The Story So Far

It’s been a while since I updated my blog and I figured I might as well do that before all my friends and family back home gave up on it. But after the baseball clinic I moved out of the guest house and into an apartment several blocks away. My new apartment is very nice. I live on the fourth floor of a five story apartment building. Fortunately it’s in a very safe neighborhood so I am able to walk by myself in the surrounding areas without the threat of imminent danger. Lately I have been enrolled in a school called El Sol (The Sun) in order to learn Spanish. This has been coming along quite well and I am learning a lot every day. It’s tough because the entire class is conducted entirely in Spanish but fortunately for me, I have a good head start on the Spanish language because my mom and grandma are of Mexican descent and spoke a good amount of Spanish around me. Also I found out recently that I had a Peruvian baby sitter when I was a baby who used to speak Spanish to me. It could be a good reason why I have never had trouble with the pronunciation of Spanish words. The school has also been great because I have made several friends within the school during this short period of time. I have been hanging out lately with a guy named Trevor who I met at the school who is also from the US. He’s a cool guy, and what’s also cool is the fact that he is a Christian and went on several long term mission trips when he was in college. It has definitely been a challenge to learn a language because in a way you are relearning how to speak and it’s only natural to use the expressions you already know in English to speak Spanish even though many of them do not directly translate. The next few months I am going to be heavily focused on learning Spanish to prepare for the ministry I will be doing among the Japanese in the coming months. A few weeks ago I had to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled because it had began to swell up after I had eaten dinner one night, and because it was partly covered with skin, it was highly prone to infection. It was scary to have a semi serious medical procedure in a foreign country but with a lot of prayers from all my friends and family back home, everything went according to plan. Praise God! I hope all of you back home will continue to pray for me everyday while I’m here in Lima. A few things you can pray for:
-I will be able to swiftly grasp the Spanish Language within the next few months
-I will recognize and take advantage of all the opportunities I have to witness to the people here in Peru
-I will use my time wisely and not forget the reason why God has me here