Barnicle

Ok next part, the unplanned part. By that I mean not in our plans but God's.

We were supposed to fly straight to Peru and Bolivia and spend an extra week there. However our flight was messed up by the travel company and we were leaving a week later than we expected. Also I should mention our flight was out of Panama City so we decided to spend out extra week there at the YWAM base just outside of Panama City.

After our first of many long bus rides we make it to the base. There we spent some of our week helping out with a school that is run by YWAM volunteers. There they teach kids who normally would not be able to afford a private school education. There the kids are taught in english from a very young age and are also able to learn Manderin. I thought this was very cool and if anyone wants to volunteer you just have to have done a DTS. At the school we helped clear dirt and weeds for an expansion of the school. We also helped clean up the base. My favorite part was on our free day we were able to go to the largest mall in Central America and the biggest mall I have been to yet.

After working in Panama City it was time to catch our flight to Lima. Once we were in Lima we realized that it was going to be cold and how different Peru was from Central America. We were able to stay in downtown Lima which was beautiful and quite old. Lima was just a stop over for us though and we were trying to get a bus to Cusco. Getting to Cusco however is took some time and we ended up having to spend 2 extra days in Lima. During this time we went out trying to meet backpackers and praying for this beautiful city. Aryk and I were able to meet another large group that was here from Minnesota while doing a bible reading in the Starbucks.

After our time in Lima it was time for our longest bus ride yet. This also turned out to be the worst bus ride of our trip. We rose 4000 meters in elevation, there was a smelly monkey in our bus, and most of us got sick (Dave and I did not). So after arriving in Cusco we find out its much colder and we are sick, also we find out none of the ministries are ready for us because we were not able to get there on monday. So we pray and decide to move on to Bolivia. Our leaders go out to buy our bus tickets and call us and let us know that the Americans have to pay $140 dollars to get into Bolivia. There are three Americans and we find out we have fifteen minutes to figure out if we have the money and if we should still go to Bolivia. So we sit down and try to figure out if we have the money, but our Australian says that we should just pray if we should go to Bolivia and God will provide the money. We prayed and God said we should go and that we had the money in the group. I will skip forward for a sec and finish this story which is an awesome story. Ok so we are back in Cusco a few weeks later, we had used money that was for our ministries and we had to pay it back. Our Australian decides that we should all pray about how much each of us should give and write it down on this piece of paper and then fold it down so the next person cannot see the number. We all do this and im not lying the total worked out to exactly the right amount of money. People who wanted to give more felt they shouldn't give more and people who had money felt they shouldn't give. For me this was huge and showed that God would take us places that we on our own could not go.

Trust in God, he will not let you down.