Well, I am leaving Pacasmayo tomorrow. Many things have happened that I have wanted to blog about, but our internet has been down for the past month making it near impossible to spend sufficient time caring for this blog. I just never felt comfortable writing sitting in a hard plastic chair or at a tiny childsized desk. So enough of my justification for the lack of blogging, this has been an experience. It hasn't been a great experience and it definitely hasn't been a horrible experience but I am extremely happy that made the decision to come down here and it has been a very memorable experience. Bipolar is a word that can definitely describe my time down here. There were a lot of really amazing times and a few not so great times, but i guess you always have to take the good with the bad. I think I am more confused about life but I think i have definitely learned a lot about myself.
I am still completely lost about what to do when I finish my time in Peru. I guess I shouldn’t have thought that I would figure out the next big plan for my life while I was down here. You would have thought that the isolation down here would have been a great time to think, to read, to make decisions. While a little of all three have been completed it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, which is really frustrating because I was trying to come down here without any expectations. I definitely didn’t get as involved in the lives of the orphans as much as I thought and sometimes feel like I haven’t really done much. It’s really hard stepping back and actually acknowledging the things that you have done. Hopefully I have been a good representation of a gringa if I haven’t done anything else down here.
My friend Mark was telling me about a guy in the Peacecorps who worked in a really small mountain town and felt like he didn’t get anything accomplished there. However years later they found out that this small town had something different that all of the others surrounding it. The people in this town had great dental hygiene. Apparently this peacecorps worker would brush his teeth everyday in the center of town at the well and I guess his example caught. I don’t think that I would have made that kind of difference, but hey you never know.. That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To make a difference?
Avis, the founder of the Go-Ye Ministries has really influenced me down here. Every time I talk to her I just feel re-energized about life. She built this amazing ministry from the ground up. Seriously, she was just one woman with her Bible that has made physical and especially emotional differences in this community. A week or so ago some developers put up a sign on the building next to our school that explained the future plans for a library. There is no way that 10 years ago they would have even thought about putting a library in La Palmera. Avis started developing this unwanted land that was also home to the dumpyard for Pacasmayo and now it is finally seeing a promise for the future. Her church is a temple, her orphanage is a sanctuary, and her school is a catalyst for brighter futures and better things to come. The thing I love about Avis is that she doesn’t stop at those three facets. Her mission and her heart wants to go out to the entire community, the country, and the world if she could. Her visions for the future of her missionary and for the community are beautiful and even appear to be feasible based on her past record of success.
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