Travel

To start, we left Costa Rica on Friday afternoon for Lima.  Josh, myself, Micah (another EMI staff member), his wife Beth and two interns, Jeff and Tripp landed in Lima without problem around 8:30 Friday evening.  Our plan was to stay at the airport until the last plane landed at 11:55 and head to a hotel for the night.  Well, just as things don’t turn out the way you planned, the last 3 flights of volunteers were delayed.  The last volunteer was rescheduled to arrive at 3 AM.  Yes, 3 AM.  I was surprised to see that at midnight, the airport was still busy and going strong.  Every airport I’ve ever been in is a ghost town by midnight.  So, to see every restaurant open and hoards of families waiting for their loved ones to arrive at 2 AM and later was interesting.  So, Josh, our fearless leader, took the team of 16 people to the hotel by 2 AM, laid down for 20 minutes and then headed back to the airport for the 3AM flight.  His head finally hit the pillow at 4:30. 6:30 AM came really early that morning, especially for Josh.  We took the hour-long flight from Lima to Cuzco, Peru that morning, then drove 1.5 hours to Urubamba, Peru.  Needless to say, our entire group was pretty tired.  Most of the group used the rest of the day to recover and to adjust to the altitude difference.  Cuzco is about 11,000 feet above sea level and Urubamba is just over 9,000 feet so altitude sickness can definitely be a problem.  Josh, Micah and the architects spent the rest of the day riding around Cuzco looking at current construction and landscaping practices.  So, by the time Josh got to bed that night, he had slept about 2 hours in 48 hours and was exhausted.  I think by this morning, Monday, he finally feels fully recovered.  It was encouraging to hear from the ministry that we are working with, SEBIC seminary and Nueva Vida Iglesia Bautista.  They are so excited that we are here and are excited about what the Lord is going to do through the new seminary campus and church the group is designing.  Their words were inspiring and a good start to the week of hard and long hours of work.