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.