C-mail, the one where they all get sick

Howdy all,

Well, its been another week gone by and fast one at that. Time moves so slow here which makes the passing of the days just all the faster.
Here are the standard briefs:

1. Our team has been pretty sick lately. It amazing how quickly you can meet a group of perfect strangers and a few days later be sharing intimate secrets about the condition of your intestinal track like talking about the weather. I'll spare you the details but, I got sick earlier this week and I feel a lot better now. Praise God! The rest of the American section of our team seems to be moving from the intestinal to the standard cold, so pray for health, healing, and open hearts to learn and pray when we're out of commission.

2. Pray for a kid named Gorgé. I'll explain details later, but pray for freedom from addition and for his mom to see him as he is now, and for healing for him as well. Pray hard.

3. Our team has been pretty well this last week, we finished a playground in the community of San Martin and had a big festival to celebrate it on sunday where a few doctors, dentists and a lawyer all came to aid the folks in the community for free. There were a lot of people from some local churches and the corresponding skits and ugh, kids music. It was really great though and the community is super stoked to be helped in this way. It was a total effort on their part too and it was great to see everyone come together for the project and each other. Our team will be leaving this part of Lima on thursday and they are sad that we are going as well.

4. Thanks for all of the respond emails and prayers, I really do appreciate it and am so grateful for the prayer support. The spanish is getting better from day to day although at times it can be a bit frustrating when trying to discuss deeper issues than excuse me, need the bathroom. (I can say more than that, honest).

5. This might be the last email from Lima. I think we fly out next sunday late in the evening, so there might be one more, but we'll see. But the time has gone/is going by so fast. Such is life.

Alright, cool stuff is below about getting sick (not the gory details, but lessons and such.) and again you're all great.

Press on for Joy!
Cameron

I got this question in an email today:
-What motivated you choose this mission trip? What is the meaning of this trip?-

In my last email, I think I said something to the affect that I really kinda liked what life was like the San Martin community. Life was kind of easy, they have some chickens, ducks, pigs, etc. The community is a thirty minute walk through lettuce and basil fields from the main paved road. The houses, if you could call them that are very small, dirt floored, many times made out of palates, poles, and thatching. They don't have electricity so the whole place goes dark about an hour after sunset. Water only comes weekly from a truck and is stored in barrels. It seemed like a very simple type of community and somewhat rustically romantic.

But, something wasn't quite right. I thought I had come on this trip to serve the poor, to follow Jesus in his call to serve the least of these. Perhaps I'm just a simplist at heart, but the poverty of these people just wasn't hitting me in the way that I thought it would. So I prayed that God would show me what He sees when he looks at this place, what is it that His heart breaks for, if anything when He looks at Lima and San Martin.

I saw a few things in the next few days, but I'm going to focus on getting sick. When working on the play ground, we needed to excavate a number of trenches. The place the playground was going was next to an open field. The field is used for one purpose, trash. One of the communities main sources of income is sorting trash. Different types of plastic, different types of paper, some to be recycled, the rest burned or just tossed out. And out in the field it goes. Piles of it in some places, and just a few plastic bags in others. And always something burning. One day when it was particularly clear, we could look at the fields from our world vision housing site and see at least a dozen plumes of smoke rising out of different fields all around the valley, obscuring the sun to a dim amber, it seriously looked liked something out of Lord of the Rings.

Oh and one other thing, the wind blows from the field into San Martin. The community continually reeks from the smell of the burning. That pretty much is why I got sick. Probably from some infected dust, or smoke or who knows what. Witches Brew is what one of the peruvian staff said. And so I didn't go out for two days and slept and thought. But I think God showed that the people living there, have to live there. They don't have enough money to move, and that is only
way they have to feed their family. And if they get sick, good luck paying for a doctor or getting pills and keeping a job and making up for the lost income.

I'm out of time, but yeah, thats it. It isn't right, but thats the deal. More to come later, sorry, you're all great.

Press on for Joy!
Cameron

PS. One of the women in the community was pregnant and was asking for names and in honor of my two roomates, I suggested Dan and Brenton, but I think she chose Cameron (nice choice, except it sounds like the word shrimp in spanish).

PPS. Mom I'm completely better and God's with me, so no worries, he'll keep me safe, even in the midst of all the dust and trash.