Day Two -- Introductions and Smiles.

Today we woke early and quickly got dressed to meet the team in the lobby by 8:00 am. After breakfast we boarded the bus and were told that before we arrive at the village of Santa Rosita we would make a stop at the Provincial Palace to meet with the Provincial Mayor of San Juan de Lurigancho, the largest province in all of South America. We arrived and had a brief meeting with the mayor and his staff, received a brief tour of the “Palace” which was actually simply a large municipal building. After a photo op with the Mayor we boarded the bus again and made the 45-minute trip to the village of Santa Rosita.
On the way, we were told of the projects we would be working on while here in Peru. We were told that we would build one community center and three houses. The “homes” are really prefabbed wall panels, tin for the roof and a concrete floor. There is no running water and no electricity. There is also no insulation in the roof or walls but then, it is not really needed because the temperature here falls somewhere between 58 degrees and 76 degrees year round. It is now winter here (remember we are 300 miles south of the equator) but the temperature today was a pleasant 73 degrees most of the day. The average annual rainfall is less than 2 inches so everything is very brown and dusty here.
When we arrived at the village we were met with a large group of villagers and lots of dogs. The difference between downtown Lima and this village are like day and night. Lima is a metropolitan city with every possible convenience. The village is located on the sides of very large hills and the living conditions here are very poor and very sparse. As we had been told, many of the homes are literally made with cardboard or shipping crates or old tarps or a combination of all of these materials. The people are extremely friendly and though we are limited some by the language barrier, smiles and hugs make up for the language challenges.
Our work today consisted of carrying all of the prefabbed wall panels up a very steep hill. Once those were in place, all of our team and lots and lots of villagers lined the road from the materials site all the way up to the construction site. We then began handing up bags of sand in true bucket-brigade fashion with the ultimate goal of moving the large sand pile from the bottom to the top of the hill. This sand will be used to make concrete for the floor of these buildings. The afternoon brought even more villagers to help with the sand pile transfer. We called it quits around 4:30 today.
We were told that every family that will receive a new house has physical problems within their family. Please pray that we can bring both physical and spiritual healing while we are here. We will ask the local leaders to provide an opportunity to anoint and pray for the sick. The power of God needs to be unleashed in the village of Santa Rosita. Please pray hard for that to happen. It has been a good day. I will post some pictures tomorrow evening.