Last night after church I was talking/waiting for someone to slow down enough so that I can understand and imput something with some of the members. Jaime (Elizabeth's husband) asked me what my plan was here in Peru, for my motives. I found this difficult to explain. I didn't want to say God was calling me to help you. That seemed insensitive. And I don't have a plan for the year, I came not knowing what my tasks would be.

We spent a lot of time at orientation talking about the importance of being, and the changed term missonary-the idea of being in community with people of another culture. It seems to me as though my expected duties with Luz y Vida are those of the more traditional term for a missonary. My understanding is that I am to teach the youth group things via workshops; workshops about enviornment, values, sex and self-esteem. This frankly terrifies me. I think I may have over emphasised the fact that I worked with my youth group back home. I've tried to explain to Pastor Rodrigo that I don't teach them anything. We would just talk about stuff related to the Bible, sometimes very loosely related. I know nothing about these topics and when I asked Pastor Rodrigo for more information he gave me 5 books about sex and one text book sort of thing about self-esteem, all in Spanish! So my 'family' doesn't dance or drink and I am to teach a workshop about abstinence...Did I miss something here, when did I sign up for a new set of morals?

Anyway I told Jaime that I came because I talked with Ruth in April and I liked her and what she had to say, and she said come to Peru!

The idea of faith based social justice programs is really exciting to me. I hope this year to soak up as much information as possible. I want to learn about non-profit organizations, about fair trade and exporting artisan crafts, about justice and reconciliation issues, about human rights and advocacy campaigns, to speak Spanish, and to salsa dance. I brought this up at lunch today, we talked about the whole YAV discernment process, and decided that most of the group came because Ruth is an excellent recruitor!