A week in the life

I’m still easing into my daily work routine. I start the work week off right – Mondays are my free day. I also have Tuesday and Thursday mornings off. Starting on September 30, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I will teach English classes at Santa Isabel Church, which is about a 20 minute bus ride from my house. Eva, a member of the church speaks English and has taught English before. It sounds like she’s going to be pretty much running the show, and I’ll be helping her out. Starting tomorrow, tuesday nights I will attend a prayer service at Santa Isabel, while Thursday nights I will go to Bible study with Santa Isabel. On Wednesdays and Fridays from 8:30 to 5:30 I’m working with children at Kilometer 13 Church as part of their “Compassion International Program,” which I’ll explain in great detail later.

As many people reading this probably know, I am planning on attending seminary after my year of service here in Peru. I think Debbie, my site coordinator and “third mother” here in Peru (the second being my host mother and the first obviously being my real mother), designed this plan of work for me knowing that it would be great preparation for being a “real pastor” one day. I say this because like any good “pastor in training,” the weekend is where I make most of my money (okay, that joke’s bad enough when you’re an actual pastor and even worse when you’re a church VOLUNTEER!). Starting next Saturday, I will be going to Kilometer 13 at 7:30am, bright and early to play fulbito with the church youth. Fulbito is “mini-soccer” – with smaller goals, and it’s played on a concrete “field” that’s about as big as a basketball court. I've only played once so far - and I was pretty much the goalie the whole time, because when I play in the field I pretty much just run around after the ball trying not to get kicked in the shins. After futbolito on saturdays, we eat breakfast. From 9:30 to 11:00 (again, starting next Saturday), I will accompany the pastor, Hernando, and a psychologist (I can’t remember his name – I’ve had to learn a lot in the past couple weeks) on visits to the homes of children in the Compassion program. Most of the kids have lots of issues at home, so we’re there mainly as counselors for the families. Hernando says that together, the three of us will be a great “pastoral team:” he’s a professional pastor/theologian, the psychologist is obviously a psychologist, and I’m a “professional” sociologist (because I majored in sociology). Any time he’s explaining this “pastoral team” concept to someone and he implies that we’re all equally qualified in our respective disciplines, I have to try really hard not to laugh. It’s not that I think I didn’t learn anything by majoring in sociology at Trinity (far from it). It’s just that Hernando and the psychologist each have master’s degrees and about 20 years of life experience that I don’t have, so to hear him talk about me, a 22 year old volunteer missionary with a newly minted bachelor’s degree and who doesn’t even speak Spanish fluently in the same breath as the two of them is rather amusing.

Starting October 4, from 11 – 12:30 every Saturday I will teach basic English at Kilometer 13. Then, from 12:30 to 4, I have time to eat lunch and take a siesta. At 4pm (again, starting Oct. 4) I’ll teach “intermediate” English for people who already know simple vocabulary and grammar. Pastor Hernando’s plan for these intermediate classes is that each class will start with a Bible passage or Christian message in English that we’ll have to translate. But this format won’t be advertised – the class is just advertised as free English classes for the neighborhood. After we get them to come to classes, we get to sneakily evangelize them! (Bait and switch? Not exactly – we’re still teaching English) Finally, my Saturdays conclude with the “adolescents” worship service in Kilometer 13 from 6:30 to 8pm. First we play games, and then Hernando preaches, or occassionally one of the youth does it (this is what I'm told - which means I'll probably have to do it eventually...) Sundays, I spend the whole day at Santa Isabel. I help out with Sunday school from 9:30 to 11, and church from 11 to 12:30-ish. Then I eat at a restaurant with some of the church members. Starting in a couple weeks, I will do "visitations" after lunch with the President of the Consistorio (basically the church ‘session’ or government – Santa Isabel doesn’t have a pastor). I think these will be similar to the family visitations I am supposed to do on Saturdays for Kilometer 13. I finish up Sundays with another worship service at Santa Isabel from 7pm to 8:30. And that’s what an average week will look like. Theoretically.

The Compassion Program at Kilometer 13 has definitely been my favorite part of my job so far (it's also the only thing I've done regularly). I’m still piecing together exactly what the program’s purpose is. Basically, it’s daycare and lunch for kids from 2 – 16 years old, provided for free by the church to the neighborhood. There are two sessions – one in the morning from 9am to 1pm and one in the afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. The sessions overlap a little bit, and each child can only come to one session per day. If you come to the first session you get lunch right before you leave; if you attend the second you get lunch right away. I guess the thing I’m not clear on isn’t how the Compassion Program works but rather what the laws are as far as going to school in Peru. My best guess is that the schools work the same way as the Compassion program (minus the whole free lunch part) – you either come to classes in the morning or in the evening. It just seems odd to me that all these kids would just be wandering the streets or burdening their parents for half the day if it weren’t for the Compassion program. Outside of food, the Compassion Program is basically like Sunday school. The younger kids sing songs, play games and draw/color. The older kids have a Bible curriculum and even complete homework and tests on Christian living. Each child has a “Padrino” or “Madrina” in the United States (or maybe some other countries). Padrino/madrina literally means “Godparent.” These are the sponsors of the program. They donate money to Compassion International, the NGO which provides the funding for the staff, food, materials etc. Kilometer 13 Church provides the building and the teachers/tutors. Every couple weeks each child has to write a letter to his/her padrino/madrina (I’m just guessing – it could be more/less often).

In all, there are over 200 children who participate in Kilometer 13’s Compassion Program. They are divided into 3 age groups that share 5 classrooms. The youngest group are 2 – 4 year olds, then 5 – 12, and one for 12 +. My host mother, Daniela, is one of the teachers for the middle age group. About an hour or so into my first day working she informed me she was leaving to go to the market to buy something (which ended up being a cake and soft drinks to welcome me, paid for with money that all the students contributed). So without warning, I was left alone for 40 minutes or so with about 18 kids who I’d just met that didn’t speak English. That was fun. Fortunately, I prevented them from killing each other. They were pretty rowdy since it was my first day there, and they’d been anticipating my arrival for weeks. And the fact that they were obviously really happy I was hanging out with them didn’t mean that they were going to listen or follow my directions. I eventually taught them how to play “Here I sit” (or “aca me siento,” as I roughly translated it), a game we play in Montreat that helps you learn people’s names. They liked it a lot, but it’s a game that gets old quickly. Once they were bored with it I couldn’t think of any other games that were suitable for an indoors, classroom-type space and that I could lead in Spanish. So I finally sat them all down and taught them how to sing the first part of “Jesus Loves Me” in English. Soon after, Daniela returned to rescue me.

Well that's about it for now. Today's random story: yesterday Santa Isabel had a "rummage sale" after the morning worship service. Among the things for sale was an old t-shirt - made in Peru - that says ATLANTA OLYMPICS '96 with a picture of a bald eagle and American flag. It was only 1 sol (about 35 cents), so I had to buy it!