Okay, so we have random pictures of our broken computer posted below...THAT is where all of our newsletter contacts and everything are kept. Thankfully the thing let Justin boot up long enough to get our contact information off of it and loaded onto our other, much older computer. Yes, that's right, the broken computer is the NEW computer that we bought just before we left the States. Thankfully we bought the warranty, so the new motherboard is free, but Dell has to ship it down...that can take two weeks or longer. We're thankful to now have all of our contacts, and now we've recreated our newsletter format anew on our old computer, and we're working from there. Hopefully we'll have it out in the next couple of days.
In the mean time: life is doing well. We miss family, and Justin is still getting into the groove of things in ministry, and the Lord has really given him a vision for working with men. We sometimes have "Bad Peru Days"...That's a phrase we've adopted from some friends who wrote to us from China saying they sometimes have "Bad China Days." This by no means is an insult to our host countries, rather our reactions to culture stress. The theme song from Cheers keeps popping into my head, "Sometimes you wanna' go where everybody knows your name..." It's like being a freshman all over again, meeting new people, seeing who you jive with, forming your routine, trying to balance work with play, but add in the fact that few people speak your first language, you have to completely relearn how to drive, and you have to barter all your prices for food because they want to charge you more because they think you don't know better...and sometimes you don't....and it just plain gets tiring.
I'm also still adjusting to facing poverty...though we live in a very nice part of town, there are still street children and impoverished street vendors on the streets leading up to our local shops and markets and everywhere in the city. Sometimes I get flustered trying to think if I have change for a handful of a woman's candy, or when a street person walks up to me and I have nothing, or I don't feel like I should give because they're just begging and not working. It's tough to balance out my feelings and to figure out the appropriate thing to do.
I am extremely grateful that the Lord has blessed us with an awesome apartment, we're all healthy, and busy with our new life. One day this will all be familiar, and I will forget that it once felt weird to have to pay guys to watch your car when you're parked on the street, or to dodge traffic like a fast game of Frogger, or to pay your bills at the bank or supermarket. I am thankful for this rich life. Now if I could just figure out how to quit setting off my car alarm everytime I get in :)
In Christ,
Gillian
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