Seeing and Planning and Shopping and Changing Plans and Shopping Some More!

Good Morning, Friends!

Yesterday (Tuesday) was another busy day, though quite different than Monday.

We started by testing the water here at La Iglesia Primero de Junio and watching the caretaker, Adan, run and describe the maintenance of their Living Waters system.  Janet and Fred took some water samples as they currently run their system, before any maintenance was performed by us.  This is the testing for which were awaiting results, which seem to be negative - it is a preliminary 24 hour test for bacteria and biological parasites in the water.   This is also a great practice run for the testing we will run at Elohim on Wednesday.

Janet and Fred do their magic with some preliminary water
condition tests at La Iglesia Primero de Junio.

\After enjoying yet another great breakfast, we went to visit an orphanage run by another of the priests under Father Alex.  Father Francis runs the Aida Infantil Sagrada Familia, an organization which provides a home for 53 children who have no home, and a preschool for another 18 who have poor home lives, but have not been taken from their parents.  The abuse these children have endured is unimaginable, but at least someone in the system has recognized this and brought them to a better home.  Fr. Francis gave us the example of an 11-year old boy who, when he came to the Orphanage, was malnourished, didn't walk much, and didn't talk at all.  Within three months of being in a caring environment, he changed and was a smiling and content child.  The pain in his story is that the same institution which took him from harm is considering that conditions have improved enough for him to return home!  Fr Francis and the others at Sagrada Familia are desperate to try to keep this young boy in a healthy place.  This is the kind of advocacy the people of Peru desperately need, and which we see Elohim providing the children of Mariana Melgar.

The afternoon was spent engineering and re-engineering the solutions we would like to implement at Elohim for the rest of the week, providing them some immediate improvements in their water needs.  For supplies, we visited a store called Sodimac, which is much like our Home Depot or Lowe's.  This home and construction center is only three months old, which helps us understand why it took so many questions to find answers.  While there, we found that our original over designed ideas were created using materials they did not have!  So... we redesigned again, on the fly, with what Sodimac had available.  After exploring the store several times, meeting a significant percentage of their staff and filling three large carts, we finally have what we need - or what we think we need. Our shopping tour took also a little more time than we expected - from departure to return for a reheated dinner (yes, we missed what Veronica prepared by quite a bit) was over 5 hours!  Upon returning, Ron took some time to lay out our plans for the school, and it looks like we may have actually purchased all we need.  As with all best laid plans, please follow again tomorrow to find out just how much re-re-redesign we did on site!

Our crew loading the van with our bounty.

We talk several times each day about the challenges we are facing and the people we meet.  We share stories of what we, as individuals, saw and felt.  We read the responses our friends at home send to us, and the comments on this Blog.  Our role as representatives to our new friends of all we have at home is more clear every day - every hour - and we thank you for your continued support!

Your faithful Servants,
The PCB-LWW Team