Hey everyone! We are continuing to adjust to life in Cusco, but so far we love it! We’ve spent the past week getting the apartment settled, learning the combi/bus route to school and town, visiting markets and learning where stuff is.

For your entertainment, we will list a few situations that we have encountered so far that is a bit different than at home:

1. Latino culture is very laid-back (a plus for procrastinators) and relational.  You kiss everyone when you enter a room and kiss them again when you leave. “On-time” is what Americans would consider very late.  When in doubt, you can be 30 minutes late.  Sometimes, when the internet guy promises he will come at 10AM tomorrow, he may or may not come.  This week, he was a no-show, so perhaps next week we will have internet installed at our place.

2. Combis are a very cheap way to travel here (picture in your mind your mom’s mini-van but it can accommodate 26 people as opposed to the original “seats 12” design. For about $0.30, the ServicoRapido or the Batman can take you into town (45 min. by combi, 15 min. by taxi, hours if you walked).

3. This is a bargaining culture. You haggle pretty much every price (except at supermarket chains).

4. We saw a sign for a “LOST DOG”, which is pretty funny because ALL dogs here are lost.  Haven’t seen a “pet” yet.  The dogs are lazy around people and keep to themselves in packs.

5. The food here is very good! You will never run out of breads, eggs, fried chicken, rice and potatoes.  We are delighted to run into our old friends: Mr. Oreo, Mr. Ritz, Mr. Doritos and Mr. Pringles.

6. The warm water in our apartment is shocking….really! You have to flip the electric heater on (which is on top of the shower head while the water is running) and if we touch anything but the top part of it, it will shock you.  So much in fact, that if you aren’t quite fully awake in the mornings, it will jumpstart your morning. So we’ve learned to shower really fast because you either get zapped a lot, or the water is scalding hot.

In other news, we are spending a lot of our time, outside of our personal time with God, on Tuesday/Friday mornings/Wednesday nights praying and interceding for this city.  We joined the Allen’s and some other missionaries from different organizations on Wednesday night for dinner and praying for Cusco.  Jesus loves this city and this nation.  We are in agreement 100% with Jordan and Joy that YWAM Cusco should be rooted in prayer and worship.  God has set apart this city for his glory and is speaking Isaiah 61 over her.  It is clear that something will be birthed out of this valley and it is our job as the body of Christ to simply live love everyday. Whether it’s giving someone at the market flowers and telling them that God loves them, or buying them a drink, or praying for them, or simply asking “how are you, today?” we can love on people around us.

We went with our buddy, David Snyder, on a city outreach on Wednesday despite having quite a stressful morning with losing a debit card.  We wanted to freak out about it, but felt like we should stay to pray for people.  We watched a parade of school kids go by and they were for the empowerment of girls and against child abuse (a big, but unspoken injustice in Peru).  So we got to stand on the steps of the Palace of Justice (yes, that’s what it’s really called!) and pray out loud (because who can understand English here?) for God to raise up a generation of God-fearing and loving men and be the Daddy the protector of thousands of little girls.  Snyder prayed for a woman and because she couldn’t understand his Spanish or English, her brother could translate.  She said her back was in pain and after he prayed for her, she said she was 100% better! (YAY GOD!).  She told him he must be a priest and he was delighted to inform her that he was just an ordinary guy.  We walked to the Plaza de Armas and sat on the steps of a cathedral.  We met a young guy from California named Rob who approached us handing out flyers for a restaurant.  He told us his story about how he was volunteering with a social project in town and is taking the year off to volunteer around Latin and South America.  David asked if he could pray for him (the guy was not Christian and looked totally confused) so David starts speaking into his life and praying blessings over him and Rob becomes filled with joy.  He invited us out for drinks and even though we had another engagement that night, we want to try and meet up with him soon.

We also started language school on Thursday with two 2-hour sessions at MundoAntiguo School.  We seem to be cruising through our level 1 book (we know it won’t always be this easy, but THANK YOU for your prayers and keep them coming that God would give us the supernatural tongue of deep conversation in Spanish). Shout-out to Miss Katie Isaacson for all of your tutoring sessions. They are so helpful already!  Our teachers this week were Amauta and Jimmy.  Jimmy reminds us a lot of a Peruvian version of Zach Miller (super cool guy). We hope to form deeper relationships with both of our teachers, especially Amauta (who let us pray for her after class), who is a newlywed as well. We hope to double-date with her and her esposito, Jesús and get to know them better.

And, yes, we saw 2 llamas already (both downtown, drinking out of the water fountains!) next to Quechua families who want you to pay for a picture with them (or the llamas).

Hasta semana, amigos! Nosotrosteamamos!