Wrapping up and headed home

Today is Thursday and we are packed up and headed home today.
The last day of clinic and Bible Storying was a HUGE SUCCESS! First, Gary and Jennifer were able to rejoin our team yesterday afternooon. It was too late for them to see patients, but it was so great to have them back with us. Janie made it to Lima, but she had fluid in her lungs and was admitted to the hospital in Lima and into ICU. Gary spoke with her doctor there and Gary says she is in a good hospital and that the doctor is a good doctor. The last word I heard is that she will be in ICU at least until tomorrow, so she will not be returning to the US with us tomorrow. She will be alright, it will just take a few days for her to recover. Thank you so much for all the prayers for her, I know they are very appreciated.
Now, onto the clinic and Bible Storying update. We were able to see many eye and dental patients and the pharmacy gave out lots of adult and children´s vitamins.
Bible Storying: Tuesday night, we had a miscommunication with our translator and she never arrived to translate for us. I had learned my stories in Spanish, so I told mine but after 45 minutes of speaking Spanish, I was so tired and we didn´t go any further. BUT 36 people came that night and we invited them back on Weds to hear the rest of the stories. Here comes the exciting part--- Wednesday night we did the rest of the Bible Storying (I had stopped at Cain and Able) and had a great response. 6 people accepted Jesus including our translator!! We got the names and addresses so the local evengelical church here can follow up. Can I just say that that more than made up for all the cold, dirt, bad food, tiredness etc!! We were all walking on clouds on the way back to the hotel, freezing cold clouds, but clouds nonetheless.
There have been many challenges on this trip, more I think than any I have been on and this is my 5th trip to Peru in 4 years, but God is so faithful and good and it is so true that if we are obedient to Him, He provides above and beyond anything we can imagine.
Thanks so much again for all the prayers and we´ll see you when we get back to the US tomorrow! Yay!!!

Day 4 update

Today was our first day of clinic in Barrio Mariano Melgar. We were all together in one big room, which was nice since we a short of translators etc, it was easy for me to run from pharmacy to occulista and back again to help translate.
We saw alot of people today, and I think we will have more tomorrow.
Here´s the latest on Janie. She was able to fly to Lima this morning from Juliaca. She arrived in Lima around mid day and is in the hospital there overnight. She will then go to a hotel that the missionaries stay in and will return to the US with us on Friday. Gary and Jennifer were not able to get out of Juliaca today due to a transportation strike. I am not sure if they will be able to rejoin our team at all because we only have tomorrow for clinic and then we are headed to Juliaca on Thursday am. We met a Peruvian Dr. who came and worked at the clinic this afternoon so we were able to see medical patients today.
The Bible Storying went well at the original location, but the other two did not work out. One of them was supposed to be in someone´s home and they changed their mind about having it and one was supposed to be at our new clinic site. We showed up there last night and waited an hour and nobody came. This is not really suprising because the people didn´t really know us, as we had not had our first clinic day yet. We are going back tonight and hopefully someone will come.
It is still very cold here. Last night when I was walkng back from the Bible Storying the water in the puddles was already frozen over.
Please continue to pray for Janie and the whole team as we wrap up this trip tomorrow. There have been lots of obstacles thrown at us, but we have still had a great trip.

Day 3 Update and Urgent prayer request

Hi Everyone
We finished up the clinic at Barrio Panamericano today. Gary Mennie got sick last night- stomach stuff and wasn´t able to come in the morning, so the triage nurses saw some patients with general stuff, you know back pain and we gave out vitamins etc. Gary was well enough to work in the afternoon and was planning on coming back to clinic after lunch when Janie Hodgins, one of our team members got very sick. The oxygen in her blood has dropped very low. Gary and one of our nurses, Jennifer Sanderfur along with one of our translators - Jerry- took Janie to Juliaca tonight. They are spending the night there and then Jerry and Janie will fly to Lima and Gary and Jennifer will rejoin the team tomorrow. One of the missionaries that lives in Lima will meet Janie´s flight and take over her care. That is the plan. Please pray that Janie will improve over night and be able to board the flight to Lima in the morning without any problems and that she and Jerry will have a safe flight to Lima and that she will get the care she needs in Lima. Also pray that Gary and Jennifer will have a safe trip back to Ayaviri to rejoin the team. They rode a bus to Juliaca and are riding a bus back tomorrow.
We are doing Bible storying in three areas this evening, we have been able to move storying team assignments around so that we can still cover all three sites. Gene Marsh will be at one site by himself with a translator, so pray especially for him.
We are thankful to God that Gary was here to take care of Janie and that we had a nurse to travel with him and help with her care. So many things have happened on this trip that I know satan is using to try to take our focus off our work, but we are not going to let that happen, and we appreciate your prayers so much.
I will update you tomorrow or sooner as I hear word about Janie.
Thanks again for your prayers.

Day Two of Clinic

Here´s the day two update. We didn´t have as many patients as we thought we would. But, of course, we were happy to see the ones that came. Dr. Brett Ford arrived here this morning and jumped right in seeing eye patients. It is great to have him here. We are starting the Bible Storying this evening at the clinic site. We are not sure how many people will come. Tomorrow will be the last day of the clinic at this site, we are moving on Monday to the other barrio. Our clinic will be in one big room there. We are also going to have Bible Storying there on Mon, Tues and Weds nights and Steve is scouting a third location.
It´s still cold, in fact I think it was colder last night than the night before.
Here are two funny things that happened today. First, we take this tricycle taxis out to this clinic site. This morning Gary and I shared a taxi and it was named ¨Titanic¨ For real, we took the ¨Titanic¨ to the clinic. Then at lunch time, we were wandering around looking for a place to eat and every where we went was closed. I told the guys ¨One more stop and then I´m going to Wendy´s¨ (Wendy´s is the name of a store next door to the hotel where we got cokes and chips the day before) Bret Ford said ¨There´s a Wendy´s here? What are we walking around for?¨
We have had water issues since we got here. When there is water, it is not hot. Jan Guidry gets the Iron Woman award for taking a cold shower and washing her hair. Gary measured the temp of the water coming out of the bathroom faucet at 36.4 degrees Yow!!!
That´s all for now. Keep us in your prayers.
Becky

Day one of Clinic

We started the clinic today. We used the campus of a school in the Barrio Panamericano - a poor area of Ayaviri. We were able to set up in several of the clasrooms. Gary saw 45 patients, the occulistas saw aboout 94 patients. I´m not sure how many dental patients there were but it was a steady stream all day. There was a big festival outside town today and alot of people were there, so we are expecting more patients tomorrow. We will be at this location until Monday and then move to another barrio on the other side of town.
It was pretty cold last night. Gary Mennie has a Go Go Gadget watch with lots of different functions and he said it was 45 and dropping in his room when he fell asleep last night. I think we all were able to get warm enough to sleep. It warmed up today to around 60 or so and it was sunny so we were warm during clinic, but as soon as the sun goes down, the cold comes back.
Dr. Bret Ford, our eye doctor should be here tomorrow. Mark and Michelle Lemoine and Kyle Hooper did a great job seeing eye patients today, they gave eye tests and glasses.

We are starting our Bible Storying tomorrow night, so please be in prayer for that.
Our whole team appreciates your prayers.
Becky

Barbara Stubee, our own Capt. Sully

Well, we have finally arrived in Ayaviri and our trip here was an adventure from the start. We all met at FBC PN yesterday and loaded up the bus to head to the airport. Barbara Stubee was our bus driver. We headed to Houston and got about 15 or 20 minutes down 69 north when a tire blew on the bus! You may have seen it on the news last night. Barbara steered that bus off the road, taking out about 50 feet of guardrail and clipping a few poles. It probably took about 15 seconds to stop, during which time I had the following thougts; Where is my seatbelt - answer none on the bus except for driver. Why is it taking so long to stop- it didn´t really. When this bus rolls over, where am I going to land and how can I protect my head- I have no control of that. And then I looked up the bus through the windsheild and saw a pole coming right at Barbara and I thought - If that pole hits her, she will die. Barbara moved the bus past that pole- she says God did it and we came to a stop. The out into the heat and scrambling to unload all our stuff and get people with vans etc out to us so we could continue on to Houston and not miss our plane. We made it to the airport and checked in for our flight. Adventure number two- Dr. Bret Ford, our eye doctor who lives in Kerrville, had flown into Houston earlier in the afternoon. When he went to check in for the flight to Lima, he realized he had brought an expired passport! He spent the night in Houston, his wife overnighted him the correct passport and he is joining us on Sunday I believe. Please pray that he has safe travel. We got to Lima and spent the night on the cold, hard floor of the Lima airport- except for Dr. Gary Mennie, who brought a little bedroll thingy to sleep on- such a smart man. We flew to Juliaca this morning and when we got off the plane, we could see our breath! Yep, it´s cold alright. Gary said when he went through the gate in Lima and the ticket agent saw he was headed to Juliaca, he said ¨Juliaca, it´s too cold there¨:). When we got to Juliaca, we had to wait in a hotel for the strike to end and the roads to open. We arrived in Ayaviri about 3 pm this afternoon. I believe tomorrow is our set up day and then we will start our work.
Please continue to pray for us and I´ll update as often as I can.
Thanks
Becky

Last minute preparations and prayer requests

Well, the big day will be here tomorrow. Our team meets at FBC Port Neches at 11:30 am, then we load up and head to Bush Intercontinental for our afternoon flight to Lima- suprisingly enough, SE Texas Regional Airport is not an international airport and we have to leave from Houston :). We fly on Continental from Houston to Lima and usually arrive in Lima around 11:30 or so, then we have to wait in the Lima airport until the first LAN Peru flight out to Juliaca - we usually catch that flight around 5am. From Juliaca we take ground transportation - a bus or vans- farther up the mountains until we arrive in Ayaviri. I have some specific prayer requests for our travel -
1- that we will have safe travel in the air and on the ground
2- that we will not have any overweight luggage we are allowed one 50lb suitcase and one 20 lb suitcase
3- that ALL of our medicines and eye glasses and the dental equipment arrives in one piece and it all clears customs in Lima without any problems.
There is a 72 hour "juelga" or strike that has been called for a city in the same district the Ayaviri is in. A strike usually shuts down ground transportation. The strike started today, so it will probably not affect us getting from Juliaca to Ayaviri, however our Peruvian translators are supposed to meet us in Ayaviri on Friday and we need to pray that they will be able to travel and meet us.
Steve Travis, our team leader, also sent out a prayer request this afternoon that our prayer partners would pray for the people of Barrio Panamerica and Barrio Mariano Melgar. Pray that they would be receptive to hearing "The Story of God from Creation to Eternity", that they will be born again, desire to profess Jesus as Lord and be part of the body of Christ in a local church.
I should be able to post regular updates during our trip, there are several internet cafes near the hotel we are staying at.
Thanks again for your prayers. Our whole team appreciates it.