just praying, and I just encourage y'all to do the same.

Like I said, tomorrow we go back to Lima, and my team is spending the night at a hotel in Lima because we have a 17 hour ride (fun, fun) to Southern Lucanas and we´re leaving at 4am on Sunday. I´ll try to upday this blog as much as possible, but I´ve been told that internet in our villages is dial-up and will be very slow in loading things.

I have so many prayer requests, but here are just a few:

-Safety for all the teams
-Unity among my teammates
-Humility and flexibility for me :)
-That God would continue to work and change each of our lives and remind us that he is in control
-That God would continue to prepare the villagers to be open and receptive to us gringos and more importantly to his truth and amazing love
-That God would do big things this summer through all of the teams and all of the summer missionaries around the world

I love you all so much, and I´m so thankful for your prayers and thoughts! Keep commenting because I absolutely love hearing from you!!

En Cristo,

Kim

P.S. Here´s Shane´s blog address: perumissiontrip2009.blogspot.com. I think he´s uploaded a few photos.

Location!

I forgot to add this to my last post, but I finally found out where in Peru I'm going to be serving: Lucanas/Ayacucho! I'm not sure what the /Ayacucho means (I think it's the region), but I looked up Lucanas, and it's a small village about 80 miles or so from Cusco and really close to the Reserva Nacional Pampa Galeras (Pampa Galeras National Reserve). I still don't really know what I'll be doing, but I'm excited to know where I'm going to live for the next 10 weeks!

Grace

As some of you may know, I have been struggling with faith and doubts lately, especially regarding my upcoming trip. Throughout this whole process, I've struggled fairly consistently with doubting my capabilities in nearly every sense of -ly you can think of: physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, linguistically, etc. This past week, though, has been especially difficult because I started doubting my beliefs. I started doubting the reasons I believe what I believe, and I just felt as if I had been going through the motions of routine and expectations for a long time. I was fed up with just going to church and singing the same songs without any realness behind them, and I wanted to experience and worship God in everything I did. This is going to sound a little silly, but I felt like Pinocchio. I was a wooden puppet manipulated by the strings of expectations and pretentiousness, while all I wanted was to be a real girl, a real daughter of God who seeks him with a genuine and open heart. Even though I've been writing in past tense, I'm still struggling with those things, but the difference now is that I'm seeking God. Before, I was so confused and upset that I just wanted to ignore these doubts and avoid thinking about them, but now, thanks to some of my amazing friends, I am seeking the answers and diving into God's Word instead of running from my problems.

God has a way of reminding me of things I already know but have forgotten because of my selfishness and lack of faith. The reason this post is entitled "Grace" is because of the sermon preached at my church today. It was about how God uses broken, foolish people to accomplish great things and to show the world his greatness. Too often, we focus on the signs and great things and forget who they point to. This whole time I had been thinking how unprepared I am when it has never been about me in the first place. Jesus lacks nothing, so when I'm in his hand, I'm covered, no matter what insecurities or failures I have. So I leave you with this verse that God has so graciously humbled me with:

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption." --1 Corinthians 1:26-30

It's not about me.

Finally

Hey, friends! I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for me to create my blog, so here it is! Fancy, I know. Soon I'll have real posts waiting for you to read, and hopefully they'll be more interesting than this one. I promise to do my very best to update this regularly (depending on my internet access in Peru), and I warn you that I plan to be open and real in what I write. Please understand that I am going to struggle, doubt, and be nervous while I'm on mission in Peru, and that it's not always going to be exciting, amazing adventures that I recount on my blog. Hopefully there will be many exciting, amazing adventures, but I know that there will be difficulties as well. Just keep praying, and please comment on my posts so that I know you're reading! As my friend Catie says, the fee for reading my blog is at least one comment :).