One week to go

Greetings traveller,
We had an epic water fight a while ago which was awesome. People then started throwing mud at eachother and really dirty water which i wasn´t up for - was still good fun though. Carnival has just passed - a festival where everyone goes a bit mental and throws water at eachother or sparys eachother with white foam. It´s officially boys against girls and the boys are particularly merciless - gangs of them were roaming the streets on Sunday looking for targets. The next most obvious targets are white people (such as myself).                       >>>>(peter throwing a water bomb at people.. haha)>>>>>>>>>>>>

 We also had a great time go-karting the other day - i took some of the older boys and then a few days later me and JD went with the even older boys and a new guy (Josh) who´s coming to stay at the home. I was zipping round the track when the manager asked me to pull over and said "Oi mate, NO professionals." I said "I´m not a professional." He said, "Well you should be." True story.I also had the opportunity to play some pro 

evolution soccer in a wee shop with some of the boys. It was great as i beat the most overly competitive boy in the world called Antonio with a last minute goal and felt compelled to celebrate wildly in the crowded shop - he took it quite well, on the surface anyway.
Haven´t been feeling too well - in fact i spent much of yesterday and today suffering from the effects of food poisoning but am now on the road to recovery. You´ve probably never seen such impressive vomiting - it was everywhere. JD and all of the boys and other interns took great care of me while i was bed ridden and all went to great effort to nurse me back to health. Abel (the pastor and house parent) even brought a TV into the room so i could watch the Royal Rumble - what a legend. I am gutted to be missing out on the Royal Rumble wrestling event we have been planning for the boys which is probably happening

 tonight - i was planning to main event. It was mentioned as a joke in the meeting we had to plan stuff but Abel loved it as he´s really into wrestling - back of the net!
Anyway, i´m heading to Lima relatively soon for the first leg of my trip back.
toga bogey

sunday 22 feb

What can i say? I will add lots of pictures as i feel i want to represent more of the group of kids to you, and also the place we live in. All the trip and activites have been possible because of your donations..

The first picture is the Arequipa center square PLAZA.

The main square has the big Catholic

cathedral which is made out of white
rock called SILLAR. This rock is from the Misti volcano that sleeps beside "the white city". We call down to the plaza when we want to change dollars and get some food.

Every morning if i look out my window i see Chachani volcano and the other picture on the right is Misti volcano.

I love to be reminded that just as this powerfull volcano is looking over the city so is God Almighty who looks over each of us.. He is more powerfull and wonderfull than anything you can imagine. Psalm 19 comes to mind every time..

Today we went for a trip.. we visted an old mill. It was really sunny and the kids had a great time.. they ran around and you would not think that they had a backround that has brought them to this childrens home.. and this is how God sees us -from whatever bad backround we have come from He sees you as people He loves..

This is Seth, another volunteer. Pray for him as he works with the youth and teaches photography to them.

And the rest of the team. Lidia, Julia and Andrew from the U.S, and Lisia from Germany, and Jorge who is going to be on the team for a year possibly. We met up with him and went go-carting with the older dudes...

Peter is really doing well with the kids - they love him to bits..!

Hold on to a good thing! ....................don't lose it...

friday 20th feb

Hi to all, it is raining here! I'm wet and full of mud because we decided to go off for dinner in Sabandia - a far off place in the valley, where you can't really get a taxi back. No one had a phone but they did have a quad bike, so Peter drove and i sat on the back, getting splattered by mud. The dude we payed 5 soles to get to a main road to get a taxi ran behind us. He didn't last too long as he got splatter in mud and was let behind. We stopped a taxi in the pouring rain but Peter had a 50 sole note only. But half way down the trip we got this changed in to smaller coins, like 100 & 50 cents..... hahaha..

A good end to a rather stressfull day. The boys did not obey - they were to go on a tour - there's more to this, but i can't be stressed to retell.. But the boys are not going tomorrow to Sabandia to enjoy the quad bikes and horse riding..

I'm trying to think what we did yesterday..

the picture on the right is of the day trip before some boys were in trouble.. we took them to 2 museums, one of Peru Arequipa and other of pre-inca stuff. This trip and many others were possible because of your donations.
The picture is of three of the groups: older girls, younger girls, and the boys group i'm a tutor with. The younger boys group was not in this picture as they were still in the museum.



These days we have been going with the boys on individual trips, giving them 15 soles to spend. The plan is to go with a tutor. It's like a mentoring project. The boys get a bit of their time, and by going out with a tutor they also may open up more about stuff they want to talk about..

Peter is doing a great job with this. He has been taking some to a playstation shop to play and cinema and go-carting.. I took a boy, Jorge, to meet up with his granny because he has not really seen her or other people from his family.. This was quite a tour and took some finding, going from one family member to another and crossing all part of town.. eventually we did find her. She bought him and his younger brother that did not come with us a big bag of fruit.. After this we went into town and He wanted to buy some ornamental fish.. so we got a wee fish tank and two fish... but the last days his fish have died. so we have got two more.. He is 11 and really loves and is proud for his small family.. He has named the fish Peter and J-d.. the J-d fish died the other day.. i think it drowned..!